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 Dr Johnny Wong and Mr Samson Wong.

TDG projects:
Construction of a Pharmaceutical Chemical Virtual Laboratory to Facilitate Inquiry-based Learning in the Pharmaceutical Chemical Education of the BPharm Programme

Dr Johnny Wong, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy

The chemical education in pharmacy has long been relying on the conventional, didacticism- and verification-based approach in which teachers impart his/her own conceptual models to students.  In the recent BPharm programme revamp, it has been decided to revitalize the pharmaceutical chemical education module by transforming it to the student-centred inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach.

The IBL in chemical education is analogue to the problem-based learning (PBL) approach constantly practiced at the Faculty.  It has been suggested that, in IBL, students build their own conceptual models by discovering knowledge through hands-on laboratory-based activities.  IBL addresses the experimental nature of chemistry by which theories are discovered constantly by experimental observations. 

To gain the maximum benefit from IBL, experiments shall be as idealistic as possible to ensure the conceptual model is built correctly but shall remain some degree of randomness to mimic the reality.  It has been demonstrated that these two seemingly contradictory criteria could be simultaneously attained by using a virtual laboratory in which experimental conditions are fully controllable while instructors could intermittently introduce fluctuation behind the screen. 

The objectives of this project are

1. Developing a chemistry-based virtual laboratory for pharmaceutical chemical education;
2. Developing a series of guided inquiry-based experiments to help students build their own conceptual models;
3. Developing a series of interactive self-learning modules in the virtual platform for students to learn and practice basic laboratory skills before entering any laboratories (e.g. for IBL group research project and final year project).

The application of this virtual laboratory can be extended to other laboratory-based subjects by adding additional training modules (objective 3) in future.

Exploring Photo-elicitation as a Teaching & Learning Tool to Foster Medical Student’s Awareness of Age-related Biases in Healthcare and to Develop a Humanist View of Ageing

Mr Samson Wong, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit (MEHU)

With the increased exposure to frail and vulnerable older patients, medical students may develop the tendency to view the ageing negatively. Age-related biases in medical students might include seeing ageing as a frustrating process of decline, infirmity and decay, or the false assumption that older adults are inherently “end-of-life” patients. In 2020, a cross-sectional survey in China reported that first-year medical students held more favourable attitudes toward older adults than senior medical students, suggesting that attitudes on ageing might have been affected by knowledge gained in the medical school. This phenomenon is perhaps even more worrisome at a time that the COVID pandemic has exacerbated intergenerational tension, and that society’s rationing of healthcare resources on some occasions have been based arbitrarily on chronological age. Recently, the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030), adopted by consensus in the UN General Assembly on December 14, 2020 (Resolution 75/131), has called for international action to “change how we think, feel and act towards age and ageing”.

Visual images evoke emotions, abstract ideas, and shared human experience. For instance, photographs of older adults could elicit learners’ apprehension of caring for older adults, and images of senile and frail older patients could elicit anxiety about growing old, thereby enabling dialogue on stereotypes and prejudices, and in turn potentially facilitating sensitivity, perception, insight, and perspective-taking. Research also reported that socializing medical students with healthy older adults through visual art could foster positive attitudes toward the other age group by fostering a sense of commonality.

In this project, we sought to harness the potential of photo-elicitation in teaching and learning, for (i) facilitating perspective-taking, (ii) enhancing medical student’s awareness of age-related stereotypes and prejudices, (iii) improving students’ attitudes towards caring for older patients, (iv) promoting professional interest in geriatrics. A structured and interactive photo-elicitation workshop on ageism has been developed and successfully integrated into the core Medical Humanities Programme mandatory for students in MBBS Year 2, with effect from academic year 2021/22. For this initiative, the Project PI has been recognized with Young Scholar Merit Award at the Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC) 2022 co-organized by Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore and Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaysia.

Speakers:

Dr Johnny Wong, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy, HKU

Mr Samson Wong, Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, HKU

Moderator:

Dr Fred Ganotice, BIMHSE, HKU