FACULTY DEVELOPMENT THAT SUPPORTS EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE
The Faculty Development Office in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences aims to assist faculty members in their roles as educators, researchers and leaders, using a broad range of methods to achieve these goals.
There will be a growing need to train faculty in the application and delivery of learner-centred approaches, learner engagement strategies, and interprofessional and interdisciplinary education practices. Knowledge translation of educational research into frontline educational practices will require faculty development support.
Faculty development will need to expand to meet these growing needs in multiple learning contexts.
INTERPROFESSIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION INITIATIVES
The Office of Interprofessional Education is comprised of a hub of experts in interprofessional education and collaborative clinical practice.
Examples of initiatives that could be supported, as part of this Education Strategic Plan, include:
i) an interprofessional group mentoring program facilitated by IPE faculty that follows a format similar to Osler Fellows
ii) working with Teaching and Learning Services, MedIT and Molson Informatics to optimize use of technologies and online tools, such as an electronic portfolio of IPE learning activities and online learning modules and debriefing
iii) development of a rigorous assessment and evaluation plan that will inform and improve the quality of the program
iv) expanded faculty development training in IPE to augment the pool of experts that can support interprofessional teaching and learning.
LEARNING SPACES THAT ALIGN WITH OUR EDUCATIONAL VISION
Our teaching and learning spaces should be a physical manifestation of our educational vision. The Health Professions Education (HPE; medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech language pathology) programs have grown substantially in size over the last decade, now close to 4000 learners. There is a wide diversity of new space needs beyond the current footprint.
New teaching methods (e.g. blended learning, flipped classrooms, decision-based and case-based approaches, reflective learning, collaborative peer-to-peer strategies, virtual patients and high/low fidelity simulation) require a reconfiguration of space in ways that meet the overlapping needs of the five HPE programs.
Interconnectivity of learning spaces across our HPE programs that promote cross-talk and interprofessional education opportunities is wholly lacking. Availability and integration of technologies that enhance the learning experience is also critical.
Ideally, teaching and learning spaces should be multi-use (e.g. moveable furniture, rotating chairs, room dividers, among other features). This interconnectivity of space among the programs, in line with new curricula and pedagogical approaches, will create efficiencies, promote synergies and collaboration and foster interprofessionalism.
Similarly, the Basic Science Departments in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences teach over 3000 undergraduate students (≈1800) and graduate students (≈1300), and train approximately 500 postdoctoral fellows at McGill University. It is well recognized that active learning approaches optimize deep learning and academic performance of learners (Freeman et al, 2014).
There is an urgent need to address the following gaps in terms of teaching space requirements for the biomedical science curricula:
i) active learning classrooms
ii) small multifunctional classrooms with modifiable furniture and layouts (break out rooms and/or rooms for smaller classes)
iii) multi-discipline shared wet-laboratory teaching space
iv) dry laboratory spaces for undergraduate and graduate programs (larger computer labs).