Innovations in Digital Medical and Health Care Education

The monthly Experiences in Digital Learning webinars from the Centre for Online and Distance Education provide the opportunity to explore the rapid innovations and changes we are seeing in digital learning, teaching and assessment.

Our next Experience in Digital Learning webinar takes place on Thursday 7 March at 14.00-15.00 GMT. In this webinar we will be examining recent innovations in digital medical and health care education, using a range of  examples drawn from medical and dentistry education at the University of London. CODE Fellow Dr Clare Sansom will be chairing a discussion between CODE fellow Professor Chie Adachi and Claire Rogers.

Our speakers

Dr Clare Sansom is one of the initial group of CODE fellows and has served in that capacity since 2005. She also works as a freelance consultant and science writer, and she often blogs webinars and other events for CODE. Her ODL consultancy clients include the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Professor Chie Adachi joined Queen Mary University of London in 2022 from Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. At QMUL she works as Dean for Digital Education, leading an inter-disciplinary team of digital education professionals, the Digital Education Studio.

Claire Rogers has worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for over 30 years. She is Principal Biomedical Scientist and Head of the Teaching and Diagnostic Unit in the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases there.

The clinical sciences present some of the deepest challenges to designers and practitioners of online and digital education. Traditional medical curricula still rely on the principle of “see one [operation], do one and teach one” with a focus on in-person experience and pedagogy, but medical professionals now need digital, AI and data literacy just as much as they need these practical and ‘soft’ skills. These two presentations will combine the ‘macro’ and the ‘micro’ levels of digital course and curriculum development, summarising a broad picture of online pedagogy and presenting some key examples in this important disciplinary area.

Digital lab practice in clinical science

Claire Rogers will speak about her experience of transforming the Professional Diploma in Tropical Nursing, a hands-on short course for nurses and allied health professionals, into an online one in a matter of weeks with no previous experience of online and digital education. She replaced the ‘wet lab’ practical components of this course with videos, quizzes and diagnostic exercises using a digital microscope. This popular course has stayed online after the acute phase of the pandemic and now attracts nurses from all over the world. She will explain how the course took shape and describe some of the lessons she learned.

Digital curriculum development in medicine and dentistry

Professor Adachi will discuss her approach to curriculum design leadership in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at QMUL, building on an innovation narrative and focusing on the need for online course development to be sustainable and appropriate to a specific context. She will explain the methods her team has used to embed digital education within the medical curriculum, referring to specific examples including a new four-week MOOC in Digital Health, developed in collaboration with Ain Shams University and their Virtual Hospital in Egypt.