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In Germany, scientific qualifications and an academic career in medical disciplines require mastering and balancing clinical, research and teaching activities. Systematic interdisciplinary human resource development is rare in German medical faculties. The purpose of this paper is to describe the MediMent programme, which is a model for systematic interdisciplinary support of early‐ and mid‐phase career development for medical academics. It comprises mentoring, training and networking modules tailored for pre‐ and post‐doctoral students at the Medical Faculty. It contributes to organisational development and reducing gender inequality by an affirmative action programme for women. The programme supports individual career‐building, teaches networking skills for an interdisciplinary workplace and assists in conflict resolution.

Mentors and mentees provided feedback via standardised forms. Additional open‐ended questions were interpreted by content analysis. Statistics were prepared using SPSS.

Evaluation of the first six‐year programme run revealed several benefits, indicating the trio of mentoring, networking and the accompanying seminar series efficiently supports career development of young medical academics. Participating mentees felt they achieved career goals within the mentoring programme. Evaluations indicated a strong potential for future investment in the organisation through better training, improving institutional visibility and stimulating recruitment of excellent students.Originality/value – The success of the MediMent programme described in the paper recommends it for implementation at other institutions.

Online resources can be helpful for students and can augment the content presented in learning environments. A team consisting of four biologists, a graduate student, instructional designer and media developers collaborated on the design, development and evaluation of first-year biology online tutorials in a Canadian University. The tutorials were designed to address knowledge gaps resulting in low success rates and attrition of first-year students in biology. The decrease in the number of students in STEM has alarmed educators, prompting a call for efforts to increase STEM majors in universities. Large class sizes, such as first year biology with ∼900 registrants annually, with detail-oriented, content-heavy loads, can result in low success rates and attrition.

Active learning methods, including online formative assessments, which encourage student engagement in course material, can be effective in large introductory science classes, and thus, the authors provided engagement with tutorial online resources. The authors identified the tutorial topics by analyzing previous years' tests, student feedback and pedagogical research in undergraduate biology. The top five topics identified as common misconceptions or troublesome concepts within the course were selected. Standard instructional design processes were used to produce high-quality online tutorials. Tutorials included learning materials, videos, animations, self-assessments, reflective questions and badges to facilitate deep learning of the topics. Effectiveness of the tutorials was evaluated using quantitative methods and quasi-experimental design to compare the student learning results between the control year (without tutorials) and the year when tutorials were offered. Pre- and posttests measuring conceptual understanding were administered to assess gains in student learning. Additionally, student engagement was measured using the Classroom Survey of Student Engagement (CLASSE), and data from learning management system was collected.

Results of the study show that the tutorials were an effective means of providing supplementary assistance to students as well as fostering a gain in students' levels of engagement with the course. Data analysis indicates that there was a significant increased gain in learning of core concepts in biology. Specifically, using formative online assessments resulted in measurable learning gains in students who participated voluntarily, in comparison to students who chose not to engage in self-paced quiz testing.

As seen from the description earlier, the tutorials, and this project, provide suitable university-level complexity to address specific learning gaps in the first year course. They provide a valuable service to students in terms of representing content in an alternate format and motivating students as they engaged with videos and self-assessment most frequently. The project adds to the teaching and learning environment with respect to program design, mode of delivery and scheduling by providing self-paced tutorials that focus on specific concepts in biology. Students may review these resources whenever and as often as they feel necessary to better master the concepts. This makes the content applicable for the various preferences for approaches to learning and accommodation requirements found in students. Importantly, using formative online assessments resulted in measurable learning gains in students who participated voluntarily, in comparison to students who chose not to engage in self-paced quiz testing.