11 Sep 2024
12:30-2:00pm

Seminar Room A6-09, 6/F, William MW Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road & Zoom

This seminar aims to help Faculty colleagues who are planning a TDG project or who are just interested in medical education research. It will help provide insight into the design and thinking behind successful HKUMed TDG projects through the sharing by Professor Julie Yun CHEN, Dr Pauline Po-Ling Luk and Dr Ria Sinha.

TDG projects:
Empowering Medical Students: MH Couture Atelier Brings Peer-led Self-directed Learning to MBBS Medical Humanities Curriculum

Dr Pauline Po-Ling Luk, MEHU & BIMHSE

Self-directed learning (SDL) is an approach that empowers students to take control of their own learning. SDL involves students identifying their learning needs, setting goals, and finding resources to acquire the knowledge they are interested in. Studies have shown that SDL can have many benefits, including increased motivation, self-confidence, self-discipline, and a positive attitude towards self-management. These skills can lead to better professional development and help students pursue lifelong learning. The current Medical Humanities (MH2) curriculum of MBBS Year 2 encourages students to take ownership of their education and deepen their knowledge, understanding, and insight of the Medical Humanities. This proposal seeks to incorporate SDL into the MH2 curriculum, allowing students to design their own learning pathways based on key learning themes in MH.

The SDL pathways will be piloted in the 2023-24 MH2 curriculum, with students forming groups of 2 to 5 and submitting their designed pathways to the MH2 curriculum team. Each pathway will be partnered with a faculty member to ensure the highest quality. Students will be coached to design and lead their own pathways, which will be in line with the Faculty's "Student in Medical Education" initiative to support students in developing skills in curriculum development and teaching.

The Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS) will be used to measure students' readiness for self-directed learning before and after the pathway, providing valuable insight into the effectiveness of the program. This project encourages students to identify issues in different scenarios and critically explore them while gaining knowledge relevant to their interests, which aligns perfectly with the educational aims of HKU, including aims 1, 3, 5, and 6.

By choosing SDL pathways, students can develop a broader range of skills and knowledge that can support their overall academic and professional growth in different disciplines. The findings of this project can offer useful guidance on developing SDL in the curricula of other undergraduate programs in the faculty and across the university, which will extend the collaboration with different faculties. Overall, the project has the potential to facilitate a significant shift in the way students approach learning and contribute to their growth as self-directed learners.

A Game-based Approach to Understanding Healthcare Inequality and (In)accessibility

Dr Pauline Po-Ling Luk, MEHU & BIMHSE

Healthcare inequality is an increasingly pressing issue in Hong Kong, with underprivileged patients facing significant challenges in accessing healthcare and receiving necessary treatments. To increase awareness about healthcare inequality and accessibility problems and foster greater empathy among future healthcare practitioners, this project aims to co-design a game with medical students that immerses learners in a simulated environment where they experience the difficulties faced by underprivileged patients.

Using a game-based approach that is engaging, interactive, and enjoyable, the game aims to effectively achieve its educational objectives. This project aims to develop a game as an essential tool for student learning in higher education, encouraging critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity while promoting empathy and compassion towards others. The game could be applied to medical humanities teaching, in MH2 and MH4, it has potential to establish cross disciplines teaching, with nursing, pharmacy, social work and social science students as well. We hope this could help create a more equitable healthcare system in Hong Kong.

The project's effectiveness will be evaluated through pre and post-game surveys, focus group discussions, and longitudinal data collection. If successful, the project will seek extra funding to convert the board game into an online game or structured game-based learning workshops that can benefit students outside the MBBS curriculum.

One of the highlights of this project is its strong connections with stakeholders in the community, including a faculty member of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration to extend the game's reach to other professions outside HKU Med. We have also lined up with a founder of an NGO working on grassroots health advocacy and a game design expert to discuss the potential of bringing this game to the community. In addition, we have connected with an award-winning video director renowned for her expertise in producing documentaries for underprivileged communities, who can assist the project to produce impactful story for the game. Lastly, this project is well-supported by a group of MBBS students from different years who are engaged in the project planning.

Health by Design: Implementation of Public Health Posters as a Multidisciplinary Visual Teaching Device in MBBS, School of Public Health and Department of History (Common Core) Curriculum Development

Dr Ria Sinha, MEHU

The Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit is continuing to develop History of Medicine as a core theme within the MBBS Medical Humanities (MH) programme. The aim is to build a coherent curriculum to underpin a strong foundation for medical students to gain an informed and critical perspective of medicine, how it relates to society and how the profession has been shaped by diverse health challenges across time and space. By drawing extensively from rich local and international sources (including archives, museums, and oral histories) we wish to emphasise the relevance of historical connection to medical students who will be practising in Hong Kong. For example, health messaging is as crucial today in the time of Covid-19, as it was in the near and remote past when issues such as hygiene, sanitation, family planning and smoking were priority areas.

To explore the development of visual health messaging in Hong Kong and concurrent progress in medicine, we will use a curated selection of archival post-war Hong Kong health posters as the basis for a series of interactive workshops. Students will consider the multifaceted, interdisciplinary nature of posters as a ubiquitous and affordable mode of health communication in historical, contemporary, and future contexts. Workshop sessions will cover the societal health and medical issues that necessitated such campaigns, analyse the psychosocial methodologies employed to deliver health information to the public, and investigate the impact of health posters on public attitudes and practice, as well as explore the future of health messaging in the digital era. A successful pilot session was conducted with students of the MA Hong Kong History elective course ‘Health and Medicine in Hong Kong’ which demonstrated strong engagement with the medium as a tool for understanding the impact of posters as health messaging devices in society and the evolution of health issues in Hong Kong. Workshops will be embedded in the MH curriculum, as well as being offered in the Global Health thread coordinated by the School of Public Health. Additionally, health posters will be further developed as a teaching tool in four Common Core courses offered by the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts, where they have been successfully used to promote interactive learning, visual literacy and critical thinking skills. Workshop and lecture content will be developed by a multidisciplinary team of teachers.

We will take a mixed-method quantitative-qualitative approach to evaluate students’ capability for critical analysis and reflection and undertake workshop evaluation and feedback. This project will inform the development of the MH History of Medicine theme and has the potential to benefit other curricula such as nursing, comparative literature, or media studies which value the use of visual media as a device to promote higher order thinking and critical analysis.

All HKU colleagues are welcome.

Speakers for TDG Faculty Reviewer:

Professor Julie Yun CHEN, Department of Family Medicine and Primary Care (FMPC) & Bau Institute of Medical and Health Sciences Education (BIMHSE)

Speakers for TDG Projects:

Dr Pauline Po-Ling Luk, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit (MEHU) & Bau Institute of Medical and Health Sciences Education (BIMHSE)

Dr Ria Sinha, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit (MEHU)

Moderator:

Dr Jian Yang, School of Biomedical Science

Poster