Teaching
Designing a hands-on course
A hands-on workshop or training day framed in one document: audience, objectives, timed schedule, modules, rotating workshops on anonymised cases, and before/after assessment.
The problem
A hands-on course (an imaging day, a simulation workshop, a course run with a partner) is often put together from last year’s programme and a list of speakers. The objectives stay vague, practice shrinks to a few minutes at the end of the day, and nobody knows afterwards what the participants actually learned.
Step-by-step method
- Set the frame: audience, number of participants, prerequisites, equipment (workstations, simulators, laptops), language, handouts. Every unknown is written down, not guessed.
- Write operational objectives with verbs: “acquire a view”, “measure”, “interpret”, “write a conclusion”. An objective that starts with “know about” or “raise awareness” is rephrased.
- Build the timed schedule slot by slot, with the share of practice shown plainly (for example “60% hands-on”) and rotation times counted.
- Apply a standard module to each topic: objective · acquisition · analysis · reference values · pitfalls · report · verified references. A reference value without a verified source stays “to be confirmed”.
- Run small-group workshops with rotation, on anonymised cases preloaded on the workstations, each with an answer grid for the tutor.
- Plan the assessment: identical pre-test and post-test, a grid of skills observed during the workshops, a short satisfaction questionnaire.
- Spread the case bank across the programme: a page of slots with a case counter per workshop, a default proposal, a reserve of unassigned cases, workshops still “to be completed” flagged, and a “copy the allocation” button to paste it back into the conversation for approval.
- Prepare the two half-day variant: same objectives, modules grouped, one assessment per half-day.
- List the open points on the partner’s side (room, equipment, funding, deadline for handouts): each becomes a checkbox with an owner.
Going further
- Imaging: from export to teaching material
- Building a clinical case
- Organising the start of a DIU academic year
- Lectures, MCQs and exams
Deliverable
A framing document (frame, objectives, timed schedule, modules, workshops, assessment, variant, open points) and a case allocation page ready for approval.
Safeguards
Cases are anonymised before they are loaded onto the workstations: no image or report carries a name, an exact date or a patient banner. No reference value or bibliographic reference is invented. The AI proposes the allocation, the organiser decides; agreements with the partner stay in the working tool.
Starter prompt
I am preparing a hands-on training day for about twenty participants. Here are the topic, the available equipment and the list of my anonymised cases. Draft the framing document: frame, operational objectives with verbs, timed schedule with the share of practice, a standard module per topic, rotating workshops with an answer grid, identical pre-test and post-test. Then propose an allocation of cases per workshop, with a reserve, without fixing anything.