There’s a lot of anxiety among health professions educators right now as they try to move classes and entire courses online. They weren’t trained to do this, have little experience doing this, and many may not even want to do this. Hardly an inspiring thought. And I found myself agreeing with them. They didn’t sign up for this and most of them really do believe that a lot will be lost with the move online.
Thinking about this predicament (i.e. people who don’t think that “online” is the best way to teach health professionals, but who nonetheless must do it) made me wonder if reframing the question would change how they approach the problem. Instead of asking, “How do I move my course online?” what if we asked, “How can I help my less-experienced colleagues in their professional development?” Instead of focusing on building online classrooms, how about providing additional opportunities for CPD? Rather than focusing on moving content online, ask your less-experienced colleagues what the gaps are in their own learning. Don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to control the assessment process but rather try to help our less-experienced colleagues to evaluate their own performance.
You may already have noticed that each of the above shifts the emphasis from you as a teacher having to control the process of students’ learning (environment, content, assessment, etc.), towards something that probably looks more like a dialogue. A conversation. You know, probably more like how you learn. No-one tells you what you need to focus on, or how far “behind” you are, or what you have to read. Maybe over the next few weeks and months we could reflect on how each of us learns best and provide our less-experienced colleagues (previously known as “our students”) with more authentic opportunities to develop as healthcare professionals.
Note: Thank you to Joost van Wijchen who first introduced me to the concept of “working with our less-experienced colleagues”, rather than “teaching to our students”, and who recently reminded me of this wonderful mental model.