gms | German Medical Science

New regulations for medical education changed the preclinical curriculum. We present a new seminar which started for the first time in this year’s summer term. The seminar “Molecular Histology” is one module of 11 integrated seminars within the medical preclinical curriculum. 16 seminar groups with 21 medical students in their second semester were formed. Seven teaching sessions were arranged each lasting 90min. The seminar lessons dealt with general histology topics based on knowledge that had been presented to the students beforehand. Chosen topics for the seminar focussed on the characterization of cellular ultrastructure and molecular components of cellular subcompartments. This theoretical part was framed by the presentation of clinical cases. To improve motivation and active participation we introduced a new seminar structure based on student experts teaching their colleagues. Core structure of each seminar lesson consisted of 3 teaching groups each taught by one of the student experts. After a given time one of the seminar members in each teaching group had to present a summary. The integrative seminar “Molecular Histology” has been designed to causatively connect molecular knowledge in microscopical anatomy with exemplified diseases and to illustrate the close relationship between current research approaches and the level of student knowledge. The seminar will be evaluated by questionnaire at the end of term. By now, we can report that the implementation of this new seminar structure led to a higher level of student activity compared to former seminars organized by the department.