HLSC609 - Facilitating Learning in Health Professional Settings

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Teaching organisation

Unit rationale, description and aim

In health professional education, it is a requirement that educators have the knowledge and skills to successfully facilitate learning for individuals and small groups with diverse learning styles. This unit provides an opportunity for students to critically examine, design and apply health professional facilitation models and strategies as they apply to different healthcare settings. 

To that end, students will first explore the contexts of learning and teaching in the workplace setting, and different models of facilitation in health professional education, while considering the characteristics of diverse learners. Students will then examine constructive alignment and learn how to develop teaching activities which encourage the use of decision making frameworks to improve critical thinking and reflective practice. Finally, students will explore ethical, moral and legal issues as these relate to practice as an educator of health professionals. Scholarly evidence will be combined with practical community wisdom as important sources of learning.

The overall aim is therefore is to provide students with a foundation of the principles and practices of effective health professional facilitation, to empower students to provide the optimal learning environment for healthcare students in their workplace. 

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 - Describe selected models of facilitation in contemporary health professional education (GA4, GA5, GA8)

LO2 - Analyse the needs of diverse learners in a range of healthcare contexts (GA1, GA3, GA4, GA8)

LO3 - Formulate and implement constructively aligned learning activities, to enhance critical thinking and reflective practice in decision making (GA3, GA4, GA5, GA7, GA8, GA9)

Graduate attributes

GA1 - demonstrate respect for the dignity of each individual and for human diversity

GA3 - apply ethical perspectives in informed decision making

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

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

GA7 - work both autonomously and collaboratively 

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

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

Content

Topics will include:

Contexts of learning and teaching in health professional education

• Workplace learning
• Characteristics of different learning environments (informal and formal)
• Characteristics of different learners
• Cultural competence and cultural safety
• Interprofessional education
• Role of technology in health professional education (simulation)

Models of facilitation in health professional education

• Principles of mentoring and role modeling
• Individual approaches to facilitation
• Group approaches to facilitation
• Role of the facilitator

Strategies for effective facilitation and communication

• Promoting learner’s self-efficacy
• Giving constructive feedback and the effect it has on learning
• Encouraging reflective practice
• Facilitating reflective discussions
• Negotiating learning
• Performance management and learning contracts

Constructive alignment for health professional education  

• Designing learning outcomes and objectives
• Formulating learning activities
• Authentic assessment tasks

Decision making frameworks

• Clinical reasoning cycle
• Critical thinking
• Decision making
• Developing reflective practitioners

Ethical, moral and legal issues in health professional education

• Documentation
• Confidentiality
• Accountability 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

This unit is offered in online mode and uses an active and collaborative learning approach to support students in the exploration of the essential knowledge associated with learning and health professional facilitation processes in healthcare education. Using a blended learning strategy, students will acquire and explore the essential knowledge underpinning contemporary and emergent trends in health professional education in a series of online interactive lessons. Students will be supported to actively engage with the content through readings, discussion forums and collaboration with peers. Students will also be supported in the construction and synthesis of this knowledge through participation in synchronous online webinars.  

This learning approach allows flexibility and uses expert support to draw upon learning experiences that are essential for required skill development.

Assessment strategy and rationale

In order to successfully complete this unit, students need to complete and submit two assessment tasks. A minimum combined total grade of both assessment tasks of 50% is required to pass this unit. Students will be awarded a final grade result.

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

• demonstrate knowledge of facilitation models, as well as understanding of the needs of diverse learners in the healthcare setting, while taking into consideration the ethical, moral and legal issues as it relates to your practice, in a written assessment;
• develop and critique a constructively aligned lesson plan, as part of the final assessment task.

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 students with a clear statement of the performance expectations for each assessment task, and to provide clarity around what students need to do to succeed. Further, the use of rubrics aims to provide students with helpful feedback about the quality of their work.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Bernard, J. M, & Goodyear, R. K. (2018). Fundamentals of clinical supervision (6th ed.). New York: Pearson.

Biggs, J.B., &Tang, C. S. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university: Wwhat the student does (4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Billet, S., Harteis, C., & Hans, G. (Eds.). (2015). Integrating practice-based experiences into higher education. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Higgs, J., Ajjawi, R., McAllister, L., Trede, F., & Loftus, S. (2012). Communicating in the health sciences (3rd ed.). Victoria: Oxford University Press.

Levett-Jones, T. (Ed.). (2018). Clinical reasoning (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Pearson Australia.

Price, K. M. & Nelson, K. L. (2018). Planning effective instruction: dDiversity responsive methods and management (6th ed.). Boston: Cengage.