A team of QUT educators received the "oscars of education" award in London last week for an innovative project to equip healthcare students with an array of vital digital capabilities for their future careers.
Led by Professor Elle Gregory, from QUT's Faculty of Health, the team received the Gold Award in the QS Wharton Reimagine Education Awards in the category Developing Emerging Skills and Competencies for their Driving Digital Health Futures project, which is now accessible across QUT and internationally.
The awards are highly competitive and sought after, with more than 1300 submissions from more than 90 countries each year. Each submission undergoes a rigorous evaluation process by a panel of more than 1000 international expert judges.
Professor Gregory said the project was a direct response to the recent explosion in artificial intelligence and the unprecedented acceleration of digitalisation which had disrupted all fields of health and medical science.
"We recognised a gap between our students' current digital capabilities and those which are critical for successful careers as health professionals," Professor Gregory said.
"To address this gap, we brought together a multidisciplinary team of academics, librarians and support specialists to create a sustainable and collaborative model to embed development of student digital capabilities across the curriculum."
Professor Gregory said the project involved a systematic curriculum and assessment design that was customised to the authentic digital skills required for each health profession and equipping academics with the tools to support students to develop these skills to use them confidently in the rapidly changing digital healthcare environment.
"This was achieved by embedding digital capability development in all courses while providing students with the resources, training and support they need to build and strengthen their digital fluency," she said.
"The project used a diverse range of technologies and a scaffolded, whole-of-course approach to embed authentic learning and assessment tasks to promote student engagement."
Professor Gregory said the team was delighted with the recognition their project had achieved.
"This prize is awarded to the project or initiative that most effectively evidences innovation in their approach to developing skills and competencies required for the present and future of work."
The team comprised Professor Gregory, Professor Lisa Chopin, from School of Biomedical Sciences, Dr Nona Press and Trish Maynard, both from QUT's Curriculum Design Studios, Sarah Howard, Associate Director of QUT Library, Megan Pozzi formerly QUT and now Director Student Enquiry and Advising, University of Southern Queensland, Rob Johnson, QUT senior language and learning educator, Rosie Glynn, and Peter Sondergeld, both liaison librarians in Faculty of Health, Cameron Rutter, QUT copyright officer, and student partner Hannah Stuckey.
The project team has published the pedagogical tools and resources they have designed and curated on the Open Educational Resource (OER) platform, Pressbooks, with the Creative Commons licence, CC BY-NC. The OER will facilitate the wider adoption of the Digital Health Futures model by higher education providers internationally, leading to improved approaches to the embedding of student digital capability development, ultimately benefitting student employability outcomes worldwide.
