tailoring online faculty development programmes: overcoming faculty resistance
TRANSCRIPT
their style of feedback. An opportunity to practice writingfeedback based on a brief video of a resident in practicewas offered to all participants. Only two took part in thisdeliberate practice.1
One month after the coaching session, each participant’sfeedback was compared with the pre-coaching feedback.What lessons were learned? Written formative feedback,a pillar of developing competence, is easy to assess. Feed-back that is specific enough for a resident to recall andreproduce the advice it contains is optimal. However, ourfaculty development around improving feedback was chal-lenging. The quality of written feedback provided by pre-ceptors showed only small improvements. Our pre-intervention scores of 2.13/5 jumped to only 2.44/5 afterintervention.Although we provided engaged preceptors with detailedcoaching specific to improving their own style of feed-back, we failed to change their habits significantly. Weprovided coaching, but did not insist on deliberate prac-tice in writing feedback. Our observation was that the twodoctors who did deliberately practice writing feedbackimproved more than their peers. We believe that we sim-ply failed to ask our colleagues to apply their learning.After personalised coaching, we missed the key step tochanging behaviour – deliberate practice.
REFERENCE
1 Ericsson KA, Krampe RT, Tesch-Romer C. The role ofdeliberate practice in the acquisition of expertperformance. Psychol Rev 1993;100:363–406.
Correspondence: Dr. Darren Nichols, Department of FamilyMedicine, 205 College Plaza, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 0S6.Tel: +1 (780) 248-1254; E-mail: [email protected]
doi: 10.1111/medu.12187
Tailoring online faculty development programmes:overcoming faculty resistance
Samar Ahmed
What problem was addressed? Faculty development pro-grammes worldwide are constantly battling with the issueof faculty resistance. This is also the case in Egypt, wheremany faculty members lack formal training in educationalprinciples and methods. Although attendance in trainingsessions is mandatory for faculty promotion in Egypt, fac-ulty members exhibit resistance because they cannotaccommodate training into their busy schedules, feeluncomfortable moving out of the secure environment oftheir departments and specialty, and often feel that it isnot worth their time. The problem is worse when they areclinicians and attending training programmes has a lower
priority than attending to patients. It was therefore feltnecessary to offer more tailored solutions to accommo-date faculty needs.What was tried? A novel training approach was tried inthe Departments of Ophthalmology and Vascular Surgery.Instead of the mandatory 3-day face-to-face training ses-sions that were obligatory for their promotion, 76 facultymembers were given the choice of using web-based mod-ules, and e-mail-based discussion forums to promote self-directed learning.Each module started with a case designed according to theobjectives of the course, which was e-mailed to all partici-pants, with an in-built assignment to complete and returnby e-mail. Each submission was assessed individually.Based on the gaps in their learning, educational objectiveswere defined and an individual assignment was designedfor each faculty member to address his or her individualobjectives. Online discussions on one or two themes werefacilitated to clarify doubts. This was followed by a groupassignment. An expert from outside the institute was addedto the mailing list and asked to look at the assignment andto provide feedback over a span of 3 weeks, during whichlearning was asynchronous at the faculty member’s ownpace. This was followed by a 3-hour face-to-face trainingencounter. Certificates of completion were given at theend of the course.Compared with the usual approach, there was an increasein participation in the faculty development programmefrom 8.3% (n = 6) to 42.1% (n = 32). Faculty member sat-isfaction was measured using a pre-validated question-naire. The mean satisfaction index increased from 32.1 to71.4 on a 1–100 satisfaction index. Faculty members con-sidered a mean percentage of 74.4% of their time spentduring training as useful as opposed to an initial 31.0%when using traditional training methods. Faculty membersvalued the training for being ‘customer oriented’ andrecognised that it ‘respected what they needed more thanwhat the medical education department wanted todeliver’.What lessons were learned? The results of the interven-tion demonstrate that faculty members benefited fromand were satisfied with the training when it was tailoredto respect their privacy, their needs and their time.Faculty members resist learning when they are taken outof their comfort zone. Giving them a safe learning envi-ronment and an opportunity to study at their own conve-nient time and place was more acceptable than beingcoerced into a mandatory training programme.Also, the opinion of an expert from outside the school isa valuable tool and helps to cut down the resistance.
Correspondence: Samar Ahmed, Department of Forensic Medicineand Toxicology, Ain Shams University Medical School, Abbassia,Cairo 11566, Egypt. Tel: 00 20 106 266 9970;E-mail: [email protected]
doi: 10.1111/medu.12192
ª Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2013. MEDICAL EDUCATION 2013; 47: 513–535 535
really good stuff