From left: Dr Rachelle Singleton and Julia Sekula
Congratulations to Dr Rachelle Singleton on receiving the FMHS Professional Teaching and Leadership Grant.
Active learning is a popular and proven method used in contemporary educational design and practice. The move away from the more traditional ‘transmission’ style of teaching (content transfer) to a more ‘constructionist model’, encourages greater learner participation. H5P facilitates easy creation of richer HTML5. Integration of H5P content within course material provides opportunities for students as learners to think critically about what they are being taught and supports the flexibility students are requesting by extending the learning environment. This approach is ideally suited for use within the learning management system (canvas) and to contextualisation i.e. content can be embedded in relatable scenarios that are likely to be encountered within professional practice.
H5P activities have been used to formatively assess student comprehension of content taught in undergraduate pathology and pharmacy courses, ensuring specific learning outcomes are achieved. Learners receive comprehensive, automatic feedback and their engagement with H5P activities can be tracked by teachers. H5P is broadly applicable/can be used within a wide variety of teaching contexts/subject areas. As a 2020 recipient of an FMHS Professional Teaching and Leadership Development Grant, Rachelle will present innovations in teaching to higher education practitioners at the H5P Conference 2020 – Madison, Wisconsin.
She intends to build a community of interest of H5P users within the FMHS and extend it to include users from across the University of Auckland (e.g., Faculty of Science). Building a dedicated community of interest within the faculty is a positive way to share knowledge and experience as well as grow staff capability around the effective use of future-focused educational technologies. It is an expectation that our community of H5P users will lead the dissemination of effective teaching practice within the Faculty Teaching and Learning Community. Hands on workshop-style sessions will be developed to grow awareness and capability for how to use the H5P tool effectively.
Congratulations also to Julia Sekula on receiving a FMHS Professional Teaching and Leadership Grant
This grant will support Julia in a scoping activity to trial and develop virtual simulation teaching tools across all domains of dietetics, adapted to the New Zealand context. This activity will help the dietetic team understand if they can either source or need to develop additional and more sophisticated simulated learning experiences across all domains such as inter-active multimedia case studies, gaming simulations of interventions, virtual tours, electronic menu planning tools and simulated placement environments. Today’s students are immersed in digital technology and the future of the health professions will be more highly digitalised than ever before. Hence there is a need to foster the development of innovative solutions to teaching and learning to improve student understanding and engagement.
Julia also hopes that these tools will provide students an opportunity to develop their dietetic and interpersonal skills in a safe, supported environment at their speed and ability level whilst perfecting and building confidence. Developing clinical reasoning, problem solving and critical thinking skills are key components of practice for health professional students, including dieticians. In clinical, food service and public health settings, supervisors foster the development of these skills. However, there is a need to develop these further due to increasingly complex learning environments and the cost involved in face-to-face placements.