Past Events
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Why Methodology Matters
#asmerme2018
Researching Medical Education is a one-day conference for all those interested in medical or clinical education research as an academic discipline. The conference is designed and run by the Association for the Study of Medical Education’s Education Research Committee. The day is structured into parallel sessions and led by internationally renowned keynote speakers. There are also keynote seminars and discussion groups, research method workshops for new and more experienced researchers and a Masterclass for those studying for higher degrees. In addition, there are opportunities to network with your peers and those leading the field in medical education research. The day will be of interest to career researchers, teachers of medical / clinical education research, students studying for Masters or PhDs / EdDs, undergraduate or intercalating students starting education projects or those just keen in gaining a better understanding of educational research.
Past Events
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To download a copy of this programme please click here
Past Events
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Call for ‘plain English’ abstract submissions for Masterclass@RME 2018
Thank you for your Masterclass submissions, the submission deadline has now passed.
Who should submit?
Submissions are invited from Masters, Doctoral and other early-stage researchers (less than 3 years postgraduate research experience in any research discipline) for Masterclass@RME 2018.
Masterclass Focus
The focus of this masterclass is on the essential skill of making your work accessible to non-specialist audiences, for example, in grant applications and to ensure dissemination of your findings has impact.
Who should attend?
All RME delegates are welcome to attend the Masterclass. Following brief ‘plain English’ presentations from selected submissions, attendees will have the opportunity to practice explaining research ideas and findings in ‘plain English’ with feedback.
The Masterclass is NOT intended to be a typical “show and tell” of completed work but to offer everyone who attends the opportunity to focus on research skill development.
Submissions
Submissions of work in progress are particularly welcome.
Up to six applicants will be selected to present to the floor in the Masterclass@RME 2018 on the basis of abstract submissions.
Prize
A free conference place for RME 2019 will be offered as a prize for the applicant judged to have best engaged in the Masterclass@RME 2018 as judged by its distinctive features including willingness to engage in opportunities to learn and to support others. This will be awarded at the end of the day by the Chair of the ASME Education Research Committee.
Advice to applicants:
Abstract submissions should be in plain English, include an explanation of methodology and methods as well a clear research question, and a maximum of 300 words plus author details and abstract title.
Submissions must be received by 12 noon, Monday 17th September via the online submission form (please click the button below). We will aim to notify applicants the outcome of submissions by 3rd October 2018.
Successful applicants will be required to register for the RME at the appropriate delegate fee.
During the 90 minute Masterclass@RME 2018 session, each successful applicant will have approximately 5 minutes to present their work in plain English, followed by 5 minutes for questions and feedback. All Masterclass@RME 2018 attendees will then have the opportunity to practice and/or feedback plain English skills before a group discussion drawing together hints and tips for developing this skill.
The session will be facilitated by experienced education researchers who will select the overall prize winnerThank you for your Masterclass submissions, the submission deadline has now passed. Submitters will be notified by October 3rd 2018.
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To help you choose which sessions to attend, descriptions of each one are below.
Please note: pink tinted ones are suitable for Beginners/Intermediate, blue tinted ones are suitable for Intermediate/Advanced and the grey tinted one is suitable for all levels
Strand 1a Beginners/Intermediate 10.30-12.00
How to write a research question
Prof Bob McKinley, Keele University School of Medicine
This workshop is aimed at colleagues who have as yet limited experience of conducting medical education research and who wish to gain a greater insight into how to develop robust research questions. A good research question is essential to focus your research so the project is achievable. This means choosing a question that is:
neither too broad or too narrow,
actually researchable, and
passes the “so what” test
The workshop will be interactive. We will introduce a pragmatic but systematic approach to apply to new research ideas to turn them into good research questions. The “raw material” for this workshop will be participants’ own research ideas.’
Strand 1b Beginners/Intermediate 1.45-3.15
Individual and Group Interviews
Dr Janet Lefroy, Keele University School of Medicine
This workshop is aimed at new researchers of Medical Education.
We will cover:
What types of data can you get from individual or group interviews?
