Online Master's Program Helps Medical Educators Enhance Teaching Skills
Along with the other considerable demands of their profession, health care professionals must make a commitment to a lifetime of continuous education. For many, that commitment compels them to take on the additional role of teacher in order to share their knowledge with both their peers and subsequent generations of practitioners. While teaching is a significant and vital esponsibility,most physicians and health care professionals do not have the time or the opportunity to take any kind of formalized classes to develop their skills in this area.
In the late 1990s Raymond Baker, MD, MEd, and Kadriye Lewis, EdD, of the Cincinnat Children's Division of General and Community Pediatrics, identified the need for advanced graduate studies in education and, in conjunction with University of Cincinnati's Colleges of Education and Medicine, began to develop a program designed specifically for physicians and health care professionals with full-time clinical and teaching responsibilities. Realizing a traditional in-class graduate program would not be feasible for full-time professionals, Dr. Baker, the program's director, and Dr. Lewis focused on making this program available completely online. As a result of their efforts, the Online Master's Degree
in Education for Health Care Professionals went live nationally and internationally in 2002.
"Most people are not born knowing how to teach," says Dr. Lewis, who is the program coordinator. "Teachers need to be trained and they need to update their skills regularly." Most physicians and health care professionals, however, do not receive this training during their formal education. "Medical schools do not include a curriculum in teaching pedagogy," Dr. Lewis explains. The nline master's program fills this gap by offering advanced coursework in educational theory, instructional effectiveness and educational research leading to a master's degree in education.
Tackling Challenges
According to Dr. Lewis, developing this program was not without its challenges. "We basically started from scratch," she says. "We didn't have much help and we didn't have much money." During the pilot phase and beyond, Dr. Lewis says, the most difficult issue she and the development team have had to overcome is the fact that the program is completely online. While online learning offers the flexibility and convenience needed by busy professionals, it does not offer the face-to-face interaction between students and teachers that most in health care are accustomed to. Additionally, since online education is still relatively new, most instructors do not have signficant experience teaching in this environment. As the program evolves, Dr. Lewis says, these challenges are being successfully addressed as better course materials are developed for a web-based curriculum and medical educators are gaining more experience with distance learning.
The program's 45 credit hours are broken up into 36 hours of required core courses, three hours for practicum, three hours for a final master's project, and three for electives. "Students develop a master's research project," explains Dr. Lewis. "What they learn in their classes, they apply to their project rather than taking quizzes and tests." The courses are delivered by qualified faculty from the University of Cincinnati's Colleges of Education and Medicine.
Making Strides
Dr. Lewis reports that the program has made great strides since its early days. Enrollment has steadily increased through the years – there are currently 39 active participants in the master's program – while the drop rate has been low. The program is the only accredited one of its kind that is offered completely online, and plans are underway to offer the program in Spanish in the future. The program's participants, 98 percent of whom are physicians, represent a broad range of disciplines including pediatrics, general surgery, family medicine and emergency medicine.
Dr. Lewis is pleased that the course evaluations show the participants are getting value from the program. "Many of them say they never thought of themselves as teachers before taking our course," she says. "Our goal is to make health care professionals better teachers."
