A traditional medical school has students spend two years in lecture courses and then two years in clinical training--during which students follow doctors in area "teaching hospitals."

In the New Pathway program, the first two years are spent predominantly in eight-person groups headed by a tutor.

Within these groups, the students are presented with a "case"--a hypothetical patient with a disease, often modeled on real patients. The students investigate these cases by looking up medical texts on their own and discussing the results of their research in class.

"The purpose is not to diagnose or learn to treat the patient, but to understand the science...that underlies the problem," Federman says.

For instance, given the case of a patient with lung cancer complaining of a cough, students must learn how cancer develops and spreads in cells in order to understand the biology behind the disease.

About 60 percent of HMS' first two years is taught in small-group tutorials, with the other 40 percent being done in traditional lecture courses. But Federman says that students spend 80 percent of their studying time on their problem-based learning courses.

Officials praise the method because it allows students watch a problem unfold from Monday to Friday and take information from several different clinical areas at once.

"Students do a lot of foraging on their own," Federman says.