The observation of the issue: High failure rates in 2023 and 2024; Dramatically high in 2024

Reflective process involved: Analysed student engagement in online course materials and formative quizzes which reflected poorer course engagement amongst students who failed the course. Anecdotal feedback also indicated heavier distribution of medical science topics in the last three weeks of the course, which reflected shorter learning time for these topics before they sat the End-of-Course (EOC) assessment.

Strategies implemented:
a) Timetabling: Science-based topics were distributed throughout the seven weeks, with 60 % of these being covered in the first 3 weeks, to allow for longer learning time for students to revise and master the topics.
b) A table that outlines student learning time spent on each discipline based on the relevant learning activities was prepared. Using this data, the questions for the end-of-course assessments was mapped appropriately to student learning time (SLT) by aligning it to course topics and time allocated to each topic. This allowed for the assessment in this first year Medicine course to be better aligned to the topic distribution in the course. The weightage for each discipline based on their relevant learning activities and student learning time was shared with the students during the Course Review lecture which takes place the week before study week, to give them  insights on how the different disciplines that they learned during the course weighted according to SLT.
c) Engagement with weekly formative quizzes was made compulsory to attempt once to promote student engagement in the course.

Outcome:
Student performance in EOC improved significantly, with the passing rate increasing from 75% to 97 %. Positive feedback from students in the myExperience.