MEDEV

School of Medical Sciences Education Development

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Summary

Megan is Director of Engagement, School of Medical Sciences Education Development at the Faculty of Medical Sciences, at Newcastle University. She became Professor of Health Professions Education in August 2012 and was formerly Director of MEDEV, Higher Education Academy (HEA). She is a Fellow of the HEA, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Educators (AoME), and a SCORE Fellow in 'policy, practice and rights'.

She is an active member of teaching staff in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University, a personal tutor and an examiner for MBBS in-course assessment and student selected components. She serves on Student Progress Committee; Digital Rights Working Group; Internal Subject Review; Faculty Ethics Committee; Regs and Approvals. She has chaired and is on many national project/service Advisory Boards, such as special committees for the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, HEA and Jisc, and those seeking to join up UK HE eLearning services. She has assisted the University of Edinburgh with the Medical Schools Council eAssessment Centre. 

She works closely with the HEA, Jisc, NHS, professional and statutory bodies such as the GMC, charities such as the Wellcome Trust, and is a member of the Association for the Study of Medical Education (ASME) Educational Research Group. She has a strong interest in teaching standards and contributed to UK professional standards framework (UK PSF) consultations. She holds a Newcastle University Teaching Fellowship and a CETL case study looking at career development and promotion based on claims for teaching excellence. She is an Assessor for the AoME and is on their Course Accreditation Working Group. 

Megan is interested in all areas of technology support for teaching, including creating enablers and promoting risk-managed approaches to sharing learning materials in HE. She has worked with Naomi Korn on copyright interpretation for learning, and the FRRIICT group in relation to ethics in digital professionalism. She has raised over £4.8M funding as PI primarily from HEA, Jisc, EPSRC and contributed to raising a further >£10M at Newcastle and £33M elsewhere. She has led major projects in the UK including PublishOER; Promoting open approaches with the UK PSRB/subject associations in medicine; Organising Open Educational Resources (OOER); PORSCHE; ACTOR; and 'OER International'; and supported others such as iridium (Managing Research Data, Jisc), CETL4HealthNE (HEFCE), eDoctoring (Paul Allan Foundation) and VETNET Lifelong Learning Network which aimed to influence flexibility of progression pathways in veterinary and related programmes for vocational learners in the UK. She is a consultant to the Leadership Foundation HE. Older projects included information 'interoperability' in collaboration with the RDN/Intute; Shibboleth identity management (IAMSECT); e-Portfolios (EPICS) and development of a UK national bank of quality assured assessment items (UMAP andUK-CDR). 

She regularly reviews for educational journals such as Medical Education, Medical Teacher and Journal of Digital Information. She also regularly reviews funding proposals for Jisc, HEA, Charities such as Leverhulme, NHS, National Teaching Fellowship applications and claims for promotion. 

Contributor to many events in the UK and abroad such as: conference co-chair OER14, Newcastle, April 2014; Re-imagining Open Education, Published Works and Social Media, London, October 2012; eLearning in Health, Birmingham, June 2011; OER in the Disciplines, London, October 2010; eLearning in Health, Warwick, June 2009; conference organiser Faculty Development in the Health Professions, Prague, August 2013; OER13, Nottingham, March 2013; NOVICE, Budapest, October 2012; invited keynote University of Leeds School of Medicine annual student support conference, December 2013; Elsevier EU/UK summer conference, July 2012; Open Education Week, Open University, March 2012; Institute of Medical Ethics (IME) conference, Glasgow, June 2011; 2nd International Virtual Patients and MedBiquitous, London, 2010; panellist and reviewer Cambridge 2012, April 2012; WWW conferences (Computer Networks and ISDN Systems); Hypertext; invited speaker Open University open resource sustainability workshop, Leeds; the Joint Information Systems Committee annual conference, London; OER10, Cambridge (all 2010).

