Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

2007 Leadership Academy for Educators

2008; Elsevier BV; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jmir.2008.01.006

1939-8654

Kelly Hubbard,

Radiology practices and education

In July 2007, I had the honour of attending the Leadership Academy for Educators in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was just coming to the end of my first year of teaching when one of my co-workers drew my attention to the application form and the fact that Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT) was offering this opportunity to “new” teachers. A few short weeks after sending my application, I received a phone call from Elaine Dever, Director of Education at CAMRT, inviting me to represent Canada at the international workshop.The American Society of Radiological Technologists (ASRT) proudly hosted the academy attendees at their beautiful, tranquil facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. An extensive information package was sent out a couple of weeks before the Academy containing several requests. There were two different anonymous evaluations, one for my students and another for colleagues, which focused on leadership skills. The package also contained reading material on Problem Based Learning (PBL) models (written by two of the guest facilitators, Peter Hogg and Stuart McKay) with which we would be working at the Academy.Packed, passported, and ready for fun in the sun, I trekked across the United States to Albuquerque, built on the famous Route 66 at about 5300 feet above sea level. As an international representative I felt warmly welcomed by the facilitator, Kevin Powers, and his team of support staff, and never had any problems fitting in with the other attendees. I found the continuing education focus of the American educators very inspiring, as many of them were working on their masters degrees in education and some of them on their doctorates. The 3 full days of the workshop flew by with a variety of work sessions, presentations, and speakers.Transitional Leadership was highlighted by Gary Shaver from Indian River Community College in Fort Pierce, FL, with his morning session on the first day. His presentation was launched with the distribution of the analyzed results of the evaluations that had been completed by attendees and their colleagues in the weeks preceding the workshop. The data were collected online and put together by Mindgarden, an independent publisher of psychological assessments. This was a great way to launch the coming days of group work. Our evaluations pointed out the transitional leadership skills that we already possessed and Mr Shaver emphasized the benefits to ourselves, our students, and our co-workers of using transitional leadership. He stressed the importance of inspiring and motivating students to go beyond the basic curriculum, fostering a lifelong learning attitude that will set them up for the continuing education that is a vital part of their careers as radiological technologists.We got a taste of PBL at its most dysfunctional during our first session with Stuart McKay and Peter Hogg. We were divided into our working groups and given a task to complete but were not given the guidelines for how we were supposed to go about it. It was quite frustrating but served as a hilarious ice-breaker when at the next session Peter and Stuart revealed that they had given us incomplete instructions on purpose. They did this to make the point that undertaking PBL without first properly training students on its processes would be very disruptive and detrimental to our programs.The PBL approach is used almost exclusively in the Diagnostic Radiography program at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom (UK). It has a very specific set of rules and the tutorials are meant to follow a 7-step process. We discussed a variety of evaluation tools that could be used in conjunction with PBL modules, as this seemed to be a big concern for most of the attendees. In the remaining days of the workshop, we completed and delivered to our colleagues two presentations based on PBL “triggers,” with excellent results. As with any group process, we were able to see how we excelled, as well as areas that needed improvement in the process of PBL.Transitional Leadership and PBL were two main foci of the Leadership Academy, but there were many other topics presented that were very valuable.•With a heightened appreciation of what makes a presentation effective, I came back and started to rework my PowerPoint slides. I don't know why the students in my first year didn't give me the Gong Show “gong” for my overcrowded, wordy slides that they had to put up with.•A program called Photo Story 3 for Windows that allows me to create narrated slide shows is going to be valuable as a review tool.•A program called Quandary can be used to create interactive mazes that can be set up like case studies or problem-solving scenarios.•A talk on the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the clinical site was very informative. Students still need to keep manual lists of examinations they have done or participated in, and, with stricter privacy policies, a password protected way to gather the data seems like a reasonable measure to investigate.•The technology that many of the other educators were using with online testing was intriguing. I could see a future in this because of our geographically large distances in Eastern Ontario, from Pembroke to Cornwall through Ottawa and back to Kingston.The hard part with any workshop is to return to work and implement everything you have learned. The UK's entire diagnostic radiography program of PBL was daunting. So I chose to watch my students and found a very interesting trend. I thought that PBL would fit wonderfully into communication and patient care topics; but I can see now that, with the group of students I have this year, it is actually going to flourish in the more technical and theory-based subjects. A couple of weeks ago I delivered a series of lectures building on the theories of electromagnetism, generators, and motors that led up to explaining the induction motor of the x-ray tube. At one point during the lecture I stood back a bit and, before I knew it, a couple of students were up at the white board drawing diagrams; one was Googling on his cell phone. We had a group of students at the back of the class who were hashing out the basics of the theories, and a group at the front who were beyond that and going into more advanced thinking. It was dynamic and amazing to watch. One of my goals for the conference was to discover new and exciting ways to teach curriculum that is based on theory as opposed to my real-life experiences as a technologist. The impromptu PBL session that happened before my eyes was very exciting and seemed satisfying to the students involved. I now have a direction that seems clear and can proceed with converting some curriculum modules to PBL.The opportunity to attend the Leadership Academy for Educators was wonderful. I am very grateful to the CAMRT for choosing me to attend as well, as well as to the ASRT for including and hosting Canadian educators. I encourage others to apply to the Academy and to research some of the theories and software programs that I mentioned in this column. I sent in a form to the ASRT before starting the Academy that asked for my motivation for applying for the opportunity. Rereading it, I see that I was hoping to “get through the learning curve portion of a new career quickly” so that I could regain balance in my life. What I discovered was that the role of an educator has a learning curve that doesn't seem to