Approximately one-half of physician assistant education occurs in the classroom or didactic setting. The didactic curriculum is developed in order to adequately prepare students for their role as clinicians. Didactic education can be delivered through various means, including the traditional lecture, small group discussion, problem-based learning, use of standardized patients, laboratory and clinical simulation settings, and one-on-one interactions. Ideally, programs will establish their expected learning outcomes and then develop the curriculum in order to meet these learning goals. The curriculum has courses that support the mastery of these learning outcomes and students are assessed along the way to establish whether they have met these learning outcome goals. During didactic education, it is vital that assessments are appropriately performed and that students are tested according to these objectives rather than on just what the instructor thinks is important.

PA programs are mandated by the ARC-PA to offer certain courses and must also cover certain topics within the curriculum; however, programs are given the flexibility to cover the topics as they see fit. Programs have the burden of proving that topics have been adequately covered. Typically, programs provide learning outcomes that address these topic areas as proof that these topics are contained in the curriculum.

Didactic education effectiveness needs to be evaluated by a variety of different audiences. Programs heavily rely on student evaluations of courses and faculty members but other avenues can also be pursued in order to provide information about the effectiveness of the didactic curriculum. Programs may use clinical preceptors, employers of their graduates, peer reviewers, and outside consultants in order to make judgments about educational effectiveness. Programs also use objective outcome data from the PANCE (Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination) and PACKRAT (Physician Assistant Clinical Knowledge Rating Assessment Test) in order to provide additional material for analysis. The PACKRAT is an ideal test to assess didactic effectiveness if it is given at the completion of the didactic training because student knowledge at this level is not highly influenced by the knowledge that is gained from clinical preceptorships.

Programs may also use industrial benchmarking techniques in order to compare their programs against the perceived leaders in the field. Benchmarking against the best rather than just against the industry average is one technique to aim for excellence rather than just meeting the average.

Assessment should be based upon measurable learning outcomes. PA programs will need to develop remediation strategies for students who fail to meet program academic standards and should develop policies that define academic dismissal for students who cannot be successfully remediated. Student assessment that is ideally performed can be utilized to improve performance of the student.

In an ideal situation, students are provided with the expected learning outcomes prior to the educational offering. Students given this information prior to the lecture or discussion may use self-directed learning techniques in order to better prepare for a topic in which they have no inherent information. By their introduction of material prior to the delivery of the lecture, retention and understanding may be enhanced because of their newly found familiarity with the subject.

The better instructors use a variety of teaching techniques and adapt their teaching to the needs of the student. Communication with the student and getting a sense of what the student does not know provides a better foundation for teaching. Connecting with the individual student and holding their attention is essential in sharing this knowledge with the student.

Many students prefer learning through intuition - they enjoy being given a problem, analyzing the problem and coming up with a logical solution. Students also enjoy being part of the discussion and being active learners - classroom activities that involve the students are more likely to keep them involved and learning. Even lecture-based courses can be adapted to include patient cases in order to involve the students in the learning process.

Resources for developing instructional goals and objectives can be found below:

Sample Instructional Goals and Objectives by Michael Huckabee, MPAS, PA-C, Wallace Boeve, MSPA, PA-C

Handouts from a workshop on assessing student writing can be acessed below:

Workshop—Reading, Writing, and Rubrics: Assessing Student Writing
Martha Petersen MPH, PA-C; Alison C. Essary, MHPE, PA-C 

The Journal of Physician Assistant Education also offers many resources related to didactic education. Click here to access articles from the journal search engine.