Biomedical Education Forum

Ahead of the Game: Biomedical Science Education into the 21st Century

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 12 December 2011

Program

Event flyer

Message of support from Australian Council of Deans of Science
Message of support from Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency

Vision and Change pdf

The 2nd National Forum on Biomedical Education for the Australian Academy of Science will be held at the Shine Dome in Canberra on Monday 12 December 2011. The Forum aims specifically to establish a sustained leadership and collaborative network to maximise integration and efficiency as well as addressing the standards and quality issues that will be raised by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).

The new Chair of TEQSA, Dr Carol Nicoll, has urged us to actively engage in the processes around defining standards and benchmarks in our disciplines. The Forum and network are also supported by the Australian Council of Deans of Science. This is an ideal time for us to work together to develop a future-looking curriculum that capitalises on the opportunities presented by new technologies and developments in biomedical research.

If you are actively involved in biomedical education it is critical that you take part in this important meeting. In addition to building a new collaborative network, this Forum will provide a unified voice / platform for biomedical education for political influence to ensure that the learning and teaching of biomedical science is supported at the highest levels. The Committee has recently secured significant ALTC funding to help develop a sustainable collaborative universities biomedical education network which will provide a support structure for the working parties.

The Forum will be moderated by Dr Norman Swan of ABC Radio National Health Report and feature several provocative presentations from a diverse range of national and international speakers as well as group discussion activities around identifying key challenges in biomedical education that the network should address. The recent Vision and Change report from the AAAS in the USA provides some examples of talking points for the Forum; the keynote speaker Associate Professor Nancy Pelaez from Purdue is an author on this report. We will be asking specifically for participants to take leadership roles for their institutions and form working parties to take issues forward.

It is planned to produce a formal report on the Forum for distribution to the Academy and other relevant audiences. All participants will be invited to submit a one page summary of an appropriate learning and teaching challenge that they face in their institution and what solutions / strategies they may have implemented. These will be peer-reviewed and published as part of the report to provide a snapshot of the state of biomedical science education in Australia.

The Forum will feature an informal barbeque in the evening of Sunday 11 December and a mixer event at the conclusion. In addition, for those who are interested there will be a debrief on the morning of Tuesday 13 December from 10am to 1pm to allow us to plan the way forward in terms of formally establishing the network.