Show notes
Audio version of Dr. Scot Morris’s column “Educating the Educators: Preparing for an AI-Integrated Future.”
The column asks whether optometry and ophthalmology education, built on slide lectures, rote memorization and multiple-choice tests, is preparing graduates for modern practice, or only for board exams.
It argues for moving past time-based classroom hours toward an aviation-style check-ride model, and for teaching workflow engineering, communication and data management alongside clinical pathology.
Transcript
Hi, this is Dr. Scot Morris. This is the August of 2026 column where we talk about how do we prepare education for an AI integrated future. In other words, how do we educate the educators? Well, so let me start this out with a question. Is education trapped in a comfortable delusion? Think about that for a minute. Is eye care education trapped in a comfortable delusion? Well, for decades, optometry and ophthalmology faculties have relied on traditional model teaching with the use of PowerPoint slides, encouraging rote memorization, using multiple choice tests to test knowledge, and in the process convincing everyone that their teaching models are working simply because enough students passed the board exams.
Well, these models simply aren't working, number one. And number two, is the goal to pass board exams? Is the goal to make great doctors? Well, board scores may mask a deeper systemic failure. Are we producing graduates who are unprepared for the realities of modern clinical practice? Now, this article may cause discomfort to even maybe infuriation to some read this or listen to it. However, this is one of those important conversations about problems that need to be addressed. We can't hide. It's also important to note that faculty are being asked to teach more and more in the same amount of time. With medical knowledge doubling every 73 days, according to an NIH paper, academia is faced with an impossible task.
But maybe, just maybe, instead of just gotten through it because this is the way it's always been done, maybe we're at a critical point where it's time to re-examine not just how we teach, but what we teach. Now, some academics might feel that clinical pathology is the only subject we're teaching or that teaching business skills is not the responsibility of the institution. Well, this philosophy often leads to a dismissal of business management in core curriculum. But elements of management like workflow engineering, interprofessional communication, and data management are fundamental aspects of clinical care delivery. Private equity continues to devour clinical care facilities at every level.
And that may be in part because most doctors graduate with zero understanding of business management, leaving them helpless against corporate consolidation. Well, I think that maybe we've reached a point where we have the death of rote memorization and maybe we need to think about switching to a different model. For example, PowerPoint lectures and fact regurgitation are really candidly approaching extinction. The next generation of practitioners will have much of the raw data and diagnostic processing handled preemptively by AI. It won't be by our gray matter. The modern provider's role is shifting from data gatherer to a high-level interpreter and communicator.
To survive this shift, we might just have to abandon this rigid, time-based, butts-in-the-sea hours to adopt an aviation-style checkride system. So just as commercial aviation has replaced classroom clock hours with rigorous scenario-based simulators, eye care Education might need to move towards the same risk-free interactive simulation environment. Students need simulated clinical care environments where they can make mistakes, experience and work through diagnostic discrepancies, and learn through continuous knowledge gap correction rather than our current model, which is one and done tests that don't really match today's clinical demands. Students need an opportunity to see multiple versions of a single diagnosis at their own pace, an environment that doesn't depend on the knowledge of a single mentor, professor, or type of clinical setting.
Right now, our students have an N of 1, what they learned, what they learned sometimes one time. And it's impossible, impossible to teach what they really need to know in our current teaching environment. Now, to go with this, grading is also going to have to evolve to match this new reality when students navigate complex simulations with multiple correct pathways. We shouldn't penalize them for taking different clinical routes. Instead, we might consider awarding them points based on operational efficiency, resource utilization, and human capital management. You know, the way clinical care works today. Now, this might require a little bit of rewiring and overcoming some institutional inertia.
So, think about it. We may need to require stripping away some of the archaic evaluation metrics used for professors as well. We can no longer grade educators on passive lecture delivery or attendance. Instead, faculty might be evaluated on student competency velocity, you know, the ability and speed at which students achieve mastery over clinical care, not didactic data. I might propose that faculty instead act as master coaches who guide learners through complex problem solving, measuring how well they unmask cognitive and automation biases and make sound clinical decisions. Now, I want to highlight a key word there, coach, not professor, not teacher.
The goal of education is learning, not teaching. We need to focus on what people learn, not what they're taught. Academia often discusses the administrative hurdles and institutional tradition, insisting they can't be told how to teach or this is just the way it is. But the market is likely going to tell us a different story. Whichever institution is first to build these dynamic simulation driven programs is likely to hold an extremely competitive advantage in recruitment. The next generation wants to learn efficiently and whichever school gives them what they want is going to win the war for talent. So in summary, the status quo is this slow motion death march for academic medicine.
You can't insulate ivory towers from an evolving world. Now, if this article made you feel uncomfortable or irritated, good. This is where change begins. And in the eye care industry, we need change. I want you to look out for one of my upcoming features on revolutionizing learning for future eye care professionals as we look at what the future could and just might look like. So before I sign off for this month, I want each of you to ask yourself this question and reflect on your answer. Can you afford not to change as the world changes around you? Evolution is not something I, you, we or any one of us can escape. You either evolve or you perish.
We need to adapt our curriculum, teach a full spectrum of practice reality or face the consequences. What we can't do is complain about it. The clinical landscape is changing. How we handle it, that's our individual choice.