Phase 1 Student Workload Policy

  • Responsible: Office of Educational Affairs, Senior Associate and Associate Deans
  • Audience: Students, Faculty, Staff
  • Approved by: CCIA
  • Approval Date: March 5, 2025; Revised and amended: 7/2/2025
  • LCME Element:  8.8 Monitoring Student Time

Policy

Course leadership (course directors, project managers, and coordinators) is expected to plan and manage courses, including all scheduled activities and expected independent coursework, within the academic workload approved by CCIA.  Monitoring is the joint responsibility of course leadership and academic/curricular affairs at each campus.  Student perceptions of course workload, which may include student feedback elicited through course evaluations, are monitored in the course evaluations.

Phase 1 Curriculum:

The scientific foundation courses are organized into modular blocks of varying lengths, using multiple teaching and learning formats. The Phase 1 curriculum includes block and longitudinal courses that have scheduled activities.

Scheduled activities include lectures/flipped classroom sessions, Core cases, Team-Based Learning (TBL), labs, small group discussions, standardized patient encounters, clinical experiences and weekly assessments.

Curricular workload includes both the scheduled activities and the independent coursework for the scheduled activities, asynchronous learning modules, and completion of assignments, quizzes, and checkpoint assessments across all Phase 1 courses that are part of the core medical degree program. Independent coursework for  scheduled activities will include preparation for active learning and post-session study for other didactics.

Workload Limits Per Student

  • Maximum of 28 hours of scheduled activities per 7-day week
  • Estimated total curricular workload in the pre-clerkship curriculum should not exceed 60 hours per week.
  • Minimum of 2 half-days for protected study time per week

Course leadership will plan for a maximum estimated total curricular workload of 60 hours per week in the Phase 1 preclinical years. This should provide time for the student’s personal wellness and social engagement.