Building Curriculum Infrastructure in Medical Education (BCIME) project creates an innovative, intuitive and well-structured system for curriculum optimisation, easily applicable in practice. In doing so, BCIME will bring a significant contribution to speeding and improving the long-term process of medical and healthcare curricula accession. Based on in depth needs analysis, which generate a set of local institutional requirements related to the goals, aspirations and current features of curriculum systems, BCIME will provide a coherent, comprehensive framework encompassing all necessary instruments for optimal curriculum management. The main project objectives are: *** To share know-how in the field of curriculum design, innovating on and optimising the proven methodology of parametric description (curriculum building blocks) and step-by-step manual for curriculum development. *** To create new descriptions of selected curriculum parts in partner institutions in accordance to the local needs analysis and institutional requirements, while in full compliance with international standards. *** To define and solve new curriculum mapping research and exploratory questions and issues and to explore hidden relations in described curricula with the use of natural language processing, data/text mining, machine learning, analysis and visualization. Building on previous efforts of project partners, especially MU in the OPTIMED project (funded by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic) and MEDCIN project (funded by the European Commission ERASMUS+ program), the BCIME project brings highly relevant benefits from methodological and technological perspective. It generates general guidelines for medical and healthcare curriculum innovations based on detailed needs analysis. It creates new instances of standard-compliant curriculum management system. It provides a detailed description of selected parts of medical and healthcare curriculum on two-tier level: a major medical discipline, Anatomy, and a secondary medical discipline. It will define new medical curriculum mapping issues on gathered curriculum data and solved using analytical, nature language and machine learning methods. These tasks uncover hidden relations between curriculum building blocks and descriptive attributes and significantly enhance the process of curriculum optimization. BCIME will produce three individual outputs: *** Methodological and technical step-by-step manual on curriculum innovations in medical and healthcare study fields. *** The outcome-based metadata description of selected parts of curriculum. *** Solution of given curriculum mapping research and exploratory questions. BCIME addresses the fundamental need of curriculum optimization and standardization for which, to the best of our knowledge there is no systematic solution based on proven pedagogical approaches and methodologies. It will make it possible to define, create, manage and analyse the curricula of medical and healthcare institutions of higher education within one robust system. Based on the presented outputs the BCIME will bring the methodologies, share experience using step-by-step manual and the curriculum management platform will be applicable also in any other study branches offered in university education systems.
The Building Curriculum Infrastructure in Medical Education (BCIME) project dealt with the challenges of curriculum management and its optimisation in terms of curriculum mapping and outcome based education focused on learners. The activities of project partners aimed specifically on curricula of medical and health care disciplines, however, the methodology and results of the project are generally applicable to other fields of study. BCIME developed the innovative, intuitive, well structured and easily applicable standard-compliant curriculum management system EDUportfolio. The EDUportfolio platform has been setup and implemented for all partner institutions in the light of both the results of BCIME needs analysis and the review of the latest literature in the field, so that it is applicable by the widest possible community and stakeholders, including curriculum developers, teachers, students, university and faculty management, administrators and technical staff as well. Moreover, BCIME provided and used a coherent and comprehensive framework with all necessary instruments for a well-structured curriculum management. Doing so, the BCIME project has met all its objectives and now shares (i) the know-how in the field of curriculum management, innovating on and optimising the proven methodology of parametric description and a step-by-step manual for curriculum development; (ii) the descriptions of selected parts of the curricula represented by the Anatomy in English as taught at all involved partner institutions and by the Neurosurgery in Romanian, the Conservative and Prosthetic Dentistry in Slovak, the Clinical and communication skills in German, the Communication skills in Polish and the Analysis, Data Management and Informatics for Healthcare Specialisation in Czech; (iii) a set of curriculum mapping research and exploratory questions with the analysis answered by the project in an visualisation toolkit capable of exploring hidden relations in described curricula. During the BCIME project implementation, all its outcomes and outputs were continuously distributed and publicly shared to all persons interested in curriculum optimisation and standardisation via the project's website, dissemination activities as well as multiplier events. In order to identify both the conceptual as well as functional features of the complex curriculum management platform and to meet expectations and requirements of participating institutions, we conducted surveys and personal discussions among 63 participants representing faculty managers, guarantors of study programs, curriculum designers, teachers, researchers, technicians and administrative staff involved in curriculum management. As the results of this needs analysis, the curriculum system’s key characteristics and features were derived and integrated into the methodologies and platform that was tested and implemented across partners’ institutions within our intellectual outputs. The same types of participants, extended by medical students, were invited to multiplier events we were able to conduct during the implementation period which was significantly affected by the worldwide pandemic situation. During three multiplier events, we shared our achieved outputs to 143 stakeholders. The exploratory and confirmatory research questions in the field of curriculum mapping were communicated to 27 stakeholders of each partner institution interested in the process of curriculum management. Based on the nominal group technique, we achieved formal consensus that generated the prioritised set of 56 right research questions. Answers to the individual research questions, together with the methodologies, step-by-step manual and outcome-based metadata description of selected parts of curriculum can be browsed by particular target groups using EDUportfolio (https://eduportfolio.iba.muni.cz/) and analytical and visualisation tools the BCIME project delivered. The BCIME project addressed the fundamental need of curriculum management and standardisation for which the systematic solution based on proven pedagogical approaches and methodologies was developed. Our set of intellectual outputs resulted in the system capable of managing and analysing curricula and is ready to be used by more than 12 500 students in the theoretical and clinical phases of medical and healthcare study programmes, more than 60 faculty members involved in the curriculum management and the 5 BCIME partner institutions (UPJS, JU, UMF, UAU, MU). Due to our project consortium cooperation the outcomes of the project are available to stakeholders at all the faculties of medicine and health care sciences involved in the MEFANET network, to other professional medical societies and general public. In order to reach a wider scientific community, the consortium was involved in dissemination of the project activities at international conferences and journal articles.