ULTSEC innovation fund 2015: Widening Participation

BryanBurford copyDr Bryan Burford as project lead with Paul Paes, Gill Vance (all SME) and Felicity Hunter from Faculty Office have been awarded 2014/15 ULTSEC innovation funding to investigate “Widening participation: Developing a participatory workshop to encourage applications to medical school”.

Widening participation (WP) – encouraging recruitment from underrepresented social groups – is a nationwide priority in higher education, particularly for healthcare professions. Newcastle University has one of the lowest rates of WP applications nationally.  This project aims to increase the proportion of attendees at existing WP events who then apply to Newcastle Medical School.  Student interns recruited from the MBBS programme will develop and deliver a participatory workshop with school pupils. This will identify barriers to application, and allow pupils to generate their own solutions, feeding into short- and long-term revision of processes.  Evaluation will include attitudinal measures, and future application figures.

ASME Annual Scientific Meeting: conference report

asme_logoWednesday 15th-Friday 17th July 2015, BT Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh

The conference opened on Wednesday afternoon with a thought-provoking Lord Cohen Lecture from Prof Steve Peters of @chimpmanagement discussing his work on optimising the performance of the human mind. I then chaired an interesting parallel session on interprofessional education and simulation.

The anatomy themed parallel session on Thursday included talks on 3D printing of anatomical models by Nick Tollemache @ntollemache from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, followed by talks on current issues surrounding anatomy knowledge and its place within the medical curriculum at the Medical Schools of both Exeter University and St George’s, University of London. I presented two posters on our work concerning Artatomy @artatomy and social media in anatomy learning and teaching in the chaired poster session on Thursday evening. Undergraduate MBBS project student Joseph Hutchinson @joe_hutch presented a poster of our work outlining development and evaluation of our 2D drawing and 3D modelling online interactive video tutorials.

I presented a talk on our work investigating reciprocal transitions in understanding between 3D anatomical structures and 2D clinical images during the parallel session on Friday morning that also included a similarly themed talk involving innovative artistic learning methods by Nichola Robertson @nich_rob from the Art and Anatomy @artandanatomy group at Edinburgh University Medical School.

The conference closed with a venue-appropriate plenary “Scoring with education – reflective practice in international sports medicine” by Dr James Robson, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Anti-Doping, Scottish Rugby Union.

You can see my #asmeasm2015 tweets from @dr_keenan on Twitter and my conference story is here: storify.com/dr_keenan/asme-asm-2015.

Dr Iain Keenan, School of Medical Education

Innovative artistic learning methods in anatomy education

Iain Keenan - Medical EducationMy research aims to provide quality, variety and engagement in anatomy education at minimal cost through development and evaluation of artistic and other innovative learning methods. Outputs have been achieved through collaborations with professional visual artist Rachael Allen and undergraduate project student partners and have contributed to my Teaching Excellence Award in 2015 for innovation (FMS).

Initially, we designed our novel cyclical artistic learning process Observe-reflect-draw-edit-repeat (ORDER) to provide a theoretical and practical framework for the use of artistic methods in anatomy, work that has been presented at Anatomical Society conferences [1, 2] and elsewhere. A manuscript outlining our design and experimental evaluation of ORDER has recently been submitted to an anatomy education journal for publication [3].

Our current focus concerns reciprocal transitions in understanding between 3D anatomical structures and 2D clinical images as a threshold concept. Ongoing work will demonstrate how we have developed ORDER to facilitate these transitions through 3D anatomical modelling and 2D cross-sectional drawing in practical sessions and with supplementary interactive online video tutorials [4]. Our future work will explore social media tools in learning and teaching and innovative embryology resources.

Our 2014 NICAP (Newcastle University Institute of Creative Arts Practice) Award has funded Artatomy, an exhibition of anatomical artwork created by FMS students that began with optional dissecting room drawing sessions. Artatomy opened at the Venue, Students Union in April and ran for a durational show at the Centre for Life during summer 2015. Artatomy has been covered by Times Higher Education [5] and Research Fortnight [6].

