HLSC665 - Contemporary Teaching for Health Professional Education

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Unit rationale, description and aim

As health professional educators, students 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 students 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 meet this need by extending understanding of contemporary and emergent educational techniques and technologies. In this unit students will investigate a teaching and learning need that presents a challenge in their context. Students will explore different educational techniques and technologies, evaluate their usefulness for their specific teaching and learning need using scholarly evidence, and make recommendations to address the need. Therefore, this unit aims to help students develop their practice as an educator informed by scholarship, the needs of 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.

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

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

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 students learning as well as providing a means to demonstrate their learning. In order to develop the knowledge, comprehension and skills required to achieve the learning outcomes and Graduate Attributes, students will:

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

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.

Bradshaw, M. J., Hultquist, B. L., & Hagler, D. (Eds.). (2019). Innovative teaching strategies in nursing and related health professions (8th ed.). Jones and Bartlett Learning.

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