Course deputy director Asst Prof Jason Lee is a passionate educator who is working on ways to create more opportunities for educators to access workshops and courses to deepen their expertise // Credit: Norfaezah Abdullah, Duke-NUS
From educator to student to improve learning outcomes
With their varied educational backgrounds and the changing nature of best teaching practices, the first step was to bring everyone—clinicians, nurses, allied health professions and course administrators—on to the same level, decided the team behind the course, which is co-directed by Associate Professor Nigel Tan, the associate dean for the MD programme at Duke-NUS and group director for undergraduate education at SingHealth.
Through the two core modules, Jason Lee equips participants with a strong foundation in education theory as well as the necessary critical thinking skills to assess how best to harness technologies to achieve their desired learning outcomes before participants choose two from a series of electives focusing on different technologies, such as simulation, AR and VR as well as data analytics.
“The biggest misconception is that this is how I learned and therefore this is how you would learn,” said the assistant professor with Duke-NUS’ technology-enhanced learning and innovation department, who specialises in understanding how technology can be used to help students achieve their learning outcomes.
Teaching methods have changed, attention spans are changing and with access to more content than ever, instilling critical thinking skills has become crucial.
“A lot of healthcare professionals focus on imparting this content knowledge,” he added, thereby inadvertently neglecting helping the learner synthesise the information and develop their critical thinking skills.
“That’s why we focus heavily on reflective learning. We encourage our participants to go back, think about what they have done and use peer support as a way to learn and form a community of practice that will enrich education across our academic medical centre’s campus.”
A buzzing community
While the team has yet to do a full impact study, anecdotal evidence shows that the course can deliver on its vision of creating a buzzing community of educators. For Phua, for example, attending the course didn’t just introduce her to a wider range of teaching tools and educational frameworks:
“It was really eye-opening because it gave me access to this network of educators in different professions across SingHealth institutions, beyond the Outram campus. And it enhanced the way I look at things, showing me a wide spectrum of how educators teach using different platforms.”
For Jill Lee, the course made her aware of the many educators around her: “It can feel like you’re fighting your battles alone. But then you realise there’s one, or more than one, of you in every department. You gain an entire community of like-minded individuals across healthcare professions whom you can fall back on and discuss your successes and failures.”
And she hopes that the course will help to bring practitioners from the different health professions together, so that their varied perspectives can be incorporated into learning experiences.
Expanding their reach
Getting referrals from others across the campus who would like to partner with the education team at Duke-NUS to develop new learning tools is another sign of a healthy and dynamic educational environment.
“A team at KKH were keen on developing an educational game aimed at children to help them understand diabetes and the importance of managing diabetes well,” said Bello.
Collaborating with students from the Singapore University for Technology and Design, they are now working on a game where players take care of a pet. Filled with mini games and trips to the supermarket to purchase healthy food for the pet, players can earn coins and are rewarded by seeing their pet flourish.
The course’s impact is further extended by its graduates, who not only come back to share their experience with other cohorts, but by bringing the principles of the course to their departments and programmes. Jill Lee, for example, is looking to introduce the fundamentals of teaching to her residents.
“The idea is that our residents complete three sessions when they are junior residents and again when they are seniors, so that they can modify their teaching and learning practices as they mature,” she said. And she is now working with Jason Lee on this part of the residency education training programme.