Learner Profile
Oussama Bentaleb

School

Cadi Ayyad University, Morocco

HMX Course

Immunology

Oussama Bentaleb knows that to become a successful physician, he’ll need a strong background in medical science fundamentals – and he’s not content to rely on classroom instruction alone. Oussama took HMX Immunology as he completed his first year of medical school at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The problem that we face every day in [medical school] lectures – you can’t just follow every single [concept] that the professor is giving for two hours, which is very long. And sometimes if we misunderstand information, you can continue to fall behind, which leads us to quit very quickly. In some fundamental sciences, where we don’t really see or touch what we’re studying, getting some concepts becomes significantly difficult. Practical classes sometimes make things easier, but sometimes professors just ask us theoretical questions about what we’ve learned. In the end, we are missing some concepts – so those are the basic reasons I was interested in HMX.

Before joining university I studied a course in high school about immunology, but it was very basic immunology; we just talked about innate immunity and some brief concepts. That attracted me since the beginning, because it’s a diverse science with a lot of concepts and a lot of information to know. Second reason is I’ve finished my first year of medical studies, and next year I’m going to start with a class in immunology, so taking the course right now is helping me improve and start the year with some knowledge that may help me to follow the course properly.

It was appropriately challenging – if you enter the course and you don’t have any idea about immunology before, I think you won’t find any problem, because most concepts I’ve learned before, I found myself forgetting. When I started from the beginning about the courses, I was very focused on taking notes and being careful with the concepts that the professors were explaining. When I took the quizzes and questions I was pretty much doing good.

I think the structure of the course was very suitable for me, because it started with an introduction which is generally a question which is attracting your attention to the course. It was like a teaser for me to think a little bit, and I found myself right in guessing some concepts. After that there is the key concepts part, which for me was the most interesting part. It was done in a way that makes you very interested in the subject, and understand things. And then there is the disease linkage part which really doesn’t focus on what you learned but makes you make some deductions from what you learned and apply them to the medical field, and so that was very interesting.

Of course – I’m going to take physiology because I will be studying physiology at university, and I think it will be very helpful.

Immunology and physiology are very important subjects to study during medical studies, and I know if I don’t try a lot of sources to study on, I won’t get a strong background on it. I was assured that the courses at university won’t be sufficient to have a strong background on these subjects, so that’s why I choose HMX as one of the best [providers of] information on these subjects.