Winner 2025 - Curing the Curriculum: A Student-Led Open Research & Education Podcast for (medical) students.
Open Research objectives/practices
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Making the outputs of research freely available.
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Using alternative models of publication and peer review.
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Using open collaborative methods and tools
Introduction
Curing the Curriculum is a student-led, co-constructive podcast that turns medical education research into accessible, openly available learning for students, clinicians, and educators worldwide. Created by two medical students / graduates affiliated with the RUG, UMCG and the LEARN research network, the podcast translates timely and relevant scientific insights into real-world, student-centered dialogue.
Each episode features conversations with leading researchers and educators on urgent educational themes — such as burnout, reflective practice, psychological safety, professional identity formation — and is distributed freely on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
This initiative embodies Open Science principles: it dismantles the 20-year or so lag between educational research and curricular implementation, giving learners and educators immediate access to cutting-edge ideas in accessible, dialogic formats.
Motivation
Our motivation stems from a critical gap in how educational research reaches practice. Decades of studies on feedback, hierarchy, reflection, and wellbeing remain locked in journals, while (medical) students and clinicians continue to face the same systemic challenges. By making research findings audible, relatable, and reusable, we empower students and educators to engage with evidence directly — not filtered through institutional training or hierarchy. The podcast also serves as a model of “open pedagogy in action”: learners are not passive consumers of knowledge but co- creators of it.
The benefits extend beyond medicine. Our audience spans all continents, and feedback from listeners in healthcare, law, and social sciences confirms the universal relevance of our topics. One UK Health Professions Education programme has already integrated our work into a curriculum revision, demonstrating tangible educational impact.
For researchers, Curing the Curriculum creates an additional dissemination channel: an open, conversational layer between academic output and the practice of education. For listeners, it humanizes and democratizes science — transforming papers into stories, and data into applicable empathy and insight.
Lessons learned
Our journey revealed both challenges and enablers of open education.
Challenges:
Sustainability: student-led initiatives depend on voluntary labour; consistent support or micro-funding is essential for continuity.
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Infrastructure: setting up reliable channels and audio workflows has been challenging as we are full time students with limited production experience.
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Legitimacy: as students, we face skepticism about 'who can teach' -yet this exactly underscores why open, bottom-up educational innovation is vital to more towards more co-creation in science and
education.
Supporting factors:
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Institutional support by our research network has been invaluable, who advised us as they value evidence-informed education.
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Public platforms (Spotify, YouTube, etc.) that facilitate free global access.
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A growing academic community supportive of open dissemination and student co-creation.
Key lesson:
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Open Research and Education is not justabout accessibility — it’s about agency. When students and researchers researching them collaborate as equals, knowledge becomes alive, socially embedded and applicable, benefiting everyone.