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.

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 learners' 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

ACU Online

This unit uses an active learning approach to support students in the exploration of knowledge essential to the discipline. Students are provided with choice and variety in how they learn. Students are encouraged to contribute to asynchronous weekly discussions. Active learning opportunities provide students with opportunities to practice and apply their learning in situations similar to their future professions. Activities encourage students to bring their own examples to demonstrate understanding and application, and to engage constructively with their peers. Students receive regular and timely feedback on their learning, which includes information on their progress.

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.

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 the needs of diverse learners in the healthcare setting, while taking into consideration the ethical, moral and legal issues as they relate to practice, in a written assessment;
• develop and critique a constructively aligned lesson plan, as part of the final assessment task.

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.