Online resources forstaff new to teaching

Teaching can be a dauntingprospect for clinicians who arefamiliar with their own areas ofexpertise, but who may have lesspractical experience in guidingstudents through parts of acurriculum outside their primaryskills area.

However, there is a wealth ofmaterial available on the Inter-net to support the developmentof teaching skills, much of whichis free, or available for purchaseat low cost.

In this article we examine a fewsuch online resources that mayassist you in making your teach-ing activities and supportingmaterials as effective as possible.

Staff new to teaching have been afocus of the UK’s Higher EducationAcademy (Academy) since 2002.In that time, a range of bothgeneric and discipline-basedresources has been amassed,intended for the use of this targetgroup1. You can choose to searchby subject area (e.g. Medicine,Dentistry and Veterinary Medicineor Health Sciences and Practice),or by topic, which reveals moreabout other disciplinary app-

roaches, for instance, assessment.There are case studies demon-strating how resources have beenincorporated into teachingscenarios2, and by contacting therelevant subject centre3, you canbe kept up to date with the latestdevelopments, projects, news andevents, with a discipline-specificteaching focus4.

David Baume’s excellent onlineversion of A guide to first words onteaching and learning5, from theOxford Centre for Staff and Learn-ing Development6, provides gen-eric practical guidance, suggestingways of thinking about studentlearning that will help you to planuseful and effective teaching andlearning activities. These might bein small or large groups, or in work-or classroom-based environments.There are useful reminders, such ashow to produce effective presen-tations and handouts. The site isalso packed with references tofurther reading.

The Resource Archive For TeacherTrainers (RAFTT)7, created by staffdevelopment experts with theAcademy Subject Centre forMedicine, Dentistry and

Veterinary Medicine, has materialthat is classified into six areas.

1. Design and planning of learningactivities or programmes of study

2. Teaching and supportingstudent learning

3. Assessment and givingfeedback to learners

4. Developing effective environ-ments, and student support andguidance

5. Integration of scholarship,research and professionalactivities with teaching, andsupporting learning

6. Evaluation of practice andcontinuing professionaldevelopment

There is a sample resource onmotivation8, written by JohnSpencer (Editor in Chief of TheClinical Teacher), which gives ataste of the kind of materials thatbecome available to you when youregister to use the website.

The Staff and Educational Devel-opment Association (SEDA)9 hasalso published generic reports andpapers related to the developmentof learning and teaching skills10.

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122 � Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009. THE CLINICAL TEACHER 2009; 6: 122–123

Some are available to purchase,whereas others can bedownloadedfreeof charge, e.g.AssessingGroupPractice, by Cordelia Bryan11.

In 2003, the British Medical Jour-nal (BMJ) published an ABC seriesof 12 papers on learning andteaching in medicine12, which arestill relevant and available. Diversetopics include teaching largegroups,creating learning materials, work-based assessment, skill-basedassessment, written assessment,learning and teaching in the clinicalenvironment, one-to-one teachingand feedback, teaching smallgroups, evaluation, problem-basedlearning, curriculum design andapplying educational theory inpractice. A second edition of thisexcellent series is in the pipeline.

There are, additionally, 34 guidesavailable to buy from theAssociation for Medical Educationin Europe (AMEE)13, which aim tocover important topics in medicaland health care professions

education. A set of 23 titles in theUnderstanding Medical Educationseries that can be purchased fromthe Association for the Study ofMedical Education (ASME)14.Although paper-based, theseguides can be ordered online, andso are deservingof amention here.

Once you start writing your ownresources it quickly becomesapparent that copyright can be aminefield in using digital imagesand video in teaching materials.JISC Digital Media have set-up aservice specifically to help the UK’sfurther education and highereducation communities embrace,and maximise, the use of digitalmedia. They have digestible adviceon finding and using still15 andmoving images16, and audio17.

Making your material easy to useby a range of students withdiffering abilities and learningstyles can also be challenging. JISCTechDis18, in their Accessibility

Essentials series19, providesinvaluable advice on making yourWord, PowerPoint and PDF docu-ments engaging and useful. Thisembodies general good practice inthe creation of teaching resources.

Reusable Learning Objects(RLOs) are web-based interac-tive multimedia e-learningpackages that enable studentsto learn about a particular topic.The RLO-CETL website20 haspackages that can be embeddedin teaching material: 14 pack-ages alone are concerned withevidence-based practice21.

Finally, writing good assessmentitems can also be a challenge.The National Board of MedicalExaminers has an online ItemWriting Manual22, which goesthrough the process of writingbetter quality test questions.The 52-page PDF document iscurrently in its third edition. Acollection of these monographsin book format is planned.

REFERENCES

1. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/professional/snas/snasdatabase

2. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/professional/snas

3. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/networks/subjectcentres

4. http://www.medev.ac.uk/

5. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/firstwords/fwconts.html

6. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/

7. http://www.medev.ac.uk/randd/RAFTT/

8. http://www.medev.ac.uk/randd/RAFTT/randd/RAFTT/motivation.ppt

9. http://www.seda.ac.uk

10. http://www.seda.ac.uk/publications.htm

11. http://www.seda.ac.uk/Paper%20117%20full%20info.doc

12. http://www.medev.ac.uk/dinky?dinky_id=898

13. http://www.amee.org/index.asp?tm=60

14. http://www.asme.org.uk/publications.htm

15. http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/stillimages/docs/category/finding-and-using-digital-media/

16. http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/movingimages/docs/category/finding-and-using-digital-media/

17. http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/audio/docs/category/finding-and-using-digital-media/

18. http://www.techdis.ac.uk/

19. http://www.techdis.ac.uk/index.php?p=3_20

20. http://www.medev.ac.uk/dinky?dinky_id=867

21. http://www.medev.ac.uk/dinky?dinky_id=919

22. http://www.nbme.org/publications/item-writing-manual.html

This Publisher has made all reasonable efforts to provide useful information on these pages but makes no warranty as to its currency or

fitness for a particular purpose. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, further advice should be sought. The

Publisher disclaims all responsibility and liability for the content of third party websites which may be linked to from these sites. Users

assume the sole responsibility for the accessing of third party websites and the use of any content appearing on such websites.

� Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009. THE CLINICAL TEACHER 2009; 6: 122–123 123