Abstract
Time and space constraints, large class sizes, competition for clinical internships, and geographic separation between classroom and clinical rotations for student interaction with peers and faculty pose challenges for health professions educational programs. This article presents a model for effectively incorporating technology to overcome these challenges and enhance student engagement and interaction in traditionally face-to-face (FTF) health professions (physical therapy and physician assistant) curricula across learning environments (classroom to clinic). Four faculty members interested in redesigning a course or course unit(s) met with the IMPACT (Instructional Media and Programming to Advance Collaboration and Teaching) Initiative instructional design team. Instructional designers provided education, training, and support to faculty for increased use of technology within their course. Four exemplars using Blackboard, videos, VoiceThread®, and Twitter® are described. Themes and “lessons learned” were developed from each of the exemplars. A model emerged for integrating technology into health professions curricula with an emphasis on engaging students in active, realistic, and social learning environments. This model demonstrates how technology can be integrated successfully into traditionally FTF health professions curricula to support learning outcomes essential for practice.
Highlights
Health science professional education must prepare graduates to perform competently in a dynamic and evolving healthcare system
To best prepare students for practice, health science professional education programs must use methods that help students learn in ways that are compatible with future requirements: that is, learning with others in an active environment
Health professional education largely involves a combination of didactic classroom learning and clinical internships to prepare its graduates
Summary
Health science professional education must prepare graduates to perform competently in a dynamic and evolving healthcare system. The report describes five key competencies for clinicians, including: 1) delivering patient-centered care, 2) practicing in interdisciplinary teams, 3) using best evidence, 4) applying quality improvement, and 5) using informatics (Greiner & Knebel, 2003). To achieve these competencies, clinicians must be competent, reflective, and collaborative problem-solvers. Health professional education largely involves a combination of didactic classroom learning and clinical internships to prepare its graduates. The didactic educational environment, often involves learners as passive recipients of lecture-based information and skill-based learning in non-authentic environments (McLaughlin et al, 2014), which is not compatible with what we know about the brain and how we learn (Jensen, 1998)
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