Developing, refining and professionalising your educational practice
Scholarship of learning and teaching (SOLT)
- Finding the "teacher" within
- Developing a “teaching philosophy”
- Evidencing your effectiveness
- Reflective practice
- Peer observation of teaching
- Evaluating a teaching and learning innovation (ITaLI)
- Surveying students in the MD Prgram (needs login to UQ Faculty of Mediince intranet)
- Conferences
- Societies, associations and organisations related to medical education
- Journals
- “How to” guide for a scholarly approach to learning and teaching (University College London)
- Events for your development
- Evidence-based teaching
On-line programs in clinical education
Develop your clinical education abilities though coursework.
- ClinEd2U@UQ (Mini) - A UQ course about Clinical Education (you can self-enrol; not a micro or short form credential); getting registered with Edge - go here for help.
- Rural Clinical School Resources for Clinical Teachers
- Melbourne’s EXCITE program
- ESME Online https://amee.org/courses/amee-esme-online-courses/esme-onlin
- Flinders - Grad Cert Clin Ed - https://students.flinders.edu.au/my-course/course-rules/postgrad/gcce
- Flinders - Masters Clin Ed - https://students.flinders.edu.au/my-course/course-rules/postgrad/mce
- Monash - Grad Cert in Health Professional Education
Communications in healthcare settings
- EACH: International Association for Communication in Healthcare is a global organisation dedicated to exploring and improving the ways in which healthcare professionals, patients and relatives communicate with one another. (see the Course list)
Completed SOLT Projects by Faculty
The following is a list of completed SOLT projects with a brief description of each and links to project websites or resources.
SCOLAR - Student Curation of Learning Activities and Resources
SCOLAR: a project exploring how medical students choose their study strategies and learning resources, given the wide range of institutional, external and student-generated resources available to them, and how Faculty might assist with this curation.
- Dr Nancy Sturman, PCCU (lead)
- Staff team: Alison Green, Louise Green, Michaela Kelly
- Student team:
Part One 2018 - 2019
Summer Scholarship student: Hedva Chiu
Year 1 Observership student: Dileep Kumar Mandali
Part Two 2019
Student Partners: Alexandra Brooks, Charlie Sisk, James Yelland, Minna Yoshikawa
- Funding: Student Staff Partnership Project
- Links to project resources / website
LGBTIQ+ in the medical curriculum
- Dr Paul Gardiner (lead)
- A project exploring the
- Funding: Student Staff Partnership Project
- Links to project resources / website
- Slides (PDF, 621.1 KB) from the Equity-focused Medical Dean Portfolio Forum in 2020
Supervising HDR students
Links to HDR supervision professional development run by the Graduate School
The Faculty's HDR student support page
The Graduate Schools page on HDR supervision essentials
The Australian Council of Graduate Research (Inc.) has a range of resources pitched at Institutional level quality provision indicators
Interpreting your course and teaching evaluations
Why use course or teaching evaluation?
Course and teaching evaluations can be used to help you develop your teaching practice and course design.
Vist ITaLI's website on Student Evaluation for more information.
Course data
NEW SECaT Course questions, Semester 2 2020 onwards
- I had a clear understanding of the aims and goals of the course.
- The course was intellectually stimulating.
- The course was well structured.
- Course experiences, tools or materials were useful for my learning.
- Assessment requirements were made clear to me.
- I received helpful personal or group feedback on how I was going in the course (in person or online).
- I learned a lot in this course.
- Overall, how would you rate this course?
- What were the best aspects of this course?
- What improvements would you suggest?
Teaching data
NEW SECaT Teaching questions, Semester 2 2020 onwards
- …was well organised.
- …was good at explaining things.
- …was approachable and treated students with respect (in person or online).
- …stimulated my interest in the field of study.
- …inspired me to learn (in person or online).
- …encouraged student input (in person or online).
- …was available and responsive (in person or online).
- Overall, how would you rate this teacher?
- What aspects of this teacher’s approach best helped your learning?
- What would you have liked this teacher to have done differently?
How to respond to evaluation data
Some things to think about are:
- validity - what is the relationship between what was measured and my context, course design and teaching practice (do the questions ask the "right" thing)?
- reliability - what is the longitudinal picture of my performance
- interpretation - how good or bad am I really? (RIGs; % agreement)
- triangulation - when you are reviewing data from student (4Q)
How you make sense of evaluation data depends on your understanding of what each question is targetting, and why it is a standard question in our surveys.
What you do about it is a personal-professional decision that you must make.
Funding medical education research
For early-career teaching focused staff:
The Early Career Educational Research (ECER) Grants enable Teaching Focused (TF), Teaching and Research (T&R) and Clinical Academic (CA) staff to promote and enhance educational research at UQ.
UQ page: Discovering research funding opportunities:
- The University of Qld has a page on Discovering Research Funding opportunities.
Professional associations:
- IAMSE has a Grants Scheme. You need to be a member of IAMSE to apply (join here).
- AMEE has a Research Grants Awards Scheme. To benefit you need to be a member of AMEE (join here).
