--- Adrian Fogarty <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What I'm getting at, is that you guys don't seem to
> question your received
> "wisdom". There doesn't seem to be any room for
> lateral thinking, and any
> attempts at innovation are stifled. I don't think
> your techniques are
> necessarily bad, it's just that ALS won't allow any
> other teaching methods.
> This rather strikes me as odd. Surely the point of
> these courses is to
> improve resus abilities; their primary purpose is
> not to be some sort of
> impressive showcase for educational techniques. Why
> should it matter how
> it's taught as long as the message gets across? I'm
> happy to let you guys
> get on and teach it any way you like, but I, and
> many others like me, was
> driven out as my teaching techniques were not deemed
> to be acceptable by the
> "faculty".
Lots of points here. First why do we teach like that?
Well for the same reasons I practice evidence based
medicine. There is evidence to support the efficacy of
these teaching methods. Now if you have some great
idea then lets hear it and you can devise a study to
test out your idea. Trial it with a group of students
and let us see the results. However all you have
provided so far is a lot of unsubstantiated comments
about aspects of teaching (like taking questions last)
that you have no evidence to back up. Taking questions
last was the traditional thing when I was at med
school. Are you sure you are not just sticking up for
what you are used too? Certainly I wouldn't say that
was a great innovation or even lateral thinking!
Second point - stifling innovation. Not my experience
at all. When I teach on the GIC course the first thing
I say to the students is that there is no right or
wrong way to teach. The course is there to introduce
students to some teaching methods that have evidence
to back them up and to expose them to a variety of
teaching situations and get them to think about how
they would approach those problems and to suggest some
ways of solving them. I am always nicking good ideas
from the students.
If there is a fault with the GIC course it is the tick
box mentality of assessment. Unfortunately this is
needed as you need bits of paper to show when a
candidate fails the course. GIC failures seem to
inevitably generate complaints and on occasions
threatened legal action. On balance I think the course
is good, probably the most useful thing is having
someone observe your teaching and give feedback on it.
Cheers Fred.
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