Take the mystery out of education research
Does a new diabetic need a step-by-step video or a test dummy?
Does an online test prepare an emergency trainee for life on the ward?
These are the kinds of questions that can be answered by education research – and a new series of workshops is aiming to get more educators into the research field.
By explaining the jargon and walking people through the initial steps, the workshops will equip more educators to examine the way we teach and whether we could do it better.
Monica Hughes is the program manager of the Westmead Precinct Education Hub, a collaboration of Western Sydney Local Health District, The University of Sydney, and The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network.
“One of the roles of the hub is to build the research capacity of educators across Westmead Precinct,” Monica said.
“There are a lot of educators in the precinct doing amazing work, but the feedback we’ve heard is many of them don’t feel confident translating that work into research. Education research can help educators improve learning and teaching, and understand education more broadly.
“This workshop series is designed as an introduction to educational research, guiding people through the process and helping them to get started.”
The first workshop, ‘Overview of educational research with examples’, was run last week by Monica, Dr Jennifer Davids and Dr Karen Scott.
Those in attendance included a range of staff from backgrounds such as emergency, theatre, allied health, dentistry, dietetics and the library.
The seven-workshop series will run monthly until the end of the year.
Spaces are limited and registrations are essential – for more information, contact Monica at monica.hughes@health.nsw.gov.au or on 0417 058 806.
Workshop schedule
11 July Literature review – leading to research gap
8 August Theoretical frameworks, formulating a question & writing a proposal
12 September Ethics & Governance Westmead Hospital
10 October Research methodology 1: Qualitative & action research Westmead Hospital
7 November Research methodology 2: Quantitative & mixed methods Westmead Hospital
5 December Writing for publication