How to construct interview guides
How to conduct interviews
The workshop will be interactive using research questions provided by participants as the substrate for discussion and development of interview guides
Strand 1c Beginners/Intermediate 3.30-5.00
Discourse analysis: first thoughts
Dr Esther Murray, Queen Mary University London
‘Discourse Analysis’ is a broad term encompassing a number of approaches to analysing communication whether written, spoken, signed or otherwise expressed. We will use this workshop to consider what that might mean for researchers in medical education. Using artefacts related to Medical Education and practice this workshop will provide the opportunity to perform some preliminary analyses and share our experiences. A broad reading list will be provided for those interested in following up their preferred perspective.
Strand 2a Beginners/Intermediate 10.30-12.00
How to get your papers published in different types of journals
Professor Peter Cantillon, Professor of Primary Care, NUI Galway, Ireland, Dr Samantha Scallan, GP Education Unit, Southampton
Whether you are an experienced author of published papers or a medical educator wanting to see your name on an author list for the first time, this workshop is intended to help you have a more productive and enjoyable experience in successfully submitting your work for publication. The aims are to work interactively to explain how the editorial process works, identify what makes a good academic paper, where to send it and how to respond to reviewers.
Strand 2b Beginners/Intermediate 1.45-3.15
Questionnaire Design
Dr Sharon Sneddon, University of Glasgow
Many research studies use questionnaires to gather data as it seems a quick and easy method. Good questionnaire design is the key to collecting useful and meaningful data. This workshop will provide an understanding of the basic concepts, principles, and practices of questionnaire design, as well as considering some of the common issues and pitfalls such as questionnaire format, use of response scales and validity.
Strand 2c Beginners/Intermediate 3.30-5.00
Using Experimental Methods in Medical Education Research
Peter Yeates, NIHR Clinician Scientist / Lecturer in Medical Education Research , Keele University
When you want to research phenomena which people can’t report; where there’s risk of reporting bias; where you want to establish the size or amount of an effect; or if you want the strongest possible demonstration of causality, then you want to use an experimental design. Doing a flawed experiment is easy, but getting it right is tricky and requires careful design and consideration. This workshop will use examples from real research and vignette-style scenarios to help learners develop a clear understanding of good practice and potential pitfalls in designing experimental studies or educational trials, and will encourage learners to develop a study of their own.
Strand 3a Intermediate/Advanced 10.30-12.00
Digging deeper: employing methods to enhance qualitative research interviews
Dr Kori LaDonna, University of Ottawa, Prof Gerry Gormley, Queens University Belfast
Whilst useful at eliciting insights of participants’ experiences, traditional research interviews can fail to capture the depth and breadth of an individual’s story. Drawing upon social sciences and other disciplines, there are a range of techniques that can enrich interview data by making visible the unverbalizable. Methods including ‘Rich Pictures’, ‘Guided walks’, ‘Photovoice’ /‘Photo elicitation’ and ‘Point of View (PoV) filming’ – can help interviewers gain a deeper understanding of participants’ experiences. These techniques allow interviewers to empathize with participants about his/her particular activity that is being researched, while also providing a new communication register for individuals and communities whose ability to use language is limited.
This workshop will introduce participants to a range of methods that can enhance qualitative research interviews. Specifically, participants will (1) learn some key principles of successful interviewing, (2) collect some unconventional, but highly productive, interviewing strategies, and (3) understand the pitfalls and the possibilities of using visual methods. We expect that participants will gain sufficient theoretical and practical skills to begin employing visual methods in their research. Colouring pens, cameras and video glasses will be provided!
Strand 3b Intermediate/Advanced 1.45-3.15
Template Analysis
Prof Nigel King, University of Huddersfield
Template Analysis is a style of thematic analysis that is increasingly being used in Medical Education research. It is a generic form, meaning it can be adapted to be used from different methodological or theoretical positions, and offers a balance of flexibility and structure that is often valuable in applied research tackling real-world issues. This workshop will outline the distinctive features of Template Analysis and take participants through the main steps in using this method. The approach will be hands-on, with participants carrying out a series of analytic tasks linked to the steps of Template Analysis on data from a health professional education context. It will also provide guidance on further reading and resources for those who may want to use Template Analysis in their own research.
