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2020 winners
The Teaching Excellence Award was set up as a way to celebrate and reward exceptional educational scholarship, particularly amongst research intensive universities, across the U21 HSG network. The Award is our way to recognise leaders in this area and share their areas of good practice across the network.
The Award also helps us to nurture international cooperation, one of U21’s key objectives, by offering faculty from different universities, and regions, to work together on exciting, interdisciplinary projects.
The 2020 Teaching Excellence Award winners were Dr Norman Ng, University of Queensland and Dr Sheila Harms from McMaster University who presented a joint workshop on "Experiences of the Online Educator. Pandemic and Beyond".
Dr Norman Ng,
University of Queensland
Dr Norman Ng is a lecturer with the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, at The University of Queensland. He received his PhD from the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, University of Queensland in 2009. Norman has a background in physical activity and health, particularly the role of physical activity in managing chronic diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes and osteoarthritis.
His research interests include physical activity measurement and occupational sedentary behaviour. Norman is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has contributed to both undergraduate and postgraduate programs across a range of courses in various learning settings. His scholarship of teaching and learning includes active learning in higher education, interprofessional teaching and learning in virtual learning environments and digital spaces, and professional identities of allied health students. Norman is the inaugural Lecturer in Interprofessional Education at The University of Queensland and the Course Coordinator of a large blended interprofessional foundations course with approximately 1500 students. He is currently investigating the attitudes and readiness of first year students towards interprofessional education and best practices in continuing and supporting interprofessional experiences for a post-pandemic learning environment.
Dr Sheila Harms, McMaster University
Dr. Sheila Harms is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair in Education in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University. Dr. Harms practices as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at McMaster Children’s Hospital with a focus on general outpatient care. She is actively involved in supervising undergraduate and postgraduate learners as well as teaching within the Faculty of Health Sciences. Dr. Harms has acted in numerous educational leadership roles within the department including the program director for Postgraduate Psychiatry Training and has held the role of the inaugural program director for subspecialty training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is also an active member on the Psychiatry Exam Board for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Dr. Harms directs the global mental health initiative in the department which includes leading a long-standing collaboration and novel educational initiative at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Western Uganda, where she also serves on faculty. Currently, she is focusing on enhancing educational scholarship activities across the department. She is pursuing a PhD in education at York University under the supervision of Distinguished Research Professor, Dr. Deborah Britzman. Her PhD focuses on critical histories in Psychiatry and how they have influenced her pedagogical experience as a Psychiatry educator. Dr. Harms is particularly interested in thinking about medical education using psychodynamic concepts as they are applied to learning, in an attempt to understand educational phenomenology that are both relevant and pressing in contemporary medical education.