Improving Nutrition Education with Second-Year Medical Students: From Take-Home Assignment to Large-Group Application Exercise

Augmenting its nutrition education, the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine Endocrinology course initially used a case-based, take-home assignment on type II diabetes dietary guidelines, with literature search requirement and a module on relevant social determinants of health (SDOH). Course evaluations indicated this assignment did not adequately improve student perceptions of learning. For the subsequent cohort, we changed to a large-group active learning session, requiring one faculty facilitator, where student teams created problem lists including SDOH and reviewed research articles to support evidence-based nutrition recommendations. Survey results indicate that the new session resulted in significantly improved student perceptions of learning.