Holistic learning and development

A holistic learning environment is one that cherrishes all aspects of students' learning. The environment should be safe, supportive, and provides opportunities to help students deal with non-academic as well as academic factors that impact their learning. Creation of such an environment requires the establishment of a supportive learning community. For a variety of reasons, establishing such a learning community of first-year medical students can be challenging. This communication presents one approach to meeting this challenge in a medical school Human Physiology course. Steps were taken at the beginning of the course to create the community, and activities designed to reinforce these efforts were incorporated into the course as it progressed.