Strand 3c Intermediate/Advanced 3.30-5.00
Video research in medical education
Jeff Bezemer, University College London, Institute of Education
In this workshop we explore the possibilities of using video as a tool for researching medical education. Using examples of teaching and learning in simulation and real clinical settings, including the intensive care unit and operating theatre, we demonstrate how video analysis draws attention to and renders visible unfamiliar or taken-for-granted features of medical work that are directly relevant for education, professional development, patient safety and improvement.
Strand 4a Intermediate/Advanced 10.30-12.00
Situated ethics in medical education research – sweating the real stuff
Prof Anita Berlin, Queen Mary University London
Research ethics are generally seen as a set of common principles which can be applied to a range of investigatory approaches. These have become codified and managed through formal research ethics mechanisms. This workshop seeks to explore another set of ethical issues – those shaped by the diverse situations in with research takes place – so called “situated ethics” (Simons & Usher 2000). This is the messy real stuff that we grapple with in medical education research!
Using vignettes and participants’ experience we will seek to explore situated dilemmas that may arise in different loci of our field:
Faculty stuff:
Ownership of project- educators or researchers
Authorship – legitimacy and hierarchy – teachers, students, evaluators, curriculum leaders
Student stuff
Students as subjects: insider or outsider research – access to students (Surveyitis Cronica)
Inter subjective student research – students researching each other (disclosure/voyeurism)
Patient- public stuff
Telling stories : Case studies – if it’s ok for teaching is it OK for research/publication?
Shaping projects : co-production of the research or the education
Strand 4b Intermediate/Advanced 1.45-3.15
Research Showcase – Session 1; Change Laboratory and Realist Review
Change Laboratory
Dr Anne-Marie Reid, University of Leeds, Dr Clare Morris, Queen Mary University London
In this interactive RME showcase, we will illustrate the ways in which we work with the conceptual and methodological tools of Activity Theory. The focus will be on the use of modified Change Laboratory a form of interventionist research. We will draw on recent ongoing medical education research projects focussed on work-place based curriculum innovations in both hospital and primary care settings. In so doing, we hope to provide opportunities for participants to consider how this approach may be of value in helping to develop practice, by viewing challenges and problems as a creative source for change and innovation.
Realist Review
Prof Karen Mattick & Daniele Carrieri, University of Exeter Medical School
In this RME Showcase, we will share our experience and insights, gained through two NIHR-funded projects, of applying a Realist Review method to topics relevant to the medical education field. The first project (now complete) aimed to understand the social and professional factors influencing the antimicrobial prescribing of doctors-in-training, called the IMPACT review; the second project (ongoing) aims to improve understanding of how, why and in what contexts mental health services and support interventions can be designed in order to minimise the negative impacts of providing care on UK doctors’ mental ill-health, called Care Under Pressure. We will provide insights into the realist review process, including key decision points and dilemmas encountered, and encourage participants to ask questions and shape the discussion. We will finish the session with a discussion of what other medical education topics might benefit from a realist review approach and what the downsides or limitations might be.
Strand 4c Intermediate/Advanced 3.30-5.00
Research showcase – Session 2; Mixed and Multiple Methods
Mixed Method Research
Dr Jennifer Hallam, University of Leeds
Using a mixed-methods approach to design and evaluate a ‘tool kit’ of behavioural interventions within a programme of Workplace Based Assessments (WBA)
WBA’s are widely used as part of a programmatic assessment model to encourage feedback and reflection. In order to understand a complex programme of assessment for learning, can we use the workplace model to identify students who are ‘at risk’ of future failures in order to develop differential, personalised support? This question was explored using a mixed methods research approach involving the exploration of longitudinal relationships between WBA engagement and success in high stakes performance assessments (OSCEs) in order to identify differing engagement profiles. As a result, we have gained a more holistic view of learner success and engagement and in doing so, it has allowed for the early identification of learners needing extra support who are ‘at risk’ of failing to progress. This has resulted in the development of a ‘tool kit’ to support ‘at risk’ learners which is underpinned by behaviour change concepts. This ‘tool kit’ has been co-designed by staff and students with elements including prompting ‘nudges’ to improve engagement within WBA.
This showcase will explore the different stages of this mixed methods research design including data profiling, co-design and semi-structured interviews in order to understand student need and to design and evaluate a series of behavioural interventions.
