The Health Professions Education Research (HPER) Primer

The Innovation/Initiative: 

To fill the gap of creating a programmatic approach towards fostering health professions education research scholars, we took a two-step approach to creating an open access curriculum and associated primer. 

First, we used a literature-informed needs assessment and a local resource audit to aggregate resources that were commonly used across three health professions education research programs (Health Sciences Education Masters Program, the Clinician Educator Program, MERIT scholars program). We then used a design-thinking approach to gain insights into what individuals would need to engage in personalized learning journeys to fill gaps in their own learning. We adapted existing course materials for this project, and created a website that housed these materials (https://www.macpfd.ca/hper-curriculum).

Secondly, we submitted for, and won a grant from the Province of Ontario to generate a primer based on our website. We commissioned members of our health professions education research community to author new content that was based on our aforementioned web-based resource. Using a standard template, each author team generated open access materials that were then edited by colleagues and placed on several open access platforms (ResearchGate, PressBooks, eCampus Open Library) to share with the world.

Why Others Should Try This:

Sharing open resources can help our community to develop and grow without the restrictions of paywalls. Government funding is achievable and desirable for assisting academics in creating open access resources that can help to grow the library of resources in domains such as health profession education research and scholarship.