Innovative program delivery in graduate health professions education: promoting excellence and collaboration

Introduction/Background The roles of clinical educator, scholar and academic are becoming increasingly recognised as essential for the future of the health professions to deliver safe and effective care. Graduate programs in health professions education (HPE) provide knowledge, skills and networks to promote educational leadership1. With pandemic lockdowns, the increased uptake of online learning offered new opportunities to innovate and expand our postgraduate degrees in HPE and Clinical Simulation, previously offered as a hybrid learning design. Aim/Objectives We aim to describe the development of Monash University HPE and Clinical Simulation programs and online approaches used to promote learning, collaboration and educational leadership, and to discuss the opportunities and challenges of fully online programs. Discussion New fully online programs were designed to continue to deliver learning outcomes, promote interprofessional learning, create opportunities for students to apply concepts and build collaborations. Best practice pedagogical concepts for remote learning were adopted. Online activities included virtual microteaching sessions, story-based discussion forums, podcasts, drop-in sessions and utilisation of contemporary online learning tools. Practice-based assessment enabled students to apply learning authentically. Through the development process, we used an Action Research approach to gather data from diverse stakeholders2. Professional development in health professions education must continue to adapt to the needs of future educators. Online learning provides increased access and flexible learning. An interactive, purposeful online curriculum with engaging and dynamic learning activities can provide rich collaborative and practical opportunities for students to apply knowledge and create meaningful future educational careers. Issues/Questions for exploration OR Ideas for further discussion Although stakeholders appreciated the increased access fully online programs offer, there was concern relationship and networking was compromised. How do we balance this? References 1 Ara Tekian, Trudie Roberts, Helen P. Batty, David A. Cook & John Norcini (2014) Preparing leaders in health professions education, Medical Teacher, 36:3, 269-271, DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2013.849332 2 Herbert Altrichter (2005) The role of the ‘professional community’ in action research, Educational Action Research, 13:1, 11-26, DOI: 10.1080/09650790500200274