Lessons Learned from Integrating Educational Technology into the Preclerkship Teaching of Pulmonary Medicine

The structure and delivery of preclerkship undergraduate medical education has changed significantly over the past decade. Asynchronous didactic lectures are now routinely paired with in-person sessions that emphasize active and small-group learning. In this environment, educators tasked with teaching pulmonary medicine should be familiar with the growing number of educational technologies that can transform how and where content is delivered to students. In this Perspective, we review how educational technologies have been integrated into the preclerkship pulmonary module at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. We hope our experience provides a road map for the integration of these tools in other educational settings. We cover how educational technology can facilitate asynchronous learning (prerecorded lectures and online message boards) as well as active in-person learning (audience response systems and technology-enhanced learning spaces). Throughout, we highlight best practices for the technologies discussed.