Key Note Speakers

Our workshop leaders this year are Drs. Nicole Woods, Maria Mylopoulos, and Mahan Kulasegaram – world class medical educators who have published and spoken widely within medical education. Their focus will be the cognitive integration of basic and clinical sciences in medical education and how that leads to adaptive expertise (which is the end goal of our professional programs). Importantly, we will also learn about the role of assessment and feedback.

Presenters:

Nicole Woods, PhD, Scientist & Associate Director, The Wilson Centre, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto.

Maria Mylopoulos, PhD, Scientist & Associate Director, The Wilson Centre, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Toronto.

Kulamakan (Mahan) Kulasegaram, PhD, Scientist at the The Wilson Centre and Assistant Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of Toronto.

Dr. Nicole N. Woods holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and Scientist and Scientist and Associate Director at The Wilson Centre, Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto. Dr. Woods has led a successful program of research in health professions education for more than 10 years. Her work focuses on the role of biomedical knowledge in clinical reasoning and the value of basic science in the development of medical expertise. Applying principles of memory and learning to education in the health professions, her research program focuses on the design of instructional methods that integrate clinical knowledge and conceptual models of disease.

Dr. Maria Mylopoulos holds her PhD in human development and education. She is currently Scientist and Associate Director of The Wilson Centre, Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Curriculum Scientist in the MD Program at the Faculty of Medicine at University of Toronto. Over the last 12 years she has successfully led a program of research aimed at understanding the development and performance of adaptive expertise in medicine, with a particular focus on how health professionals deal with uncertainty, novelty and complexity in their daily clinical problem solving. The ultimate goal of her research is to translate this understanding to educational design that promotes the development of exceptional clinicians who are able to handle the complexities and challenges of the healthcare workplace.

Dr. Kulamakan (Mahan) Kulasegaram holds a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics. He is a Scientist at the Wilson Centre and Assessment Scientist in the MD Program at the University of Toronto as well as Assistant Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine. His primary research focuses on the cognitive processes that support transfer of learning in health professions education. This includes examining the processing evoked by instructional interventions as well as the effect of assessment tools and practices on assessment enhanced transfer. He has extensive experience in the study of undergraduate medical education including investigating the transfer of fundamental and basic science concepts in medical training. He also has extensive methodological expertise in experimental and observation epidemiological designs, statistical analysis, and measurement theory.