HLSC665 - Contemporary Teaching for Health Professional Education

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Unit rationale, description and aim

As a health professional educator you need to support learning through the effective application of educational strategies, techniques and technologies in a way that addresses a need, is of high quality, and is sustainable. To do this you need to be able to understand the opportunities available and critically evaluate these options in order to design and deliver learning resources and experiences that are flexible, engaging and transformative. This unit helps you meet this need by extending your understanding of contemporary and emergent educational techniques and technologies. In this unit you will investigate a teaching and learning need that presents a challenge in your context. You will explore different educational techniques and technologies, evaluate their usefulness for your specific teaching and learning need using scholarly evidence, and make recommendations to address the need. Therefore, this unit aims to help you develop your practice as an educator informed by scholarship, the needs of your learners, institutional mission, values and policies, and other priorities that impact on the healthcare sector.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - discuss the characteristics and functions of current and emergent educational strategies, techniques and technologies applicable to health professional education (GA5);

LO2 - identify and analyse learning needs for a group of learners in their practice setting (GA5, GA8, GA9);

LO3 - apply knowledge and understanding to develop a plan for learning activities, using a scholarly approach, that aim to develop learner capability and that reflect effective contemporary health professional education (GA3, GA5, GA6, GA8, GA10).

Graduate attributes

GA3 - apply ethical perspectives in informed decision making

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

GA10 - utilise information and communication and other relevant technologies effectively.

Content

Topics will include:

Participatory perspectives of learning

Understanding the need and the context

• Conducting needs assessment
• Aligning education and training with internal and external priorities
• Reporting and dissemination of findings and recommendations

Contemporary and emergent educational strategies, techniques and technologies

• Blended learning
• Gamification
• Interprofessional education
• Simulation
• Virtual reality, augmented reality and visualisation

Design considerations for health professional education

• Application of education models and theories to guide and focus design
• Cultural, social and ethical considerations
• The use of storyboarding to guide activity planning and development

Strategies for enhancing quality education

• Validation and authentication
• Instruction and facilitation techniques

Evaluation

• Models, strategies and levels of evaluation
• Aligning evaluation process with identified needs
• Use of evaluation data 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

Participants of this unit are adult learners with diverse geographical location, educational experiences including that of online learning, and professional background. For this reason, this unit has been designed in a manner that aims to assist you to develop your practice as a health professional educator who supports learning through the effective application of educational strategies, techniques and technologies in a way that addresses a need, is of high quality, and is sustainable.

To achieve this, this unit is delivered using an online mode of delivery and uses an active learning approach to support you in your exploration and acquisition of the essential knowledge associated with contemporary teaching methods in health professional education. Using a blended learning strategy, you will acquire and explore the essential knowledge underpinning contemporary and emergent trends in health professional education in a series of online interactive lessons. You will also be supported in your construction and synthesis of this knowledge through participation in synchronous online webinars. 

These activities will be informed by your comprehension of relevant scholarly evidence combined with practical community wisdom.

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment strategy used aims to progressively develop your knowledge and skills to enable you to meet the learning outcomes for this unit; in other words, it supports your learning as well as providing a means for you to demonstrate your learning. In order to develop the knowledge, comprehension and skills required to achieve the learning outcomes and Graduate Attributes, you will:

• first, demonstrate your knowledge and understanding about participatory perspectives of learning (for example, a short answer format paper)
• second, advance your knowledge and understanding through a written assignment (for example, a written report)
• thirdly, apply your knowledge and understanding through the construction of a plan for an educational activity designed to meet a specific need (for example, a story board).

Each assessment task in this unit will be assessed according to criteria and standards that are simplified and summarised in the form of a rubric. The rationale for the use of rubrics in this unit is to provide you with a clear statement of the performance expectations for each assessment task, and to provide clarity around what you need to do to succeed. Further, the use of rubrics aims to provide you with helpful feedback about the quality of your work. 

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Bauman, E.B. (2013). Game-based teaching and simulation in nursing and healthcare. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Billett, S., & Henderson, A. (Eds.). (2011). Developing learning professionals. Integrating experiences in university and practice settings. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Hager, P., Lee, A., & Reich, A. (Eds.). (2012). Practice. Learning and change. Practice-theory perspectives on professional learning. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Hager, P. & Halliday, J. (2006). Recovering informal learning: Wisdom, judgement and community. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Hellaby, M. (2013). Healthcare simulation in practice. Keswick, United Kingdom: M&K Publishing.

Herrington, J., Reeves, T. C., & Oliver, R. (2010). A guide to authentic e-learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Reiners, T. & Wood, L. C. (Eds.) (2015). Gamification in education and business. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.