Enhance Your Expertise at Faculty Skills 201
Are you looking for an opportunity to connect with other experienced faculty and refresh your skills? Consider joining us after the Education Forum, on October 16–17, for the Faculty Skills 201 Pando™ workshop. This two-day workshop builds on Faculty Skills 101 (previously called Basic Skills) and is designed for faculty with at least three years of teaching experience.
If you’ve attended the Basic Skills workshop, this is your chance to revisit some of those topics as well as venture into new areas. It’s also a great opportunity for you to continue to develop your network of other experienced educators — colleagues you can connect with throughout the year.
The workshop will provide you with powerful evaluative tools that will help you assess a student’s true didactic and clinical knowledge, while also meeting program goals and Accreditation Standards. In addition, workshop facilitators will show you how to develop students into critical thinkers and lifelong learners by identifying their individual learning styles and improving their study skills. After revisiting critical topics such as objective writing, test item writing, and program assessment, facilitators will delve into other areas of growing interest. For example:
Unconscious Bias — A Brief Introduction
Are you aware that your decision-making process for interviewing and selecting candidates for your program is influenced by when you last ate? Your choices can also be affected by whether the applicant is seated to your right or left. PAEA’s Chief Communication & Diversity Officer Seán Stickle will share his insights and help you to better identify the phenomenon of unconscious bias. More specifically, you will examine its relevance to PA education. This perspective will help you understand the positive and negative effects of bias and implement some practical steps to avoid it within your program.
Developing Critical Thinking
Are you perplexed about why your students often have such a difficult time integrating course materials? You selected the best and the brightest who have performed well in their academic undergraduate careers, but now they are struggling in your graduate program. Memorizing anatomical facts and regurgitating standard medical treatments are necessary — but only represent the foundation for what PA students really need to be able to do as part of a patient encounter. Tim Wood, DHSc, PA-C, director of the Center for Academic and Professional Enhancement (CAPE) and assistant professor in the Department of Physician Assistant Education at Western University of Health Sciences, will dig deeper into these issues and help you think critically about critical thinking.
Uncovering the Link Between Personal and Program Teaching Philosophy
Most faculty are too busy to sit and reflect on their teaching philosophy — although we incorporate it into everything we do and live it daily. Have you ever taken the time to consider how your own teaching philosophy aligns with your program’s teaching philosophy? It’s critical to ensure that our philosophies align with the program mission and values. We will talk about the importance of a teaching philosophy and how it can impact what you do both on a daily basis and in the long-term.
The Faculty Skills 201 workshop benefits those educators who already have a knowledge base in these areas and want to further develop their skills. It is recommended that those who are new to these topics should attend Faculty Skills 101 first. For more information, including a detailed description of the workshop with session objectives, please visit the Pando workshop page. This workshop is approved for 13.25 Category I CME.
