Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium
Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2025
THURSDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2025 | 553 ST KILDA ROAD, MELBOURNE VIC 3004
See the event photos here.
Our Education team hosted our annual Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium in mid-November, bringing together our educators and leaders from across the medical faculty in an interactive event focused on the theme, celebrating 10 years of Teaching Symposium.
Our 10th year, the forum brought together our community of practice, which includes colleagues from outside the school as well as our team of educators, educational designers and researchers. On this day, we worked together to discuss key issues surrounding the current state of our teaching, key policies and how we are managing the challenges. By working together, the group learnt from each other to contextualise their own work in the wider University picture, and workshop shared challenges to generate ideas that could improve the quality of our educational offerings.
Deputy-Head of School Professor Dragan Ilic welcomed approximately 80 participants and shared an update on our School, zeroing in on our world-class education programs and the impact we are having in the region. Professor Ilic introduced his AI twin, who also introduced the forum and our guest speaker, Associate Professor Tim Fawns highlighting how we can construct our own avatars.
Associate Professor Tim Fawns explored genAI in practice, sharing his multi-institutional research on Student perspectives on AI in Higher Education, which included approx. 8,000 students and 79 focus group sessions. Associate Professor Fawns noted that 91% of students were worried about breaking university rules and are working with AI in diverse and complicated ways, with some avoiding it altogether. The presentation sparked an interactive discussion and Q and A sessions.
This presentation was followed by Associate Professor Nazmul Karim and Dr Adelle McArdle who showcased the tool they have created to measure professional behaviours. They discussed the challenges of his multidimensional construct and how context-dependent it was.
Next, we welcomed our Deputy Dean (Education) Professor Claire Palermo, who gave an update on the Faculty’s vision on professional and the use of ProFESS framework. This presentation was extended upon by Associate Dean (Student Experience) Associate Professor Kelli Innes, who demonstrated the ProFESS framework and stepped the participants through its use. Professor Innes stated that “the ProFESS framework was about prevention, student well-being and support.”
To apply the lessons from this session Professor Basia Diug and Holly Wild lead the interactive Solution room: Educators as first responders. During these sessions participants:
- Aligned personal and institutional expectations of professionalism.
- Explored a case study about Sam and his team.
- Reflected on professionalism in practice.
- Provided take-home actions and resources with links.
The solution room finished with a set of steps guiding how to prevent this situation.
- Consider how the university’s definition of professionalism plays in your assessments
- Create a structure or boundary for your students to follow
- Understanding the context of your unit and situation
- Getting support from Course Directors
During the break, the community of practice got together to celebrate 10 years of the Teaching Symposium with cake and morning tea. This was followed by a visual representation of the changes to the community of practice over the 10-year period. With Professor Basia Diug showing photos and videos from each of the previous Teaching Symposiums and highlighting the theme, challenges faced at the time, and the impact it made.
Next, Kelly Allen led a series of vignette-style talks, including how to empower the student voice, the importance of teaching reflective writing, meeting Fiona the AI-generated bot that gives students real-world clinical trials experience, insights into the Indo-Pacific Global Case competition and a discussion of inclusive teaching practices from Pru on behalf of the EDI sharing circle.
After a question time, we finished the program with Professor Dragan Ilic in a workshop called Conversations: Moving forward together. Together, we discussed our current state and what opportunities we need to continue to go forward. Professor Ilic proposed a magic genie that granted three wishes as a starting point and used this to open a discussion about the strategic direction of the school. He concluded by thanking everyone, stating, “I want to thank everyone involved in making this a success, in particular Emily Tran and event chair Professor Basia Diug, all our educators and the MERQ team, and all of our presenters.”
For those interested, slides and resources from the event can be found here.
(Monash University access only.)