Based on the evaluation measures utilized (see Table 2), the postdocs successfully designed and taught their own course. The undergraduate students were engaged throughout and performed well on the final oral assessment and throughout the course (Table 2). The final course ratings by the undergraduate students were high, well above the departmental average. The postdocs felt that their learning needs were met and that the intensive and relatively short (about 4 months total) nature of the experience prevented excessive disruption to their biochemistry research. Several months after the experience ended, one of the postdocs received a faculty position offer from a prestigious college that specifically referenced his unique curriculum design and student-centered teaching experience.
The biology and biochemistry departments, as well as the education mentor, also found the experience to be successful. The initial pilot program is now an official training opportunity for bioscience postdocs at the UUSOM. The biology department curriculum committee approved a regular course to be offered each summer (BIOL 5800 – Advanced Topics in Biochemistry and Cell Biology: Developing Skills in Reading and Interpreting Primary Literature with a Focus on X). During the summer of 2019, two postdocs participated, designing and teaching a course to 9 undergraduates on apoptosis and autophagy.
In addition to the standard academic measures of success, the participants in this experience found it deeply satisfying. Just like in their scientific research projects, the success of this experience depended on the postdocs owning the biology course [2]. Their initial struggles with clearly defining the course goals and aligning all activities with these goals paid off in the joy of helping students achieve challenging expectations. The education mentor enjoyed the opportunity to work with a team of postdocs. This experience created a sense of community, based on both a shared purpose and the fun of working creatively together in a safe and supportive team. Given the prevalence of burnout and its relation to feeling isolated [13], this outcome should not be overlooked.
The need for postdoc training in education has been well documented [14], and several programs already exist to address this need [15,16,17]. The postdoc training experience described here differs from these other programs in several ways. (1) Our training experience is for postdocs in a medical school and is led by a medical school curriculum dean, while the postdocs teach an undergraduate biology course. Therefore, the postdocs are exposed to the perspectives, methodologies, and cultures of both medical school and undergraduate STEM teaching. (2) Our training experience is a short and intense work-based opportunity, with postdocs jumping right into curriculum design with no didactic preamble. (3) Other than the time invested by the postdocs (about 200–260 h) and the teaching mentor (about 30 h/year), there is no cost associated with this experience and the biology department gains a well-designed and effectively taught course at no cost. It should be possible to create similar training experiences at other medical schools that have bioscience postdocs with academic goals and undergraduate campuses located nearby. The limitations of the experience include its impact on a relatively small number of learners (to date five postdocs and 13 undergraduates over 2 years) and its implementation at only one US-based university and medical school.
In conclusion, we describe a low-resource, highly authentic postdoc curriculum design and teaching experience that utilizes design, evaluation frameworks, and teaching methods commonly used in medical education. These postdocs learned how much work goes on behind the scenes of an effective course, and should be well prepared for the educational portion of their academic careers.