A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching in the disciplines
whiteboards and virtual reality, are also becoming increasingly utilised. An important
issue for medicine and dentistry is to consider what any form of technology offers that
particularly relates to the nature of the discipline and how students learn it. One feature
of technology in teaching is that some types can be very time-consuming to set up; also
an un-coordinated, non-cross curriculum approach may sometimes lead to student
confusion and a lack of institutional learning about how to best use technology.
Interrogating practice
• How do any of these technologies fit into your current educational
practice?
• Could you further enhance their effective use?
• What access do you have to training, a learning technologist and an e-
learning strategy for your school?
Among the areas of learning in medical and dental education that are/might be enhanced
by the use of technology are:
• streaming demonstrations or interviews (e.g. of clinical and communication skills,
including taking a history). Filming these, provided it is done professionally, can be
advantageous in many ways (e.g. making full use of scarce resources); opportunities
for student activity and thought need to be added;
• the opportunity for simulated practice to precede or enhance practice in the real
world, including the use of virtual reality;
• a means of maintaining a community of practice and commonality of approach when
students are distributed to different clinical sites;
• handheld devices for learning logs, and computers for electronic portfolios (see Case
study 3);
• capacity to represent three-dimensionally and offer manipulation (e.g. of molecules
or anatomy);
• access to web information or loading reference texts on to handheld computers can
aid learning, including in ‘down’ moments in the clinical setting, and may enhance
an evidence-based approach to practice;
• many medical techniques and investigations rely on technology (e.g. imaging) and
this may also be used for teaching and learning – having the additional benefit of
familiarising students with how to ‘read’ the output.
Technology is also increasingly relevant to assessment. This ranges from the online MCQ
that can give feedback to learners about their answers or ask learners to think about their
confidence in their answer (Gardner-Medwin, 2006), to opportunities for examiners to
assess at a distance.