Consulted by, for example, the General Medical Council (Tomorrow’s Doctors supplementary guidance); German Rectors’ standing conference; Ako Aotearoa, (and through them other NZ organisations such as the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Council), Wellington; the Swedish Agency for Networks and Cooperation in Higher Education and Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm; the Australian Learning and Teaching Council; University of Sydney Medical Programme; IMS-Global Alt-i-lab; and medicine discipline coordinator and on the judging panel for the European Academic Software Awards (EASA) in Ronneby and Rotterdam. 

 

Other roles and projects

• 2000-2012: As Director of MEDEV working with the HEA, the Jisc and the sector she managed a small team who delivered programmes of activity designed to share good practice to promote professional development in order to contribute to the accreditation of staff and enhance the student learning experience (see the website). MEDEV published regular newsletters, run workshops and events, managed a portfolio of mini-projects and subject specific activities (such as special interest groups), worked with funded projects, and generally supported the sector through a blend of proactive and reactive engagements, most of which are driven from the grass roots needs of the sector. The team worked closely with the Subject Centre for Health Sciences and Practice (based at King's College London) who provided a similar service for Nursing, Health Care Professions and related programmes.
• 2003-2004: Seconded 60% as the Health Education Learning Technologist with UK eUniversities Worldwide, London (UKeU the eUniversity) where Megan was responsible (working to the Chief Architect) for managing delivery of the portfolio of healthcare programmes on the UKeU learning platform. This required innovative solutions to reproduce on-line, for example, enquiry based approaches to support learning.
• 1994-2000: Promoted to Assistant Director of the Faculty of Medicine Computing Centre at Newcastle where Megan was a founding member of the team and responsible for developing and delivering innovative ICT and Medical Informatics/Evidence Based Medicine courses to medical, dental and biomedical science students and staff, and implementing many technical innovations to support delivery of the curriculum. The FMCC grew from 3 staff to form the core of the School of Medical Sciences Education Development with a staff of over 70. She managed major projects for Newcastle University and the Funding Councils e.g. Teaching and Learning Technologies Programme Phase 3 Project Number 86 Facilitated Network Learning in Medicine and Health Sciences (a consortium of five universities) where the aim was to 'disseminate ICT based approaches developed to facilitate, manage and support the interactive learning of medical and health care science students based in sites remote from the main university campus'. This project was seminal in establishing administrative as well as educational support for students (often located in practice) and is still the mainstay of learning support in the partner medical schools today. In addition to managing the staff on the project she developed Contracts, inter-institutional Memoranda of Understanding and detailed Project Plans, Evaluation Plans, Dissemination Plans, Risk and Stakeholder Analysis, regular Bi-monthly and Annual reporting.
• 1998-2000: Represented the Faculty of Medical Sciences in five Quality Assurance Agency Subject Reviews (24x4 and 23x1 achieved). She was responsible for regular evaluation of student and staff IT knowledge and attitudes (quantitative tests and qualitative questionnaires, structured interviews and focus groups). Megan shared the development and delivery of a student selected component for Stage 4 MBBS students which was fully subscribed and received a rating of ‘excellent’ in all student evaluations.
• 1988-1993: Worked in research, IT support/service provision and staff development while at Sheffield Hallam, Leeds Metropolitan and Wolverhampton universities.

Qualifications

• BSc (1986) Zoology major, University of Otago, New Zealand.
• PhD (1997) Developing and Evaluating a Hypermedia Computer-based Learning Package in Biology, Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. Research focused on developing a interactive video disc alternative to performing a rat dissection in the classroom, and a quantitative evaluation of the suitability of hypermedia as a learning medium.
• Finalist European Academic Software Awards (1996) her rat dissection video software (now shared under CC-0 licence) was presented at the finals of the international EASA awards.
• UCISA Awards (1997) the Anatomy of the Knee Tutorial developed at Newcastle University was runner up in a national UCISA award.

Research interests

All things educational, specifically hypermedia, data mining, and leadership, policy and practice.

Contact at

Faculty of Medical Sciences, School of Medical Sciences Education Development
Ridley Building 1
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU