Collaboration during the Master of Education in Health Professions Education program. Post 2: Why did we learn about collaboration? What resources did we use?

This blog series has three posts pertaining to USask’s Master of Education in Health Professional Education (MHPE) program.

1. In post #1, we share what we learned about collaboration in the program.

2. In post #2, we discuss why we learned about collaboration and share resources used to collaborate. → YOU ARE HERE 🤩

3. In post #3, our final post, we discuss indicators of success.

Why did we learn about collaboration in the MHPE program? 🤔

The ability to collaborate is an essential transferable[1] or durable[2] skill that is necessary in every field. This is especially true in healthcare. Our team discovered that the ability to collaborate is equally essential in education! Effective collaboration is necessary to achieve many shared goals. Collaborating in the MHPE program helped us ALL to achieve success and enhance our experience. When you are NOT collaborating, you are carrying 50 lemons alone! 😬 (which is a lot; heavy, awkward, and they’ll likely all go to waste because you cannot use them efficiently). Sharing the load goes a long way. In fact, in our experience, sharing the load and responsibilities with team members helped us feel connected and built our confidence.

Collaboration within the program benefited us as educators, which in turn impacted the health professions and institutions we represent, as well as our learners. Collaborating was beneficial in many ways. In the program it helped us to:

• Brainstorm fruitfully (or lemony 😉 )
• Generate new ideas
• Spark innovative and creative thinking
• Dissolve professional silos
• Break down complex tasks into smaller manageable pieces
• Learn from one another
• Practice collaborating!

Fruitful collaboration didn’t just happen. It was a process that evolved gradually over time. During our progression through the program we experienced different levels of collaboration. It started as a superficial interaction, similar to networking. Over time, with repeated interactions, hesitancy was replaced by comfort. As we began to feel more psychologically safe, we truly began collaborating. Through repeated collaboration we developed a community of practice–a concept we were introduced to during the program.

We share an interest in improving our teaching skills, which is how we found ourselves in the MHPE program. Our teaching approaches improved with the guidance of our instructors, the program’s content, and repeated collaborative opportunities with our peers. We feel that we learned about collaboration in the program as an opportunity to learn the skill, collaborate with other professions, and enrich our “educator toolbox”.

What resources did we use to collaborate and how did we use them? 🤔

The MHPE program is an online opportunity for health professionals from around the world to learn, collaborate, and become better educators. As many of us were in different geographical locations, all of our interactions were online! The bulk of our collaboration came from engagement in discussion boards, group presentations, through peer feedback, and during virtual class meetings. That’s how we got to know each other and gained a sense of how we each work. As mentioned in post #1, What did we learn about collaboration, this blog post series is the first project we, the authors, have done as a team.

Our instructors introduced us to many relevant platforms and resources through clear direction and thoughtful assignments. From this starting point, we learned about platforms, approaches, and resources from each other![3] Our go to’s became:

• Canvas
• Zoom
• Padlet
• Google (Docs and Slides)
• OneDrive
• Microsoft Teams
• Panopto

We had many opportunities to build relationships with colleagues. Within Canvas, discussion boards were common in our courses, and often it was our fellow peers that provided insight. At times we may not have been confident about our responses, but we could read “early bird” posts (big thank you to keen peers) to become more confident. This initial lack of confidence seemed to diminish through the process of continued discussions, constructive peer feedback and frequent opportunities for team assignments. We became comfortable posting responses–even if our ideas didn’t always align with those of our peers. Discussion boards helped spark further discussions, acted as a medium for sharing resources, developing relationships and engaging in collaborative opportunities.

Group projects were also a common element in this program which helped to build relationships and explore collaborative resources. We became more comfortable with sharing our ideas, questions, and doubts as we gained mutual trust with our peers and instructors. We became more interested in exploring different perspectives and even trying new platforms. Who better to learn or practice with than with those learning along with us!? This created a domino effect of “they tried [insert platform/approach], so I’ll try [insert platform/approach] next time.” - “wow, that was risky…maybe I’ll take a risk next time” or “Hmm, I never looked at it that way”. The tools listed above allowed for synchronous and asynchronous work. We also learned about many other platforms[4] from each other–and sometimes we were brave enough to try them!

The opportunities and desire to provide and receive feedback[5] improved our confidence with sharing or presenting our work. Final submissions were influenced by our peers and by also reaching out to those outside the program. External resources included work colleagues and supervisors, the USask’s Writing Help Centre, USask library, family members, and even our very own students (for those of us who were teaching).

Virtual class meetings created opportunities for synchronous interactions. Group presentations during these meetings allowed for us to provide and receive live peer feedback and see different tools in use. Breakout rooms, commonly used in virtual class meetings, allowed us to get to know each other more as we completed mini-tasks together.

Overall we came to value the discussion boards, group projects, peer feedback, and synchronous class times. With the various collaborative opportunities and resources, we developed relationships, which in the end, enhanced our collaboration skills.

Stay tuned for our next post, where we discuss indicators of successful collaboration!

 ^[1] “Transferable skills are abilities or talents relevant to all professions and facets of life. They include skills such as teamwork, time management, communication, adaptability and critical thinking, among others. On many occasions, they determine success in the workplace and, as a result, also determine who gets hired. They're also called “portable skills,” since you can transfer them from one career to another.“ Retrieved from indeed.com.

^[2] A more recent term we discovered is durable skill and you can explore more on that in the article Skills aren’t soft or hard–they’re durable or perishable.

^[3] We recognized the value of different approaches, ideas, or suggestions.

^[4] Google (Sites, Drawings, Sheets, Forms), Prezi, PollEverywhere, Flipgrid, Kahoot, Socrative, Canva, Survey Monkey, Mural, Top Hat, Design Cap, QuizMaker, Answer Garden, Kialo Edu, Book Creator, PowToon, Audacity, ePortfolium, IPECT, and Doodly.

^[5] It took time to develop a sense of trust among our peers. Although, initially, non-anonymous peer feedback tended to be either superficial (kind, gentle, avoided “correcting”) or only focused on errors, over the course of the program, increasingly, the feedback became more meaningful, wholesome, and balanced. We looked forward to receiving feedback from others so we could improve.