Notes on your phone

In the new medical curriculum, lecturers sometimes apply the rules a bit rigidly, according to columnist Arendje. Fortunately, her fellow students are resourceful.

For the past two years, the Medicine programme has had a new curriculum: ErasmusArts 2030.  The name sounds futuristic, but the teaching itself is, unfortunately, not quite there yet.

Take for example the way we are expected to prepare for exams. Under the ‘old curriculum’, students always made good use of past exam papers and revision guides that you could buy for a few euros. For us, there was simply nothing available at first: no past exams, and even a practice test with more than ten questions was too much to ask for in the first few months, as it was feared this would make students complacent. In the words of our programme director: “You’re not meant to study solely with exams in mind.” Brilliant, given that you really do have to pass those exams to get your degree.

Aside form this lack of practice material, there is another issue: we are not allowed to take photos of assignments or PowerPoint slides, and these are not posted on Canvas either. The lecturers are worried that, if they did post them, nobody would turn up for the seminars next year. Personally, I would try to make my lessons more engaging, but perhaps that’s too simplistic a view.

The result of this policy is that the classrooms sound like a forest full of woodpeckers with ADHD, such is the intensity with which the students are trying to type out every detail. Lecturers also tend to put a huge, complex table on the board, say that it’s exam material, and then move on to the next slide within a minute. Funnily enough, all new students simply get the notes from the older students – that’s the circle of life at uni, after all – so the question is whether this strategy employed by the programme actually works at all.

Fortunately, students are very good at finding creative ways to work around the rules. Recently, I was in a seminar where a whole lot of important material was put up on the board. A student who was usually rather quiet put her hand up and asked: “Would it be all right if I took some notes on my phone?” What followed was a deafening silence, a lecturer staring ahead in bewilderment, and finally saying that there was nothing in the rules to say that wasn’t allowed. She grabbed her phone out of her bag and took some photos, which were then gratefully received in our group chat.

What I found most remarkable about this situation was that nobody asked afterwards whether it was actually okay that those pictures were taken. A student found a loophole and took immediate advantage of it. Not out of rebellion, but simply because she wanted to make studying a bit easier. Perhaps that is the greatest lesson I’ve learnt from this curriculum: if it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid, but at least it works.