Medical Education

• Study the latest research, scholarship and practice, and learn to deal with complexity, contradictions and gaps in the current evidence base
• Explore the wide range of learning, teaching and assessment methods used across all levels of clinical education and training, and discover how to use these in practice
• Develop the skills, attitudes and practices of an excellent teacher, and an awareness of personal responsibility and professional codes of conduct
• Gain the capacity for innovation in education through the design, implementation and evaluation of a small scale education research, development or leadership project
• Benefit from studying with from a highly experienced, knowledgeable and accessible team who will encourage you to appraise your practice and address emerging development needs through independent and collaborative activities.

This course supports your development as a medical educator, scholar and leader.  It provides opportunities to develop your thinking and practice within a dynamic multi-disciplinary community of clinical educators.

The course team models learner-centred teaching, learning and assessment practices and provides plentiful opportunities for you to rehearse them yourself.

Your final assignment is a supervised Medical Education Research Project in an area of professional interest, which provides a clear sense of your educational role responsibilities and the confidence to offer guidance to peers who wish to develop their own educational practices. You thus evidence emerging educational leadership capabilities along with developed skills in project design, management and evaluation.

The assessment strategy for the course combines formative and summative elements i.e. assessment for learning and assessment of learning. It is designed to foster strong links between learning on the course and the lived realities of medical and healthcare educators working in Higher and Professional education contexts. It is also designed to enable you to evidence your competence as a medical or healthcare educator, in order to satisfy requirements of professional bodies and regulators. The choice of assessments is determined on the basis of their fitness for purpose i.e. to evidence achievement of unit learning outcomes at Masters level (Level 7). However, they also rehearse writing for a range of academic purposes; an early assessment point in the core unit for the PGCert in Medical Education, for example, is designed to rehearse writing in the reflective genre and Harvard referencing conventions. Later assessments move to writing in the academic genre, within the traditions of the social sciences. Increasing emphasis is placed on academic literacy and the ability to present complex ideas coherently with reference to appropriate literature. Plentiful opportunities are built in to the course to rehearse these skills, e.g. exercises in problematizing, practice in assessing exemplars of actual (anonymised) assignments, using the criteria we use on the course. By modelling and analysing best practice in educational assessment, we hope students will gain confidence and skills in critiquing, using and developing their own approaches to assessment. To enhance your understanding and experiences of assessment practices (relevant to your role as an educator) you will encounter a wide range of assessment methods. Examples of assessment methods used across the course are: evidence-based portfolios (e.g. Medical Education in Practice, Simulation in Practice,); academic papers (e.g. Educational Perspectives in the workplace) critical appraisals (Workplace Based Learning); Oral presentations (Educational Policy and Leadership); Case Studies (Workplace Based Learning, Simulation in Practice) Reflective assignments (Medical Education in Practice, Educational Policy and leadership) Literature review (Workplace Based Learning and Medical Education Research Project) and research proposals (Projects) Details of assessment methods are found in each UIF. The assessment map below illustrates the assessment experience of a student on the MA in Medical Education who completes 60 credits per year, chooses the Medical Education Research Project and takes three years to complete the award.

Putteridge Bury campus

Putteridge Bury is a magnificent country mansion set in 30 acres of landscaped gardens and picturesque parkland. Built in 1911, it is just four miles from the University Square campus on the Hertfordshire - Bedfordshire border. 

It is home to the Bedfordshire Business School postgraduate programmes and the University’s Conference Centre.

A free shuttle bus service operates between Putteridge Bury and University Square.

Comprehensive Learning Resources Centre

The Putteridge Bury campus has its own comprehensive Learning Resources Centre equipped with PCs, which give you access to online information databases and more than 2,000 electronic journals.

Students based at Putteridge Bury can also benefit from the 200,000 books and specialist texts, 9,000 journals and 300 fully networked PCs that are available at the University Square campus.

Location

Ideally located only four miles from Luton town centre, Putteridge Bury is set in picturesque parkland just off the A505 and enjoys a tranquil rural environment and ample parking within the grounds.

Putteridge Bury lies close to the University Square campus, and is a short drive from the London Luton airport, the train station and bus station.