Summay table of sources of medical education research funding:
Scheme | Purpose of program | Link |
Aust Gov’t Schemes | ||
Discovery | The Discovery Projects scheme provides grant funding to support research projects that may be undertaken by individual researchers or research teams. | https://www.grants.gov.au/Go/Show?GoUuid=0c2bce86-93e1-445f-b5a1-97e763b067a6 |
Professional Association schemes | ||
ACEN Research Grants | In 2021 ACEN is offering funding for two Work Integrated Learning (WIL) research grants up to $10,000 each and two grants of $5,000 for Emergent and/or Early Career Researchers | https://acen.edu.au/2021-research-grants/ |
AMEE research grant awards | AMEE is an international organisation that seeks to promote scholarship in healthcare professions education to advance knowledge and best practices in education as well as to build a community of scholars working in the field. | https://amee.org/awards-prizes/ |
ANZAHPE Research Grants | The ANZAHPE Grants for Educational Research were established in 1987 with the aim of encouraging and fostering research and development in the education of health professionals. The grants are a one-time offer of support, rather than a continuing fund, and are intended to encourage quality research into any issue associated with the education of any health professionals. | https://anzahpe.org/Grants |
HERDSA Grants Scheme | HERDSA offers grants to HERDSA members to fund research and/or development projects on teaching and learning in higher education that directly align to the mission of HERDSA. | https://www.herdsa.org.au/herdsa-grants-scheme |
IAMSE Educational Scholarship and Curriculum Innovation Grants | The purpose of the IAMSE Educational Scholarship Grants is to make available funds to support projects designed to systematically collect and analyze data related to medical education, which may employ a variety of methods, but seeks to produce generalizable information for dissemination. | http://www.iamse.org/iamse-grants/ |
NCSEHE Student Equity in Higher Education Research Grants Program | The National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education invites proposals for its student equity in higher education research grants. These support researchers and equity practitioners in conducting research focused on supporting and informing policy and practice on student equity in higher education. | https://www.ncsehe.edu.au/grants/ |
Foundations and other institutes | ||
Mater Foundation | https://www.materfoundation.org.au/ | |
PA Research Foundation | In 2017 the PA Research Support Scheme was renamed Metro South Health Research Support Scheme to better reflect the commitment to supporting research across all Metro South Health sites. The Metro South Health Research Support Scheme is funded by Metro South Health's Study, Education and Research Trust Account (SERTA) and the National Critical Care Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC), which is a separate allocation of funding to our PA Foundation Research Awards. | |
Children's Hospital Foundation | https://www.childrens.org.au/ | |
RBWH Foundation | Each year, RBWH Foundation calls for research grant applications from clinicians and medical practitioners at the hospital. The funding applications received come from all areas of the hospital from mental health and neurology to infectious diseases and cancer care. They represent a commitment to excellence in patient care and a thirst for knowledge. | https://rbwhfoundation.com.au/ |
Avant Foundation Grants | The Avant Foundation Grants 2021 program provides funding to support research, quality improvement projects, education and leadership programs designed to make a real difference to how medicine is practised – in particular, the systems and processes. | https://www.avantdifference.org.au/ |
Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation | https://www.gallipoliresearch.com.au/; https://www.gallipoliresearch.com.au/ | |
Common Good | https://www.thecommongood.org.au/ | |
UQ schemes | ||
UQ Early Career Researcher Grant Scheme | The UQ Early Career Researcher (ECR) Grants Scheme provides support for early career researchers while at the same time remaining committed to research excellence. | https://research.uq.edu.au/research-support/research-management/ |
Getting started with tutoring - UQ's Graduate Teaching Associates Program
The Graduate Teaching Associates (GTA) program is designed to foster the next generation of great teachers.
The program provides participants with the knowledge and practical skills to build a successful teaching career in higher education.
Medical Education Research Seminar Series
The links below are to the recordings of the seminars in this series. The series commenced in 2021.
Go to "upcoming events" for details.
Past events can also be viewed and most will be videoed and videos can be viewed from links on each even page.
Developing your assessment literacy
Assessment literacy is your knoweldge about, and use of that knowelge of, assessment to facilitate student learning.
UQ has an assessment ideas "factory" which might be a fun place to begin your journey. It has medicine-specific examples and many useful examples of assessment practice from a range of disciplines that might be applied by you in your teaching.
Peer conversations about medical education practice
Invigorate your educational practice with peer conversations about medical education.
What is this about?
Through a collaborative innovation with the Institute for Learning Innovation (ITaLI) the Academy for Medical Education has instituted support for peer conversations about medical education.
This is a simple program in which you and a colleague agree to engage in a cycle of structured conversations about educational practice.
Training will be provided in how to structure the conversation (click here to beging your journey).
If you go through the whole cycle, and provide appropriate evidence, you will receive a certificate from ITaLI verifying that you did this. That certificate could be of value to you - e.g., for your C.V. or for claiming College CPD points.
Listen to a podcast about peer conversations here.