Clinical teachers embracing and braving technology enhanced learning
It has been a great pleasure to be involved with the teaching on both the PGCert and MEd in Clinical Education. My role has been to support our students (all working healthcare professionals) to explore and critically evaluate ways in which technology can be used to enhance teaching and learning. Every year I have been impressed by two things: (1) the creative ways in which clinical teachers are already using technology and (2) the fortitude of those teachers who initially do not feel confident with technology, but yet persevere and discover ways to use it which really fit with and enhance their teaching practice.
This year I have spoken with clinical teachers on the courses who already use Padlet to collect and share learning resources, WhatsApp to work as a group to organise a conference and Mentimeter or Kahoot to bring interactivity to their presentations, getting an instant view of their students’ understanding and providing them with a chance to reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching approach.
Technology is not always the best approach, but it is a useful tool to have in your teaching set and it can be both fun and challenging to explore the ways in which it can support and transform your teaching. You do not have to be a digital native, in fact the idea that the young instinctively know how to use technology well has little evidence behind it. But we can all become more digitally savvy – able to review different tools and choose when and how to use technology to support us.
If you’d like to find out more about the ways in which technology can support your teaching, learning and practice then you might find the following useful:
- Health Education England’s Technology Enhanced Learning Blog https://telblog.hee.nhs.uk/
- TiME to Teach – the award-winning LIME programme that can run short training sessions at your organisation to support clinical teachers
- Technology in Medical Education (TiME) – explore our website to see the different ways in which we use technology to support the MBChB students
- Health Education England’s Digital Literacy programme
- #wecommunities on Twitter – join and share your experiences
If you know of other good places to learn about TEL in healthcare education or if you know a great online clinical education community that shares their TEL ideas then we’d love to hear from you – just add a comment below this blog post.
Blog written by Tamsin Treasure-Jones.