The Special Master’s Program at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC SMP) is a one year academic enhancement MS program that prepares students for future success in medical school with a curriculum that includes about half of the first year basic science medical curriculum, and complimentary graduate courses. GUMC SMP students attend lectures with first year medical students (M1), complete the same multiple choice exams as their M1 counterparts, and are graded against the M1 average for their corresponding medical courses. In 2015, a second campus, the Georgetown Downtown SMP (GTDT), was opened that follows the same curriculum, but with the material delivered in a fully flipped manner. The GTDT students review the lecture capture (LC) recordings of medical (or graduate) lectures on their own time and attend classes four days weekly where the GTDT instructor provides active learning sessions to reinforce the material that students studied on their own. On the fifth day, GTDT students participate in clinical experiences and community service activities, in contrast to the 5-day per week class schedule of the traditional GUMC SMP cohort. In 2016 & 2017, we reported that the initial cohorts of GTDT students consistently scored above the average of the GUMC SMP cohorts. The present research expands on previous findings by evaluating the GTDT cohort performance compared to both GUMC SMP counterparts as well as their M1 peers’ performance over the past 5 years. Our results indicate that the GTDT students continued to outperform their GUMC SMP counterparts over 80% of the time on the medical exams. All SMP students entered the GUMC and GTDT cohorts with significantly lower undergraduate academic records than the medical students. On average, the GUMC SMP students performed on par or better than the medical students in 34% of the exams, whereas the GTDT SMP students scored on par with or better than the M1 students in 53% of the exams, a substantial increase. That increase is most likely attributable to the different learning environment, in which GTDT SMP students were actively engaged in flipped learning in all classroom sessions. Additionally, GTDT students’ responses by anonymous polling showed that they felt the active learning activities were beneficial to their overall learning and their long-term retention of the material. Overall, our results continue to validate the successful use of the active learning environment in medical education, confirm the success of both SMP cohorts in the rigorous program, and suggest that the modality results in better learning outcomes in a rigorous medical curriculum.

Keywords: Flipped learning, medical education, biomedical graduate education, outcomes, active learning.