Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2024

Theme: Empowering futures

On Thursday 21 November, SPHPM hosted its annual Teaching Symposium, bringing together our community of practice to examine how we can empower the future of our students and our team.

The day was filled with interactive presentations, solutions and problem rooms with notable keynotes by Deputy Dean (Education) for the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences Professor Claire Palermo and Department of Architecture Associate Dean (Education) Professor Ari Seligmann inspiring and challenging us for the future.

Many thanks to all our speakers, admin support and MERQ team and participants for joining us for this day. Many thanks to the Monash Education Academy for their support.

Program

Welcome
Professor Sophia Zoungas

Faculty vision
Professor Claire Palermo

Flash Talks

• Trauma-informed medical education
  Associate Professor Jennifer Neil
• Teaching and the art of case interviews: A role-play approach
  Dr Sarah McGuinness
• Empowering students with numbers
  Nassif Hossain
• Breaking the silo
  Dr Nazmul Karim
• PAAIR (Programmatic Assessment and AI Review)
  Kelly Allen

Solution room: Balancing Control and Chaos
Elisha de Valle & Holly Wild

10 years of MERQ
Professor Basia Diug & Professor Dragan Ilic

Flash Talks

• Public health hackathon
  Holly Donaldson
• Training the future surge workforce for the next pandemic
  Bethany Howard
• Understanding how research students in a Peer-led learning environment engage with and use informal networks in their learning
  Associate Professor Chris Barton
• Postgraduate students' insights about Integrated Collaborative Learning and Assessment (ICLA)
  Dr Ewan Macfarlane
• The role of short courses in discipline-specific education
  Dr Marina Skiba
• The evolution of professional education
  Associate Professor Danijela Gasevic

Problem room: Integrating AI into public health education
Professor Ari Seligmann

Symposium summary and closing
Professor Dragan Ilic

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2023

An eagerly anticipated annual fixture in the MERQ and SPHPM calendars, in December 2023, MERQ hosted the 8th annual Teaching, Challenges and Innovation Symposium themed ‘Collaboration’.

This event brought together school and faculty educators with our research and professional partners to showcase teaching and learning innovations and also to solve our challenges. With a focus on our collaborations together as educators, in co-design with students, through connections with the faculty and university, as well as our many industry partners, we heard from contributors across all facets of our programs and higher education, and celebrated our collaborations.

After kicking off with an overview from our Head of School, Professor Sophia Zoungas, showcasing our alignment with Impact 2030, we enjoyed a keynote presentation from Monash’s leading educational expert, Professor Allie Clemans.

A highly regarded education researcher with expertise in professional and lifelong learning policies in Australia, Professor Allie Clemans is currently charged with leading the University's Education Portfolio as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) and Senior Vice-President. We were reminded of our educational leadership as health professions educators at Monash, and inspired by Allie’s drive and insights around global higher education.

With approximately 80 participants, we tackled the current issues facing our discipline including real-world challenges that impact the sustainability of our programs and our overall student experiences and outcomes, including;

• How can we integrate the lived experiences of our students?
• What are the best approaches to collaborative practice with our professional staff?
• What does effective and sustainable industry partnership look like?

To bring the session back to our educational coalface, we head from the school’s Educational Designer, Prudence Perry, as she detailed the opportunities to collaborate and educational support available right here in the school, and some of the innovations our educators have been trying out in recent teaching periods. With staff pulling together, we’ve seen a prompt response to generative AI across our programs and units, as well as a reinvigorated sense of student engagement. A call to move towards authentic and programmatic assessment at Level 1, together with hearing more of the student voice, were the take home messages of this session.

After a short tea-break and connecting with our colleagues, we were right back to work, this time collaborating together to brainstorm solutions to challenges around industry placement and the student experience. Holly Wild and Bethany Howard led us in an engaging cafeteria-themed activity to exchange ideas around harnessing the best from our industry stakeholders, while ensuring continuity in their contributions from year to year. Meanwhile, Kelly Allen put us to the test in small groups to brainstorm our best solutions to responding to student needs.

We heard from MERQ’s very own Associate Professor Danijela Gasevic as she outlined the breadth and variety of our educational research endeavours, as well as our considerable impact in scholarship of teaching and learning, and leading educational practice. Collaboration is key, and these efforts were often supported directly by our final keynote speaker, Professor Claire Palermo.

An internationally recognised researcher in health professions education, Professor Claire Palermo is the Deputy Dean (Education) for the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and former Director of the Monash Centre for Scholarship in Health Education (MCSHE). It was a pleasure to hear Claire’s approach to and plans for a bright and modern educational future within the faculty.

Our Director of Education, Professor Dragan Ilic led us into our networking session over lunch with a few final comments from the day. A big Thank you to all involved in organising, presenting and attending this wonderful event. We can’t wait until next year!

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2022

See the event photos here.

Our Education team hosted our annual Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium in mid-December, bringing together our educators and leaders from across the medical faculty in an interactive day-long event focused on the theme ‘Public Health Impact’.

Now in its seventh year, the forum brings our educators, educational designers and researchers together to learn from each other, 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 ongoing.

Head of School Prof Sophia Zoungas kicked off proceedings by welcoming guests and sharing our School’s new strategic framework, zeroing in on our world class education programs. The new strategy provides a timely and carefully crafted framework around which we will build our future educational offerings.

She was followed by our keynote speaker, Deputy-Vice Chancellor (Education) Prof Sharon Pickering. Prof Pickering described the University-wide impact that she’s observed from our School, citing several clear examples of excellence. She also elaborated on the University’s education plan 2022–2025, with a focus on flagship rich experiences including the Global Immersion Guarantee (GIG), and noted our recent successes in creating accessible and inclusive courses that have attracted diverse student cohorts. We were thrilled to hear her picking up on key areas that we’ve targeted.

