From Classroom to Evidence Base: Launching HMBS Centre for Health Professions Education Research

If you teach, you've probably noticed teaching or learning problems (and successes!) worth exploring further e.g., students who keep tripping on the same assessment task, or feedback conversation that never quite land. Turning those everyday observations into evidence others can use (what's often called the scholarship of teaching and learning, or SoTL) is not straightforward. Health professions education (HPE) researchers, meanwhile, need exactly these everyday problems to do research that matters. This session treats SoTL and HPE research as two ends of continuum, not separate worlds, and uses that idea to launch UQ's new Centre for Health Professions Education Research (CHPER).

Bring a teaching problem (or success), a half-formed research question, or just curiosity about where your current work sits and you'll leave with a clearer sense of the pathway from classroom observation to generalisable evidence, and how CHPER can support you along it.

Key learnings/experiences:
• A working framework for locating your own teaching or research activity on the SoTL–HPE research continuum, and what moving it along that continuum would involve
• Facilitated small-group discussion to surface and workshop a live teaching problem with peers
• An understanding of CHPER's purpose, structure, and how it differs from (and connects to) teaching-support and curriculum roles
• A clear pathway for becoming an affiliate or collaborator, including what support the Centre offers at each stage of the continuum
• A chance to connect with colleagues across HMBS working on related teaching or research problems