Learning how to present in the flipped classroom

All doctors have to be teachers. Even if you don’t have students or residents around, you have to teach and instruct your patients. Most of us also have to deliver at least an occasional public presentation. We get limited training at this, which is why we decided to run a course, focusing on learning by doing.

I’m a pretty relaxed person and this is a very relaxed course with the main aim of Swedish EPs getting together and enjoying themselves. We’re running it on a cruise ship because it’s cheap and partly over the weekend, so people might even be willing to do this in their spare time and pay for it themselves, neither of which Swedish doctors at any level hardly ever do. We expect about thirty people, which will be enough for two groups.

There will be three sessions, each 2-3 hours long, i.e. hopefully short enough to keep people’s attention. Since the presentations will cover different topics, there should be some learning from that too.

This is a great opportunity for me (and the two other organizers) to learn, so we do take the content very seriously. The plan is something like this (I’ll make a video to describe it later).

October cruise

Pre-course learning:

Around 4hs of material, mainly videos on how to present and teach

Prepare a Pecha Kucha lecture, 6 min and 40 sec, on a topic in the curriculum. (We’ll offer a list, anything from Guillain Barré to a procedure)

On site learning:

Everyone watches the video and rates its qualities,anonymously on a web based polling system.

Presenter gets four minutes to present (without slides)

– why he chose the topic and how he chose to focus and limit the talk (very difficult when given an open topic)

– thoughts about the introduction

– teaching goals and how they were stressed in the presentation

Then we have an open feedback discussion. I expect all of this to take around twenty minutes per person.

After-learning

After the course everyone will be able to use all videos in their teaching programs. We’ll probably have to offer people the chance to update their videos on the ship, or they’ll never get to it.

We will also add some other elements like bedside teaching, how to give feedback, the unwilling learner etc. Some of it can be done in advance as part of the pre course material. Then we’ll run a few foamy hangouts with international EM teachers and hear their views.

I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on this. Thank you everyone who has contributed already with great links for the pre course material.