gms | German Medical Science

Guidelines for instructing inquiry-based teaching formats usually assume seminars with regular (bi-) weekly classroom sessions to be most effective for supervising and enhancing students’ research projects (e.g., [1]). But what if either structural imperatives (e.g., external instructors, time constraints of the study program) or the instructor’s individual preferences call for conducting the seminar as a compact course “en bloc” – with only few but all-day classroom sessions? Is it still possible to teach inquiry-based learning courses? And how to ensure effective student learning? The author has instructed several seminars on inquiry-based learning as a compact course. In his poster presentation, he reflects upon his seminars by presenting the experience-based concept “FLIK”. FLIK is an acronym for inquiry-based learning en bloc (“Forschendes Lernen in Kompaktform”). The concept resulted from the author’s experience and the qualitative analysis of feedback from various seminars, and aims at providing scholars with a set of concise and action-oriented recommendations for guiding students successfully through the span of their research projects with only a small number of classroom sessions.