There is a growing interest in medical education in Russia, and there are several large institutions who are awakening to the potential for change and development in medical curricula. Although most of the prospective participants have experience in audit, epidemiological or clinical research, few have any experience of the types of research approaches that can be applied to understanding education.
The ESME Research course is a three day face-to-face course run by David Taylor, Professor of Medical Education and Physiology at Gulf Medical University, UAE. The course will provide participants with a Certificate of attendance, converted to a full certificate if they produce a research poster within three months of the course. The course will be able to accommodate 20-25 participants (a smaller number than the other ESME courses) to allow us to address cultural and translating issues.
Participants
This module is appropriate for people who have some teaching experience and have already completed the basic level ESME course.
Module Aims
The module aims to cover four essential elements of medical education research:
· To provide participants with an awareness a range of research skills drawn from the psychological and social sciences
· To enable participants to develop their research skills
· To develop participants’ abilities to analyse complex situations and make sound judgements
· To encourage participants to reflect upon the ways in which educational interventions can be analyzed
Module Design
In the module, we consider the nature of evidence and proof, and the variety of research techniques that are open to us. We use a combination of formal face-to-face instruction, discussions in small groups and individual project work. Each participant will identify a research problem of immediate and local significance and design a study that will help to answer the problem. Participants will be encouraged to explain and defend their approaches in group work, and will receive feedback from other participants. The emphasis is on applying research techniques to solve real and current questions, leading to an increase in research capacity in the participating institution/s.
Assessment
Participants will be assessed against the learning outcomes. This may be a formal written piece, an e-poster/Prezi/Adobe Spark presentation, or a video, but must be submitted within three months of completion of the face-to-face attendance, in a form that allows dissemination to other course members and the assessors.
In order that participants can change their new learning into action, they will also be asked to produce a poster regarding an element of their work in research; this can be an example of what they are presently researching, or an example / idea of a research proposal. They will be asked to present this (a la AMEE poster sessions) at a meeting held 5-6 months post the course. This will not add, at present, to their final assessment since its main aim is to encourage dissemination and discussion regarding research.
Best regards,
Head of AMEE Russia
Esma I. Avakyan