Combining Multiple Methods
Dr Kath Woolf, University College London
In this showcase Kath Woolf and Eliot Rees from UCL will discuss the advantages and challenges of combining multiple methods (qualitative and quantitative, primary and secondary, cross-sectional and longitudinal), to examine medical school selection from the perspective of the applicant as part of a National Institute for Health Research funded study.
Strand 5a Intermediate/Advanced 1.45-3.15
Using UKMED for a research project
Daniel Smith, Education Data Development Manager GMC, Ben Kumwenda, PhD Student, University of Aberdeen
This workshop is aimed at those seeking to apply for a UKMED data extract and use it to complete a research project. We will cover the following:
Data included in UKMED
The opportunities provided by UKMED not previously available
Lessons learnt from completed UKMED research that are applicable to future projects in particular:
Challenges of working with longitudinal data assembled from routine databases
Sequencing of data points and determining the best variables to use
Prospective design of studies – collecting your own data and linking it to UKMED data
Strand 5b Intermediate/Advanced 1.45-3.15
When talk is not just talk: using conversation analysis
Dr Kay Mohanna EdD, Professor of Values Based Health Professions Education, University of Worcester Institute of Health and Society
This workshop offers an introductory guide to working with data at the level of the individual spoken word; with all the ums and ahs, sighs and coughs in everyday speech.
Participants will work with their own video-recorded data-clips and the workshop will introduce transcription conventions, consider some of the social rules of conversation and look at how an analysis of the spoken word can reveal both the application and the creation of the norms of social interaction.
Conversation analysis asks the questions ‘why this now’ and ‘what happened next’ to seek to make sense of observed conversations. It allows the study of the development of meaning and context by looking at talk-in-interaction (Cameron 2001, p87). It is particularly a way of looking at how the social order, ‘what things are like round here’, is perpetuated through talk (Garfinkel, cited in Cameron 2001, p48). That the social order (the system of values, customs and practices in a given setting) can be considered to be created and perpetuated through talk was first explored in the lectures of Sacks (Sacks (1964-72) cited in Heritage 1998, p3). This workshop will cover Sacks’ concepts of sequencing, adjacency-pairs, preferred responses, turn taking and repairs.
The background to the workshop will draw on some of the features of general practice consultations in a clinic in India with reference to the Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) of the United Kingdom Royal College of General Practitioners. There is a significant difference in the success rate in this postgraduate licensing assessment between those doctors trained in India and those trained in the UK, the reasons for which are not known. Some doctors from India feel that this is in part due to family medicine being performed differently in India. The results presented here use conversation analysis to explore the work done by talk-in-interaction in video recordings of actual family medicine consultations in India.
Participants will need to bring, or have access to, a laptop with a word processing package, with headphones and a short fragment of video-recorded conversation between two people, that will play on their laptop. Any spoken word can be brought, a social or work-related conversation, but should be recorded with the full knowledge and consent of the participants. The clip need not be more than 3 or 4 turns of speech.
ReferencesCameron, D. (2001). Working with Spoken Discourses, London: SageSacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. (1974). ‘A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn taking for conversation’. Language 50(4), 696-735.
Strand 5c All Levels 3.30-5.00
Masterclass@RME 2018: “So what does that mean in plain English?”
Dr Sarah Yardley, Consultant in Palliative Medicine, CNWL NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer, University College London, UK and Prof Susan Jamieson, Professor of Health Professions Education, Deputy Head of Undergraduate Medical School (Educator Development), Director of Health Professions Education Programme, School of Medicine, Dentistry & Nursing, Wolfson Medical School Building (R307), University of Glasgow
The focus of this masterclass is on the essential skill of making your work accessible to non-specialist audiences, for example, in grant applications and to ensure dissemination of your findings has impact.
All RME delegates are welcome to attend the Masterclass. Following brief ‘plain English’ presentations from selected submissions, attendees will have the opportunity to practice explaining research ideas and findings in ‘plain English’ with feedback.
The Masterclass is NOT intended to be a typical “show and tell” of completed work but to offer everyone who attends the opportunity to focus on research skill development.
Up to six applicants will be selected to present to the floor in the Masterclass@RME 2018 on the basis of abstract submissions.
Please see Call for Masterclass Abstracts tab above for information on how to submit a paper
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Thank you to everyone who registered for this year’s conference. We are now fully booked.
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