Future Trends & Developments in Postgraduate Teaching Methods

After an ice-breaker session, Dr Anabel Varela Carver (Principal Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London) began by saying that she would be speaking about preparing graduate education for a changing world. She then outlined some emerging trends, such as active learning, AI and digital and a more personalised style of teaching. 

“No longer can we stand in a lecture hall of 100 or 200 students,” she remarked, ​“Students are learning in a world where AI tools are becoming normal, digital delivery is expected and many learners are balancing study with work or caring responsibilities.”

She then spent a couple of minutes talking about active learning, which she cited as one of the biggest trends in PGT. She said this style of learning involves more discussion and problem-solving, consultancy-style tasks and idea pitching. ​“It’s very good for busy postgraduate students who are maybe doing
two-year or part-time courses, and it works well in digital or blended formats.”

She then turned to the subject of AI. ​“We are currently being bombarded with so many generative AI tools. We’re being asked to make much more authentic assessments and more process-focussed evaluations. AI can personalise some aspects of learning, but it’s never going to detract from human review and judgement.” She went on to say that it was concerning that students wanted to use AI for statistical analysis, and that clear rules around the ethics of AI were needed.

She then spoke about flexible learning, by which she meant ​“blended delivery, asynchronous learning and modular pathways”. She said that postgraduate teaching had become about moving core content outside the classroom, so that the in-person time could be used for debating, critiquing and collaborative problem-solving. Regarding the personalisation of learning, she mentioned a recent project on what she called ​‘micro learning’, where the content was broken down into shorter units so that students could access it when needed.

Finally, she turned to the topics of authentic leaning (a mode connected to employability) and diversity and inclusion. Regarding the former, she said they had found that real-world-pitching (in the style of Dragon’s Den) was very useful for postgraduates because it is linked to professional practice. She explained how they have designed their teaching around the production of ​“consultancy reports, grant proposals, lab reports”: activities designed to build transferrable skills.

She then concluded by talking about how postgraduate cohorts are more diverse now and how similarly diverse methods of testing were needed. She explained that many formats could be used: an oral presentation, a policy memo, a portfolio or perhaps an essay, depending on the learning outcomes. She also spoke of an approach she had been taking with her own students in which they were asked to produce a poster with an abstract which describes their findings in layman’s terms. This also helped patients to see how research was contributing to their care.

Dr Carver summed up as follows:

“Rather than being mainly transmitters of information, the postgraduate teacher is increasingly a designer of learning experiences, a facilitator of discussion and a mentor for independent learning. This doesn’t reduce the importance of academic expertise; it just ensures that the expertise is used to determine how learning is structured.”