Project Title : Physical activity in medical education: a flipped classroom approach

Much of the world’s population is physically inactive and sedentary and physical inactivity has been argued to be the greatest public health problem of the 21st century. Physical activity (PA) promotion is paramount in both primary and secondary healthcare, and tomorrow’s doctors need to be in a position to embrace the potential for prescribing PA to their patients for both disease prevention and treatment. However PA is not taught routinely in Edinburgh medical curriculum. The aim of the project is to facilitate a formal teaching and learning opportunity in which first year medical students will be exposed to the basic principles of PA for disease prevention and treatment.

Adopting a flipped classroom approach to teaching and learning we will develop a learning package to be delivered within the year 1 Health, Ethics and Society (HES) module (MBChB): self-study preparatory materials; a whole session flipped classroom; post class review case studies. We will involve a group of medical students to work with the project team in developing and evaluating the learning package.

The impact of the learning package will be assessed in a number of ways: tracking student use of online materials; student survey and focus group evaluation of learning and teaching methods; survey of student knowledge on physical activity.

The learning package will be of use to other programmes requiring input on physical activity and the broader findings from the project will be of interest to those adopting a flipped classroom approach.

Development and delivery of physical activity medical education material for medical students at Univeristy of Edinburgh