Building a smart clerkship ecosystem in ophthalmology based on an AI-powered curriculum in practice: a quasi–experimental study

Abstract Objectives To propose a smart, AI-powered curriculum designed to create a transformative clerkship ecosystem to solve challenges included in ophthalmology clerkships. Methods A smart ophthalmology clerkship model was constructed based on a smart AI-powered curriculum. A comparative study was conducted involving 43 students (experiment group) who underwent smart clerkship and 40 students received traditional training (control group). Formative and summative assessment and student satisfaction surveys were conducted to evaluate the impact of reform. Results Students in experiment group demonstrated statistically significant improvements in formative ([56.47 ± 6.56] vs. [52.03 ± 6.52], p<0.001) and summative scores ([26.26 ± 2.56] vs. [22.53 ± 3.88], p<0.001). The proportion of high scores (>86) was 37 % in experiment group and 10 % in control group. Satisfaction surveys (100 % response rate, Cronbach’s α =0.856) revealed a high overall satisfaction rating (4.86 ± 0.35), with 97.67 % of students finding the reformed clerkship highly beneficial. Students reported that the AI-powered tools significantly enhanced learning motivation, clinical thinking, efficiency, and comprehensive ability. Conclusions The smart AI-powered curriculum successfully created an effective clerkship ecosystem that significantly improved students’ clinical thinking and skills. It enhanced teaching quality and efficiency, providing a replicable paradigm for modernizing clinical ophthalmology education.