Active Learning Strategies & Instructional Design

There are three main reasons for learning more about how people learn and how best to facilitate learning in the health professions.  The most obvious is that all of us will teach during our education, training and practice and we owe it to our learners to provide them with effective and positive learning experiences.  Secondly, we are life-long learners and we can be more effective in maintaining and enhancing our competence if we know how best to learn.  Last and not least, learning more about teaching and learning will better prepare us for our involvement in educational research and/or quality improvement initiatives aimed at advancing our respective disciplines.

We have curated the way you will progress this topic to help you to take part in a focused and direct way. As you progress through each task, a new task will unlock to help you keep on track of your learning and focus on the content. We have carefully selected a path that will help address all of the key touchstones along the way while helping center your goals. We consider this topic to be so broad and encumbering, we have kept the progression of this entire activity linear in order to help address only the most important topics in an order that makes sense and challenges you just enough.

Topics are curated based on what the experts developing these activities deem the most important considerations at the time of developing the module. We hope these topics will enhance your skills and knowledge to help you in your career path and help you as a professional (or enthusiast) until you have reached competency at this level!

In this activity, we will introduce you to best practices for virtual delivery of health professions education. You will engage with concepts and practices that effectively deliver lectures, problem-based learning, supervision, assessment and feedback to learners virtually. 

Healthcare simulation is a powerful educational method that has exponentially grown in the last 20 years, and become standard practice in the education of multiple healthcare professions.  Robust evidence suggests that simulation-based education “works” and is more effective than many “traditional” forms of education.

However, merely doing simulation does not mean that it is performed effectively.  Healthcare simulation is a resource-heavy educational method that requires extensive training and practice to perform safely and effectively for learners.  This specialization creates a number of barriers for educators who wish to start using this powerful educational method.  This module aims to reduce these barriers by introducing the fundamentals of healthcare simulation-based education.  The module is designed to guide healthcare educators and researchers with practical tips on how to start using healthcare simulation in their practice. Upon completion of this module, is still highly recommended that participants seek mentorship and guidance from experienced simulation educators at their local healthcare simulation centre.

Following the principles of adult education and professional development, the Advanced Certificate of Education at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry (ACES) program has been designed to acknowledge faculty members’ prior learning experiences (PLEs) and ongoing education development activities that can be demonstrated to be aligned with the current Schulich values and education programming.