end, and that I can look forward to the enjoyment of learning and trying new theories and skills for many years to come. In July 2007, I had the honour of attending the Leadership Academy for Educators in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was just coming to the end of my first year of teaching when one of my co-workers drew my attention to the application form and the fact that Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists (CAMRT) was offering this opportunity to “new” teachers. A few short weeks after sending my application, I received a phone call from Elaine Dever, Director of Education at CAMRT, inviting me to represent Canada at the international workshop. The American Society of Radiological Technologists (ASRT) proudly hosted the academy attendees at their beautiful, tranquil facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. An extensive information package was sent out a couple of weeks before the Academy containing several requests. There were two different anonymous evaluations, one for my students and another for colleagues, which focused on leadership skills. The package also contained reading material on Problem Based Learning (PBL) models (written by two of the guest facilitators, Peter Hogg and Stuart McKay) with which we would be working at the Academy. Packed, passported, and ready for fun in the sun, I trekked across the United States to Albuquerque, built on the famous Route 66 at about 5300 feet above sea level. As an international representative I felt warmly welcomed by the facilitator, Kevin Powers, and his team of support staff, and never had any problems fitting in with the other attendees. I found the continuing education focus of the American educators very inspiring, as many of them were working on their masters degrees in education and some of them on their doctorates. The 3 full days of the workshop flew by with a variety of work sessions, presentations, and speakers. Transitional Leadership was highlighted by Gary Shaver from Indian River Community College in Fort Pierce, FL, with his morning session on the first day. His presentation was launched with the distribution of the analyzed results of the evaluations that had been completed by attendees and their colleagues in the weeks preceding the workshop. The data were collected online and put together by Mindgarden, an independent publisher of psychological assessments. This was a great way to launch the coming days of group work. Our evaluations pointed out the transitional leadership skills that we already possessed and Mr Shaver emphasized the benefits to ourselves, our students, and our co-workers of using transitional leadership. He stressed the importance of inspiring and motivating students to go beyond the basic curriculum, fostering a lifelong learning attitude that will set them up for the continuing education that is a vital part of their careers as radiological technologists. We got a taste of PBL at its most dysfunctional during our first session with Stuart McKay and Peter Hogg. We were divided into our working groups and given a task to complete but were not given the guidelines for how we were supposed to go about it. It was quite frustrating but served as a hilarious ice-breaker when at the next session Peter and Stuart revealed that they had given us incomplete instructions on purpose. They did this to make the point that undertaking PBL without first properly training students on its processes would be very disruptive and detrimental to our programs. The PBL approach is used almost exclusively in the Diagnostic Radiography program at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom (UK). It has a very specific set of rules and the tutorials are meant to follow a 7-step process. We discussed a variety of evaluation tools that could be used in conjunction with PBL modules, as this seemed to be a big concern for most of the attendees. In the remaining days of the workshop, we completed and delivered to our colleagues two presentations based on PBL “triggers,” with excellent results. As with any group process, we were able to see how we excelled, as well as areas that needed improvement in the process of PBL. Transitional Leadership and PBL were two main foci of the Leadership Academy, but there were many other topics presented that were very valuable.•With a heightened appreciation of what makes a presentation effective, I came back and started to rework my PowerPoint slides. I don't know why the students in my first year didn't give me the Gong Show “gong” for my overcrowded, wordy slides that they had to put up with.•A program called Photo Story 3 for Windows that allows me to create narrated slide shows is going to be valuable as a review tool.•A program called Quandary can be used to create interactive mazes that can be set up like case studies or problem-solving scenarios.•A talk on the use of personal digital assistants (PDAs) in the clinical site was very informative. Students still need to keep manual lists of examinations they have done or participated in, and, with stricter privacy policies, a password protected way to gather the data seems like a reasonable measure to investigate.•The technology that many of the other educators were using with online testing was intriguing. I could see a future in this because of our geographically large distances in Eastern Ontario, from Pembroke to Cornwall through Ottawa and back to Kingston. The hard part with any workshop is to return to work and implement everything you have learned. The UK's entire diagnostic radiography program of PBL was daunting. So I chose to watch my students and found a very interesting trend. I thought that PBL would fit wonderfully into communication and patient care topics; but I can see now that, with the group of students I have this year, it is actually going to flourish in the more technical and theory-based subjects. A couple of weeks ago I delivered a series of lectures building on the theories of electromagnetism, generators, and motors that led up to explaining the induction motor of the x-ray tube. At one point during the lecture I stood back a bit and, before I knew it, a couple of students were up at the white board drawing diagrams; one was Googling on his cell phone. We had a group of students at the back of the class who were hashing out the basics of the theories, and a group at the front who were beyond that and going into more advanced thinking. It was dynamic and amazing to watch. One of my goals for the conference was to discover new and exciting ways to teach curriculum that is based on theory as opposed to my real-life experiences as a technologist. The impromptu PBL session that happened before my eyes was very exciting and seemed satisfying to the students involved. I now have a direction that seems clear and can proceed with converting some curriculum modules to PBL. The opportunity to attend the Leadership Academy for Educators was wonderful. I am very grateful to the CAMRT for choosing me to attend as well, as well as to the ASRT for including and hosting Canadian educators. I encourage others to apply to the Academy and to research some of the theories and software programs that I mentioned in this column. I sent in a form to the ASRT before starting the Academy that asked for my motivation for applying for the opportunity. Rereading it, I see that I was hoping to “get through the learning curve portion of a new career quickly” so that I could regain balance in my life. What I discovered was that the role of an educator has a learning curve that doesn't seem to end, and that I can look forward to the enjoyment of learning and trying new theories and skills for many years to come.