words from the grapevine

So the rumours are true.
For the last few weeks, if not months, there have been whispers that the school of medicine (SOM) will be ridding the second year program of REAL lectures and replacing them with on-line resources instead - mostly in the form of voice-over powerpoint presentations.
Some people are clearly unhappy and upset about this decision.
Some people are content.
Some don’t really care much.
Me? I’m not really sure how I feel about it all.

First let me give you some background information.
it seems as though the biggest push to go electronic is because of our class size. To make a really long story short, in previous years there have been a much larger clinical component to the course in second year. Simply put, there is no place to house 400 students for lectures in our clinical locations.
We’re assured that it will just be the lectures that go all “e-” on us. We will still have our clinical workshops, clinical communication skill sessions, PBL groups and our smaller clinical coaching sessions.

I like the idea of being able to access lectures when I want or need to. Having the power to stop and rewind the lecturer at the touch of a button is appealing. I’ve done a course back in undergrad over the internet and I didn’t mind it too much. I don’t think it really will change much. Those that regularly attend lectures will regularly download and watch lectures. Those that don’t, simply won’t.

You obviously can’t ask your computer screen questions as they come up (well, you could... doesn’t mean it’ll answer you though!) but that can be (and WILL be) alleviated by forums, e-mails and other means.
There is the whole social aspect. Seeing friends… interacting with other people… all very important.

But I think at this point what bothers me the most is the (imminent) stigma. There is already some stigma attached to our cohort for being the biggest class in all of Australia. Questions about the quality of education have already been raised. But now, we’ll have to deal with the stigma of getting our med degrees through the internet. Of course that’s not how it is, but surely that’s the way it’ll be portrayed in the media and that’s how the layperson will take it to be. how will this affect us when we're trying to match for competitive residency programs?

And how will this REALLY affect the quality of our education? I guess we’ll just have to see in 4 years right?

One student brought up a good point. This is not something that was hatched overnight. We should’ve known about this earlier. As a matter of fact we should’ve known about this before we accepted our offers. I can’t help but agree. and if I DID know of this before, would I be here?