MedEd UNSW 2021
FOR MEDICINE AND HEALTH EDUCATION ENTHUSIASTS
Welcome to the first MedEd Newsletter of 2021
Welcome to the first MedEd Newsletter for 2021. My name is Dr Linda Ferrington, and I am based in the Rural Clinical School in Port Macquarie. Like me, you are probably all readjusting to working face to face again, I'm loving being back on campus with the students, though I have to admit that it has been a bit of an adjustment having to think about what I wear every day again! How lucky we are in Australia that we are able to have some sort of normalcy.
I would really love this newsletter to become driven by the readership (i.e. you!) so please do send me any interesting MedEd related items that you happen across. In this first issue, I'll be giving some information about up coming events, including our own MedEd Seminars, Education Focused events and Medical Education Conferences; I would love to hear from you if you have any upcoming seminars and workshops in your area, and of course all important teaching tips! This month we have a couple of good tips from colleagues, including a missive to eat more cake - no arguments from me!
First MedEd Seminar 2021
17th March @ 12pm
Dr. Kayley Lyons is the Ware Research Fellow in Pharmacy Education and Leadership at Monash University. She previously completed a PhD in the Learning Sciences at UNC. Her research focuses on collaborative learning, student motivation, therapeutic reasoning, and self-regulated learning.
In the first MedEd seminar for 2021 she will present content from her team’s recent article in Medical Teacher entitled “The clinical educator’s guide to fostering learner motivation: AMEE Guide No. 137.”
To join the meeting please use the MS Teams link below
Teaching Tips
Facilitating a learning community:
having your cake and eating it too
DR JESS MACER-WRIGHT – PHASE 1 MEDICINE, UNSW RURAL CLINICAL SCHOOL
Facilitating discussion and collaborative learning in higher education can sometimes be a challenge. This can be for a variety of reasons, such as the level of student engagement, diversity in individuals and their preferences for learning, or perhaps a fear of straying from the all too comfortable ‘comfort zone’. In the Phase 1 Medicine Program at the Port Macquarie Campus, we have introduced “cake club” into our small group scenario-based learning sessions with the aim of facilitating the development of a close-knit learning community. Thus far, this has been successful in providing the opportunity for the new year 1 cohort to build stronger collegial connections over cake. Additionally, it has inspired our current year 2 students, keen to rebuild their learning community after almost a year of COVID online learning and interaction in 2020, to create their own version. Anecdotally, I can tell you that this group is much more close-knit and enthusiastic about collaborative learning, probably due to their ability to build a close and supportive learning community.
Meeting for coffee (and cake) is used widely by social support groups etc to create informal learning settings and fosters the formation of social support networks (Cross, 2016). Coffee clubs have also been used in the higher education setting to provide an opportunity for informal learning (Harvey & Smith, 2014). In our setting, our aim is to foster a social and collegial support network for Port Macquarie Phase 1 students within a formal teaching setting. We believe that this may assist in breaking down barriers to collaboration and facilitate a safe and open learning environment in which students can comfortably tackle challenging learning.
References:
Coss, Sarah (2016) Learning to Mother over Coffee and Cake: Naming our Informal Learning. Masters thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Harvey, F., & Smith, T. iPads, coffee and cake: Becoming experts together-informal learning with iPads at the University of Southampton. In First International Conference on the use of iPads in Higher Education 2014.
Associate Professor Chinthaka Balasooriya
EDUCATIONAL QUALITY
Associate Professor Chinthaka Balasooriya will present on Educational Quality and what makes teaching good. He will also touch on the value of formative peer review of teaching
Dr Melanie Fentoullis
ONLINE APPROACHES TO COVID IMPACTED CLINICAL LEARNING
Dr Melanie Fentoullis will share her experience and insight on using MS Teams for peer learning and managing approaches to online and face-to-face (clinical work-integrated) learning
Professor Louise Lutze-Mann
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSION
Professor Louise Lutze-Mann (Director, Education pillar in the Pro Vice-Chancellor Education & Student Experience portfolio) will lead a session for EF academics on promotion and career planning
EF Career Development Funding now Open
The EF Career Development Funding (CDF) is a valuable resource for all EF academics that are looking to access career development opportunities. EF academics are eligible to apply for up to $5,000 of funding per FTE (full time equivalent), per annum.
Round 1 applications opened on March 1st.
Teaching Tips
Class Polling
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICHARD VICKERY
Polling during class is a great way to get a sense of student understanding. Teaching synchronously online across multiple platforms can make this challenging to implement as, for instance, presenters may not have access to set up a poll on a given platform.
I use Echo360 to set up a quiz as a few slides in a presentation in the relevant Moodle course (you can always create a new class to put the quiz into). I then post a direct link to the Echo presentation in the chat window of the platform I am using to teach. I screen-share the Echo screen to show the results of the polling/question to students and lead a discussion on the results.
MedEd Article(s) of the Month
Upcoming Medical Education Conferences
Beginning to Teach 2021
FOR UNSW EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS AND HIGHER DEGREE RESEARCH CANDIDATES WITH LITTLE TO NO EXPERIENCE OF TEACHING.
Module 1: Mon 5 July, webinar - Fri 9 July
Module 2: Mon 12 July, webinar - Fri 16 July
Module 3 Mon 19 July, webinar - Fri 23 July
Practice teaching sessions Friday 6 August (f2f) in Wallace Wurth building
I have read many persuasive reports about medical education, but they generally overlook the essential point, that if you have first-class students and first-class teachers the rest matters very little.