Areas of expertise: Health Professional Education

• Provide academic leadership in research and scholarship in professional and higher education.
• Foster application of evidence based theory in design, delivery and evaluation of professional and higher education.
• Create strategic partnerships with education bodies and research centres with similar aims.
• Provide continuing education programs which enhance the competence of health professionals in the area of education.
• Provide formal programs of study for practicing professionals leading to qualifications in teaching.
• Support the design, development and delivery of high quality teaching in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

Our research, development and consultancy work includes:

• Curriculum design and review, mapping, management and evaluation. We advise on curricula of all sizes, from workshops to entire programs.
• Assessment design and management
• Flexible learning design and delivery
• Information and communication technology and ICT project management
• Academic development for educators in the health professions
• Reflective practice
• Learning portfolios
• Clinical learning, teaching and assessment
• Continuing education in the health professions
• Student approaches to learning
• Educational environments

Current and recent projects include

Educational program design

Sophie di Corpo, Lois Meyer and Sonal Bhalla
Embedding the graduate capabilities developed for the Master of Public Health and Health Management Program in SPHCM through the use of online scenarios.

Sophie di Corpo, Sonal Bhalla, Alan Hodgkinson, Lois Meyer
Review the Master of Public Health Program (MPH) in SPHCM to enhance the learning and teaching experience of students and teaching staff.

Chris Hughes
Development of a UNSW ePortfolio system

Chris Hughes
iCurriculum software

Medical student learning

Peter Harris, Leah Bloomfield, Chris Hughes, Jan McLean, Alix Magney, Sophie di Corpo, Debbie Owen and Sue Morris
Assessing Collaborative Learning at UNSW

Alix Magney and Leah Bloomfield
The effect of the facilitator’s disciplinary expertise on scenario based learning

Chris Hughes, Peter Harris, H Patrick McNeil, Anthony O’Sullivan
Student collection and development of virtual patients

Eva Segelov, Leah Bloomfield, Alix Magney, Anothony Grabs,
Evaluation of the “RIME” protocol as an assessment tool for students involved in multidisciplinary clinical teaching

Chinthaka Balasooriya
Approaches to learning of medical students

Edna Koritschoner, Chinthaka Balasooriya
Student perceptions of communication teaching in Phase 1 of the UNSW medical program

Specialty medical training

Peter Harris, Leah Bloomfield, Chris Hughes , Chinthaka Balasooriya, Lois Meyer
Evaluation of assessment methods and training related to curricula for postgraduate training in diagnostic radiology and radiation oncology for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists.

Leah Bloomfield
The clinical learning environment for registrars training in radiation oncology and diagnostic radiology

Peter Harris and Chris Hughes
Evaluation of an online formative assessment for registrars in training for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

Peter Harris and Chris Hughes
Supervisors utilisation of data from online formative assessment tool in nuclear medicine for the Australian and New Zealand Association of Physicians in Nuclear Medicine

Peter Harris and Philip Kemp
CME in emergency care in general practice

Teaching and Postgraduate Supervision

Health Professional Education group members supervise students wishing to pursue Masters and Doctoral studies in education for the health professions. Recent studies have been in

• students’ approaches to learning in medical education
• educational environments
• assessment and performance
• cognitive learning styles
• student learning,
• development of clinical reasoning skills
• peer learning by students
• the design of learning materials