After her presentation, education staff from across our School provided a series of vignette-style talks, focusing on priority areas for this year, including international collaboration in Asia, student placement activities, a reflection on the delivery of a new course to train frontline workers responding to disclosures of sexual violence, industry engagement opportunities, and a report on the delivery of a new clinical trials masterclass. The hard-won knowledge and experiences passed on in these snapshots gave our attendees an inspiring glimpse into what innovative concepts they may incorporate into their own educational ventures, and made clear who they can approach for advice and guidance on similar projects.

Following a short tea break, attendees rolled up their collective sleeves to begin the workshopping portion of the event, a series of ‘solution stations’ coordinated by educational designer Prudence Perry. Randomised teams worked on core real-world challenges that impact the sustainability of our programs and our overall student experiences, including:

• How can we integrate the lived experiences of our international students?
• What are the best approaches to assess teamwork in group assessments?
• How can we attract and retain students in our units and courses?

Event Chair Prof Basia Diug said later, “I’m really proud of this event, we’re all passionate about teaching public health and events like this provide our team with a structured opportunity to learn and share about our practice and key challenges we all face. It’s a vital professional development opportunity that means their year is capped off with positive reflection, leaving us all energised and enthusiastic for the next term.

“I want to thank everyone involved in making this a success, in particular Emily Tran, Prudence Perry, all our educators and the MERQ team, and all of our presenters.”

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2021

The School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine hosted its sixth annual Teaching, Challenges and Innovation Symposium on Wednesday December 1, 2021. These symposia provide our staff with a chance to share and learn new approaches and evidence-based practices in medical education, and to share experiences and knowledge around the integration of emerging technologies into our teaching practice.

They are our flagship educational professional development events, and ensure a sustainable, high-quality learning experience for our students now and into the future.

This year’s Symposium took a deep dive into SPHPM’s current educational offerings and its outlook for 2022 and beyond. Reflecting on two years of largely online learning, the Symposium also looked with hope towards a return to more traditional modes of teaching, and opportunities to integrate the best of both worlds.

Guest speaker Professor Wayne Hodgson, Deputy Dean (Education) discussed teaching direction from the Faculty’s perspective, while Professor Claire Palermo gave an insight into her own vision for teaching as the freshly appointed Associate Dean (Learning and Teaching).

Within the School, Deputy Head of School (Education) Professor Danny Liew joined Associate Professor Claire Harrison of the Department of General Practice and challenged us to reflect on how we can strengthen collaboration and evolve our approach to undertaking better educational practice.

Download the presentation slides here (PDF, 2.53MB)

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2020

'COVID-19: TURNING A CRISIS INTO AN OPPORTUNITY'

2020's annual SPHPM Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium provided an opportunity to reflect on teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guest presenters included Dr Mahbub Sarkar from the Monash Centre for Scholarship in Health Education discussing the Faculty evaluation on teaching in 2020, and Deputy Dean (Education), Professor Wayne Hodgson.

View the Symposium program (PDF, 670KB)

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2019

The School hosted the 4th Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium on Wednesday 11th December 2019, with the theme of Assessment. The Symposium explored current assessment approaches as well as innovative strategies that can be used in our teaching at the School.

The two workshop sessions resulted in valuable resources for the School to use key assessment tools for future units and students.

If you don’t want to miss out on the valuable updates and insights presented, you can download the presentation slides, coursework marking group and the teaching and learning hub, which provides a range of resources for educators to use, from tips for how to increase student engagement, to help with solving technical issues. It includes information about active learning, how to write learning outcomes and assessment, infographics, exemplar rubrics, help with editing in Moodle, how to make instructional videos, and lots more.

We would like to thank you all for participating in this year’s Symposium. The event organisers, Associate Professor Basia Diug and Natalie Rowell, sincerely thank the presenters and attendees, Professor Sophia Zoungas, Professor Wayne Hodgson, Professor Danny Liew, Dr George Kotsanas and the MERQ team for their support of this successful event.

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2018

The School hosted the third Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium on Thursday 6th December 2018, with the theme of Work Readiness.

The symposium explored key attributes of our graduates in terms of work readiness by focussing on programs within the school that include a placement or work experience component. A highlight was the invited panel of industry representatives who shared real world requirements of employers in terms of skills and attributes of graduates. The three successful workshop sessions resulted in valuable resources for the School to use for future placement units and students.

If you don’t want to miss out on the valuable updates and insights presented, you can download the presentation slides below.

View Symposium presentation slides (Monash authcate login required)

The event organisers, Tania Richter and Associate Professor Basia Diug, sincerely thank all presenters, facilitators and staff of SPHPM and the MERQ team.

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2017

Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium 2016

The SPHPM Teaching Challenges and Innovation Symposium coordinated by Dr Basia Diug and Maria LaChina was held on Friday 25th November 2016 and attracted over 90 senior and teaching staff.

The symposium successfully showcased SPHPM’s current contribution to teaching at Monash University and highlighted opportunities for expansion and collaboration across teaching programs. Key staff members provided overviews of under-graduate, post-graduate, short course and other program teaching, with a focus on SPHPM-led innovation. The symposium concluded with an open discussion of how we might address future challenges facing teaching staff in a climate of increased uncertainty and rising enrolment numbers.

View symposium presentation slides (Monash authcate login required)

View symposium discussion & results (Monash authcate login required)

Thank you to our speakers, staff members of SPHPM and MERQ and in particular the Monash Education Academy for their generous sponsorship of the symposium.