Master of Clinical Education

This subject lays a firm foundation for further studies in the education of health professionals. The basics of teaching and learning theory are presented with clear linkages to the clinical workplace to ensure immediate relevance and applicability.

An engaging mix of day-long seminars, workshops, on-line learning and practical activities in the workplace meets the needs of clinicians who teach learners at any level, while an intensive option might appeal to those with limited availability.

In recognition of the occupational demands on busy clinicians, contact days will typically occur once per month at the Parkville campus during the semester with 4 hours devoted to this subject on each of the days.

Teaching will be split between lectures (1 hour), seminars or symposia (1 hour), and small group work (2 hours).

Taught in tandem with Effective Clinical Teaching, this subject provides participants with a foundation in the principles and practices of vocational supervision that are unique to the health professions. Effective Clinical Supervision takes the theories and principles studied in the co-requisite subject and applies them to clinically-qualified learners who are further developing their career as a health professional. A diverse range of learning activities will dovetail with those provided in Effective Clinical Teaching to emphasise the similarities and differences between education and training. An intensive option will appeal to clinicians requiring greater flexibility.

Modalities will include lectures (1 hour), seminars or symposia (1 hour) and small group work (2 hours).

One of the key roles of the clinical teacher is to reliably assess their learners’ knowledge, skills and performance to decide whether they have achieved competence in the area of instruction. This is not just important for appropriate academic achievement and progression, but to ensure that learners are being appropriately certified as safe and competent health professionals. This subject introduces participants to the current and emerging theories underpinning valid and reliable assessment of clinical learners and provides opportunities to develop and implement clinical assessment items, as well as practical experience in assessment.

This subject brings together the two major threads from the first semester’s subjects and presents participants with opportunities to apply the principles in their own clinical workplaces. More difficult teaching situations and the strategies to resolve them will be explored. The emphasis is practical, with participants using the theories and concepts explored in the previous semester during their usual clinical teaching and supervision activities, then reflecting on the effectiveness of their work after receiving feedback from peers and students. A collaborative workshop at the beginning of the semester and another at the completion support this practical experience. An intensive option will appeal to clinicians requiring greater flexibility.

Teaching days are generally held at the Parkville campus once per month and are shared with the corequisite subject (‘Assessing Clinical Learners’). Apart from the workshops to prepare for and debrief from the peer review exercise (2 hours each), participants will engage in simulated teaching encounters (2 hours), small group sessions with tutors (4 hours), seminars (2 hours) and lecture-style presentations (4 hours).

Pedagogy into Practice is designed to deepen the basic educational theories encountered in the first year of study and to enhance participants’ ability to develop and implement curriculum content. It provides and develops a general conceptual framework for understanding learning and teaching specific to clinical contexts. It examines how learning can be enhanced from a range of theoretical and evidence-based perspectives. Participants will analyse student characteristics to identify learning and teaching strategies that build on individual students’ prior experiences and learning. Participants will investigate the strategic role of the teacher in effective student learning, planning for learning, group teaching, developing a culture of learning and building relationships. There will be strong emphasis on linkages to the clinical environment and critical reflection as a paradigm for teacher self-evaluation and professional learning.

‘Clinical Assessment and Course Evaluation’ considers the similarities and differences involved in judging the performance of clinical learners while also evaluating the education they receive. Whereas the foundation subject (“Assessing Clinical Learners”) focussed on the basics of the main assessment formats used by clinical teachers, this subject goes into greater depth on designing and implementing highly-performing assessment regimens. It also explores key issues in measuring the quality of health professional education programs and their associated assessments.

Clinical simulation involves a range of immersive techniques that replace or amplify real clinical experiences with interactive, guided ones to achieve enhanced educational outcomes with safety for both patient and learner. This subject examines the educational underpinnings of effective clinical simulation.

Using the best available evidence to ensure that educational programs for healthcare professionals are reliable, appropriate and effective is crucial to providing a quality learning experience. This subject assists participants to critically analyse the research underpinning their clinical teaching and examines research approaches best suited to undertaking clinical education research.

Clinical Education Modules is designed to provide students with an opportunity to explore an area of interest in greater depth while remaining within the structure of the Graduate Diploma program.

Participants will be asked to choose two modules from a range of module topics offered each year. The topics offered will vary and are presented to participants at the start of the year based on currency, interest, and availability. Examples of module topics to be offered may include:

• Comparative Clinical Education
• Gender & Culture in Clinical Education
• Promoting Professionalism
• Interprofessional Education
• Teaching Clinical Reasoning
• Clinical Teaching with the Humanities
• Course Design and Curriculum Development
• other topics as appropriate.

Participants enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Clinical Education will be provided with a description of each module and will be surveyed early in the year as to their preferences. Only those modules attracting sufficient preferences will be offered each year. The aim of the modules is to allow participants to expand knowledge within a specialised area of interest, while maintaining broad application to the unique requirements of teachers working in health professional contexts.

Within each module participants will additionally learn how to:

• Integrate a range of different elements of the learning and teaching environment into their own teaching context

• Discuss and reflect on: different teaching systems, forms of knowledge and reasoning, ideas and understanding relevant to the clinical teaching environment

• Recognise the influence of factors including culture, language and gender, that influence educational goals and relationships between health practitioners, students and patients

• Use their knowledge of culture, language, academic disciplines, gender and comparative education to create a safe and inclusive teaching environment.

• Translate various elements of the teaching environment to specific education strategies to assist clinical learners in the development of their professional skills and identity

• Be able to make informed decisions about their approaches to teaching, subject design and assessment in a variety of contexts and with a diversity of students

This subject provides practical support and guidance for participants preparing to undertake their research project in the second semester. It builds on the theoretical research paradigms and methods introduced in the graduate diploma research subject by supporting clinicians to develop and define a research question, and appropriate research design and methods. Recognising that clinicians have many competing demands on their time, the seminar days are workshops that will allow participants to develop important resources such as their clarified research question, literature search strategy, project design and ethics application.

The field of clinical education is rapidly developing in order to meet Australia’s health workforce needs. The content of this subject addresses the multiple roles of health education leaders in this environment; to maintain and further develop evidence-based quality in education delivery and underpinning scholarship; to ensure clinical education curriculum and training produces competent and safe health care professionals, and to manage and effectively lead people across different levels of complex organisations.

To equip students for these roles, this subject will cover theories and models of leadership and how concepts of leadership can be applied to health care education leaders. The subject content will be grounded in the context of current reforms in education and training.

Recognising, responding, managing and leading clinical education in this context, requires clinicians with current or future clinical leadership responsibilities to have a scholarly grasp of leadership and change management theory. Students will also require skills in change management, leading in complex organisations, and methods of transformational, interpersonal and distributed leadership.

Teaching/learning formats include case studies with small and full group discussions, interactive presentations, and panel discussions. The informal exchange of insights and experiences among participants and invited lecturers drawn from multiple professional disciplines is a vital part of the experience.

This project involves the conduct of a defined research project and results in the production of a minor thesis on a topic of practical importance to the participant’s work in clinical education. Participants are encouraged and supported to select a topic that is important yet feasible to resolve within the bounds of this project. Preliminary work in refining the research question, designing the methodology, reviewing the literature and applying for ethics approval is undertaken in the preceding semester’s subject: “Research Proposal in Clinical Education”.