TeachIM.org
TeachIM.org is a free and public online tool designed for internal medicine attendings and senior residents with the goal of making it easier to teach when they want, the way they want. We believe physician educators should be able to share and build on one another’s teaching materials rather than spend countless hours re-creating what others have already made. Many of us miss out on teaching in the moments it would be most effective due to the time it takes to prepare a highly effective talk.
We recently started asking for donations to support this effort. It is expensive to build and maintain an online platform and we want this project to continue growing. However, we never want money to be the reason learners or educators can’t access our material. So please feel free to renew a free annual membership as long as you need to.
We currently have three types of posts, each with guidance on how to teach the topic and the materials necessary to do so. Still, we hope you will adapt and build on them based on your own style and learner environments.
- Chalk Talks (20-45 minutes) – The most unique feature to our platform is the ‘Chalk Talk’, a conceptual framework for addressing a clinical question that fits into a single visual frame, rather than a series of slides or pages. This allows all discussed content to map onto one fixed space that learners can use to reinforce the concept and easily re-access in the future. Each talk is designed for teachers to use as-is or adapt as needed. Information on the online platform helps the resident or attending prepare for the talk. Then they either reproduce a version of the Chalk Talk on a whiteboard/chalkboard or project the talk directly from the website on a screen or monitor.
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- Chest X-rays (5 minutes) – One image, one teaching point. These brief posts are intended for 5-minute warm-ups before rounds or morning report.
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- ECG (5 minutes) – Again, designed to be a brief single image warm-up to a broader topic or incorporated. If you are incorporating these posts into a longitudinal curriculum on reading ECGs, we recommend starting with the Introduction to ECGs to orient learners to the same standard methods.
Each format, especially a chalk talk, requires preparation time to become familiar with the material before using it to teach.
The Editors
Brandon Fainstad, MD
Yilin Zhang, MD
