A 9-Credit Online Certificate Program for
Healthcare Professionals
Are you involved in educating students, residents, or colleagues? Interested in enhancing your teaching skills? Asked to design an evaluation strategy to improve or measure the impact of a course or an entire curriculum? Looking to secure a leadership position in health professions education, without pursuing another graduate degree?
Today’s tremendous changes in health care, including an intense focus on delivering high-value patient care, demand that clinicians from different disciplines know how to work closely with others to enhance important educational outcomes. Educators need to be able to accomplish much more than disseminating knowledge; they need to be able to ensure their graduates have the essential knowledge, skills, and professional attitudes to ensure they are competent clinicians in the delivery of health care that positively impacts patient outcomes.
The University of Connecticut’s (UConn) Certificate in Health Professions Education (HPE) reflects this important shift, giving people an opportunity to learn in the context of a cohort, typically interprofessional, through a curriculum that addresses the essentials of evaluation, planning, and implementation. In relatively equal parts, the program is structured to be part seminar – as reflected in common reading/writing assignments and synchronous (real-time but online) discussions – and part independent study – asynchronous effort on each person’s self-selected project. Admissions to this 9 credit program are every fall; it consists of three consecutive courses (fall, spring, summer). At the completion of this one-year program, you will be able to:
- Examine the similarities and differences of formative and summative evaluation from the perspective of evaluation science.
- Describe the limitations of educational assessment as a form of summative evaluation from the perspective of adult learning.
- Identify important subjective and objective sources of information relevant to a needs assessment of health care professionals.
- Devise an evaluation strategy to address circumstances in which an educational activity has multiple important learning outcomes, at different levels, associated with it.
- Defend a multifaceted educational program to change clinician behavior or to improve patient outcomes using adult learning principles and evidence-based educational practices.
- Develop an explicit rationale for sequencing a multifaceted educational program using needs assessment information and adult learning principles.
- Appraise the merits of learning preferences as a tool to plan an educational activity for health care professionals using adult learning principles.
- Describe at least three major reasons why a longitudinal approach to education is generally superior to an event approach from the standpoints of learning science, diffusion of innovations research, and evidence-based practice in the health professions.
- Describe the different facets of experience as part of an educational philosophy for health care professionals.
- Evaluate the role of interaction as an evidence-based strategy to promote learning and behavior change.
- Develop strategies for transforming the conventional lecture into a more effective educational tool.
- Use classroom discussions as a means of engaging students in critical thinking dialogue that respects a democratic framework.
Participants must have a master’s or doctoral degree in order to apply.
