Assoc ProfessorEleanor Dunican

Reflecting on my experience of teaching and training students and junior doctors, as well as my own educational experiences, I appreciate the immeasurable influence that teachers have on the lives of young people.  I also appreciate that effective teaching is not simply natural talent but requires skills and knowledge that is evidence-based and ever evolving as people evolve in the how they learn and interact with the world around them. As an educator, I hope to not only impart knowledge in an effective and engaging manner, but also cultivate a lifelong love of learning and critical appraisal in my students. In order to become a better university teacher, I am applying for admission into the UCD teaching and learning professional certificate course this year. 
 
My first introduction to postgraduate course administration was as the teaching assistant for a genetic epidemiology course during my master’s program at University of California San Francisco. In this role, I learned the basics of delivering a curriculum and assessing the learning outcomes. In 2017, I was appointed as an associate professor in the school of medicine in UCD and 2018 took on the role of academic module coordinator for a medicine module focused on data interpretation. In this role, I became progressively interested in the designing and development of curricula and assessment. I have already instituted many changes in my module design to make better use of technology and PBL as tools for learning, and to my assessment strategy to better match assessment to the learning outcomes of the module. 
 
My goal is to improve my teaching, learning and assessment strategies in line with the current best evidence and I believe this course will be invaluable helping me reach this goal. I embrace the knowledge that this will be a career-long journey.