Areas of Excellence to be Recognised

Eventually a holistic assessment of excellence in education in a medical, dental or veterinary school may be made. In the first instance, specific aspects will serve as a focus for the assessment. Nine areas have been selected for the awards. These are:

• Student Assessment      
• Student Engagement
• Social Accountability
• Faculty Development
• Simulation
• Curriculum Development
• Inspirational Approaches to Health Professions Education
• Technology Enhanced Learning
• International Collaboration in Health Professions Education

More information about each theme as well as the requirements can be found below.

For an institution to be regarded as achieving excellence in the area of assessment, there should be evidence of an outstanding programme of assessment. This can be demonstrated to actively promote learning in order to achieve the curriculum objectives, provide a fair assessment of learner achievement, and ensure patient safety by only allowing competent individuals to progress and graduate. The notion of excellence also embodies the active engagement with scholarship and a desire to seek continuous improvement in the area of assessment of competence.

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Criteria
Guidelines for submitters

For a school/institution to be regarded as achieving excellence in student engagement, there must be specific evidence provided in the application that students actively participate in a variety of areas within and external to the academic community and that they are consulted about and formally participate in shaping the teaching and learning experience.

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Criteria and Guidelines
Application Form

The essence of the social accountability of a school is their engaging, partnering with, and responding to the needs of their communities, regions and nation (noting that some social accountability activities may involve all three levels whereas others may predominately involve the community, or region, or nation).

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Criteria
Additional info 

An applicant school may have a single centralized program or a decentralized series of programs of faculty development to enhance teaching/education, leadership and scholarship. Applicants will describe the total array of the school’s faculty development programs in the application summary and will specify whether the application will describe the whole series of programs OR focus on the specific program that prepares teachers and educators, educational leaders and educational scholars. The program must include a focus on those who teach undergraduate students but may also include those who teach postgraduates and practicing clinicians. The school’s designated program(s) will constitute “the program of faculty development” for the ASPIRE program application and be assessed using the criteria for excellence.

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Criteria
Additional info

Application Form

Simulation in healthcare education is a “technique, not a technology that replaces or amplifies real experiences with guided experiences that evoke or replicate substantial aspects of the real world in a fully interactive manner” (Gaba 2004). Simulation may include a range of technologies and educational contexts that include but are not limited to: simulated (standardized patients), simple and partial task trainers, full body patient mannequins, virtual reality, augmented reality, haptic, hybrid models, and simulated environments. An institution that has achieved excellence in healthcare simulation education ensures it is well-designed (embedded in appropriate educational theory), and integrated into the curriculum, uses it as an adjunct to patient or health systems care training and/or assessment experiences, and provides for outcome driven measures that are continuously evaluated for quality and improvement.

Criteria

A curriculum is a statement of the intended aims and objectives, experiences, outcomes and processes of an educational programme (Grant, 2006). A curriculum describes all the ways in which a training or teaching organisation plans and guides learning. This learning can take place in groups or with individual learners. It can take place inside or outside a classroom. It can take place in an institutional setting like a school, college or training centre, or in a village or a field. It is central to the teaching and learning process (Rogers and Taylor 1998).

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Criteria and guidelines
Curriculum Development 2018 Award Winner Interview - University of Leeds, UK
Curriculum Development Webinar by Peter McCrorie

In line with ASPIRE’s aim of recognising excellence in heath professions education and veterinary science, the need had been identified to recognise schools where there is evidence of excellence in education not addressed or captured in other ASPIRE categories specified to date or where resources are limited to satisfy all the criteria within a particular area due to certain economic or cultural limitations– which the school or institution has overcome to demonstrate impact and excellence. This new initiative will contribute to the ASPIRE aim of supporting international excellence in health professions in whatever form or context it manifests. We also hope it will encourage schools, colleges or institutions to apply for recognition for their initiatives and efforts. The proposed new category for ASPIRE submissions recognises that excellence exists in a range of ways in various contexts. This should encourage schools, colleges and institutions and indeed the health care professions education community more widely to think in different ways of how excellence in education can manifest.

  (Two stage application, deadline for Letter of Intent is 1st November 2021 and final application deadline is 28th February 2022)

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Introduction and Criteria
Letter of Intent (LOI)

There is no ‘universal’ definition of Technology Enhanced Learning  (Kirkwood & Price 2014) but a useful broad definition is that used by the AMEE Technology Enhanced Learning Committee: “enhancing teaching and learning by the use of general education technologies with special emphasis on the education pedagogies underlying their use.” Technology is increasingly used in both simulation and in the provision of healthcare (medical informatics) but applicants are advised to carefully consider the appropriateness of activities in their application for ASPIRE Recognition of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning

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Criteria

Application Form
 

For the purposes of the ASPIRE award in International Collaboration, we intend to define collaboration as the purposeful action of working with others for mutual benefit that extends beyond the organisations themselves and involves a sharing of responsibilities and power. Collaborations should be able to demonstrate the additional benefits and value that the collaboration brings, over and above what each entity can achieve alone.

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Introduction, Guidelines and Criteria

Application Form

Potential applicants may wish to read this paper prior to submission as it contains some useful information on collaboration.

Schools can opt to be assessed for excellence in one, two, three or all none of the areas. The ASPIRE Board established nine Panels:  Excellence in Assessment, Excellence in Student Engagement, Excellence in Social Accountability, Excellence in Faculty Development, Excellence in Simulation, Excellence in Curriculum Development, Excellence in Inspirational Approaches to Health Professions Education and Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning, Excellence in International Collaborations in Health Professions Education comprising of individuals with expertise in the area, practising teachers from developed and less well-resourced countries and student representatives. Together they have developed criteria for excellence in nine areas. The criteria produced represent a de facto set of standards for ‘best practice’ in education and effectively outline what ‘best practice’ in areas would look like. The criteria were refined following a series of pilot studies and a consultation process. The criteria adopted will be subject to continuing scrutiny and will be part of a dynamic process that responds to the experience gained and the changing demands placed on medical, dental and veterinary education.