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What is your main teaching philosophy?
It is my mission to prepare my students for the challenges they are going to face in the future. Students should understand health care is undergoing tremendous transformation, in addition to professional knowledge and skills which is fundamental to safe practice. It is necessary to be competent in 21st century skills, which include creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, information management, effective use of technology, career and life skills and cultural awareness, so that they would be successful after their graduation.I believe in experiential learning which engages undergraduate students purposefully in direct experience, focused reflection, and authentic assessment to increase knowledge, develop skills and strategies, clarify values, and apply prior learning. It is a holistic integrative perspective of learning that incorporates perceptions, cognition, experiences, as well as behaviour.
What is the most rewarding part of teaching?
I am an outcome-oriented teacher. When my Enrichment Year students presented their consultancy report in the government secretariat in rural Yunnan with great success, I am proud of their achievement beyond their position, based on what they learned from pre-clinical classes and service learning in the course.When I found students discussing about the patient, reminding their peers the standard practice and warning about the risks in clinical simulation after deliberate practice and debriefing, I know they have learnt how to learn. They will be safe interns when they join the workforce. It is extremely rewarding to witness how students grow in the process, even though there were ups and downs in the middle.
How do you promote teacher-student rapport?
I see myself a learning facilitator who is there to help students to learn. Students’ heavy workload is a common problem in medical schools around the world. While we defend our high professional standard, and guide students to be a competent doctor that could meet the public expectation, we can work out with them on how to facilitate their learning.I discussed with students a real life scenario in the class, as a practicing emergency physician, and let them interact with standardized patients or simulators. Within a couple of minutes they got into their roles, they think of very practical questions and help each other to manage patients with complex conditions, such as sexual assault victims. I was very impressed about the high quality of discussion in that class, which was not common in town.
What have been your greatest challenges in teaching and how did you overcome them?
The pandemic posed a threat to the teaching activities. Frequent and unpredictable class disruption in early 2020 put us in a novel challenge. I really appreciate the direction from the T&L Deanery and the support from colleagues. We developed a core curriculum as a quality reassurance measure. Online teaching was a new topic to me. I searched literature for any model of online teaching, and we developed our blended online and face-to-face teaching based on Community of Inquiry Theory. It’s far from perfect but we improve from time to time.
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