The Virtual Classroom

At Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, students have created several independent projects integrating psychopathology and film. In each case, social media have replaced the traditional classroom as the venue to discuss topics related to mental illness.

On this page, we present 3 of these innovative teaching curricula. For each of the 3 projects, blogs were created that explained how the films related to psychopathology. By clicking on the links below, you can access over 100 of these documents.

2016: March2Madness

Each day of the 2016 NCAA tournament, head-to-head match-ups of movie monsters were posted on Twitter. Participants simply clicked the icon next to a monster to cast their vote for their favorite fiend. By clicking on the monster’s name, users linked to pdf files that provided the background on how each of the 64 monsters related to psychiatry.

2015: 31 Days of Halloween

Beginning October 1, 2015, medical students celebrated Halloween by watching a daily horror movie and created (31) blogs on how the film related to the field of psychiatry.

2014: 52in52

Using the United States of Horror Movies map as a guide, medical students “visited” one state each week by watching the movie set in that state. After watching the film, they created (52) weekly blogs on how the movie related to pertinent teaching points in psychiatry and psychopathology.