Dr Iain Keenan, School of Medical Education

  1. Backhouse, M., et al. ORDER (observe-reflect-draw-edit-repeat): a novel cyclical learning process in anatomy education. in Anatomical Society Summer Meeting 2014 Skin and Bones. 2014. University of Bradford: Journal of Anatomy.
  2. Keenan, I.D., et al. The future ORDER: a student partner approach for evidence-based evaluation and implementation of an ‘observe–reflect–draw–edit–repeat’ artistic learning process in anatomy education. in Anatomical Society Winter 2013: Assessment and Sense Organs. 2013. Newcastle University: Journal of Anatomy.
  3. Backhouse, M., et al., ORDER (observe-reflect-draw-edit-repeat): Design and evaluation of a novel cyclical artistic learning process for anatomy education. 2015, in preparation.
  4. Hutchinson, J. and I.D. Keenan, Design and evaluation of online interactive video tutorials for the use of ORDER (observe-reflect-draw-edit-repeat) as an adjunct to anatomy learning. 2015, in preparation.
  5. Campus News – Newcastle University. 2015 26.08.15]; Available from: https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/content/minority-students-benefit-from-confidence-building-measures.
  6. Brooks, J. Newcastle builds bridges between art and science. 2015 26.08.15]; Available from: http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_news&template=rr_2col&view=article&articleId=1352358.

Vancouver International Conference for Teaching of Psychology

Patrick Rosencranz

Dr Patrick Rosenkranz presented a paper at VICTOP 2015.  The paper was called ‘Teaching psychological research methods through a pragmatic and programmatic approach’, co-authors, Dr Amy Fielden and Dr Effy Tzemou. Here is the abstract:

Research methods teaching in psychology is pivotal in allowing students to make the transition from student as learner to independent practitioner. We took an action research approach to re-design, implement and evaluate a course guiding students, through a programmatic and pragmatic research cycle. These revisions allow students to experience diverse psychological methods by working as collaborators on three sequential studies (qualitative psychometric and survey design). Evaluation of the first delivery ( 2014) highlighted that students developed a broad range of transferable skills, but experienced uncertainty associated with the research process and anxiety attributed to the less definitive guidance provided by staff ( Rosenkranz, Fielden and Tzemou, 2014). Based on this we implemented changes aimed at further developing independence while managing uncertainty by using structured discussion and research groups. In this presentation we will discuss the overall rationale of redesigning the course and present data from the second delivery (2015) of the action research evaluation.

Supporting information:

Rosenkranz P, Fielden A, Tzemou E. (2014). Teaching psychological research methods through a pragmatic and programmatic approach. Psychology Teaching Review, 20(2), 28-35.

New publication: Patient non-attendance: utilising clinical time

Heidi BatemanBateman, H., Thomason, J. M. and Ellis, J. (2015), Patient non-attendance: utilising clinical time. The Clinical Teacher. doi: 10.1111/tct.12405.

This article outlines one of the innovations the School of Dental Sciences have implemented in response to patient non-attendance during undergraduate student clinics. Although we work hard to minimise patient non-attendance, the reality is that on occasion it does happen, so having a range of alternate learning opportunities is important.

Close contact teaching and learning activities (CCTLS) are short, skills-based tasks which students can undertake in the clinical environment utilising the resources usually associated with that session. A selection of the range of activities we have is described, together with general principles underlying their development; this hopefully allows others to develop similar activities tailored to the demands of their individual programmes.

The CCTLs we have are directly observed, formative activities with structured assessment criteria. They focus on tasks which develop understanding and skills and can also reinforce protocols, so they are potentially most appropriate for early-stage clinical students. We believe these activities can contribute to maximising the potential of clinical attachments.

Miss Heidi Bateman, School of Dental Sciences