The Solution

The integration of Osmosis’ medical education platform, which gives access to multimodal resources that delight and engage medical students in medical knowledge acquisition.

Osmosis provided a resource that could be utilized by all learners. With multiple types of media from videos, notes, flashcards and questions, there is something for any student. “[Osmosis] really provides the auditory, the visual, with the little cute ways to represent some of the information that sticks in your mind because of some of the stand-out aspects of it.”

Spearheaded by Dr. Johnson, the academic affairs team created Osmosis playlists directly aligned with course content to alleviate the initial burden for faculty. They “inserted [the playlists] into the learning management system, so that right along with the lecture powerpoint slides there would be a link to the Osmosis resources. And that was pretty successful. The students decided this was a great resource, they have been using them pretty consistently.”
 
Faculty became increasingly more curious about how they might use Osmosis to support teaching, and they began asking for access. This sparked the idea of faculty development sessions to ensure faculty could learn more about the resources available to them and their students. Some faculty expressed concern that Osmosis might compete with their own original content. However, Dr. Johnson assured them, “No, this is not competing, it is repeating it in a slightly different way that might gain purchase with an individual student.”

Beyond supporting primary learning, Osmosis also quickly became a core feature of the remediation process. When students need to retake an exam or close a learning gap, they can create their own Osmosis playlist which they share with their student success team and course directors. Then they watch the videos and use any associated Osmosis resources before taking their repeat exam.
 
For these students and others, a key aspect has been making learning medical information more fun. “I like that lighthearted approach that Osmosis takes…And I think that there are things here and there that make you chuckle a bit, that are cute and they make you feel good and there’s a lot to that psychologically.”

The Challenge

Finding reliable resources that would benefit the learning of all students and be particularly helpful for remediation.

Dr. Johnson has worked for decades educating both allopathic and osteopathic medical students and has seen firsthand what helps students succeed in medical school and beyond. Through her own research² she found that the most successful learning outcomes arise from multimodal learning, and that struggling students tend toward one type of resource or one mode of learning (i.e., reading, watching lectures, highlighting/note-taking, etc.).
 
Wanting to ensure that all learners have access to reliable, multimodal learning resources, Dr. Johnson brought Osmosis into the pre-clerkship curriculum at KYCOM. Her intention was to leverage Osmosis alongside coursework, to support self-directed learning among all students, and to aid in remediation for struggling students.

Additionally, to increase diversity among classes and promote rural health, there are a great number of non-traditional students in their classes. Dr. Johnson explained, “That means we have the added challenge of addressing the needs of those students and how we make sure they are supported in their learning. We want to address those needs by the end.”

KYCOM also searched for resources to be utilized in remediation processes throughout the curriculum. These resources needed to be reliable and easy for students to access for independent study to prepare for exam retakes.

The Result

Expanded and deeper Osmosis usage across the pre-clerkship curriculum.
The students' enthusiasm for using Osmosis is clear based on their own explanations and the engagement data. About 80% of students in the classes of 2024 and 2025 have used Osmosis.

After seeing the data and watching videos associated with their own courses, faculty want to continue exploring more ways to utilize the resources and expand Osmosis usage further. One of the primary ways faculty engage with Osmosis is “by pulling all those pieces together, assigning a video for students to review and then talking about that video.” Beyond flipping the class and providing pre-work, faculty now regularly go through questions associated with the videos during class time. 

Each year the academic affairs staff reflect on how to use resources most effectively and how to best demonstrate the resources available to the students. “I think that if you acquaint students with the resources when they first hit the doors, and support them in the use of those resources throughout the curriculum, that when they start to engage in board study at the end of the second year they will be much more prepared.”

Dr. Johnson is continually advocating for further use of Osmosis because, “We know that these are quality resources, we know that from reviewing many [Osmosis videos] - they are very closely aligned with what the students are learning in the classroom. Osmosis content is an alternate way for students to take that information in and for them to have a greater chance to understand it completely.” In addition, it encourages retrieval practice, a core component of expertise theory, the concept developed by Anders Ericsson³ about deliberate practice that leads to mastery level learning.