This article describes a professional development initiative facilitated through a transformational partnership model. In this context, we discuss our experience of piloting an online continuing professional development course in the area of online teaching, which offered a digital badge for successful participants. The course was the result of a partnership between three Irish higher education institutions and a national agency that had initiated a nation-wide scheme to create and disseminate a range of open access collaborative professional development courses to promote the professionalisation of teaching and learning, with a specific digital badge being available for each course. We investigated the interplay between the digital badge issued for the course we piloted, and other potential intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Digital badges appear to be a weak motivating factor in initial enrolment and engagement, although for some participants, they did motivate continued engagement and completion. We discuss implications in relation to internal and external drivers and motivations around professional development. We also offer reflections on the larger context in which badges might be used or valued by course participants in their professional environments. Implications for practice or policy: For digital badges to motivate learning, educational developers and institutions need to associate them with intrinsically meaningful rewards. Partnership between higher education institutes and non-accrediting bodies can drive the development and wider acceptance and use of digital badges as a tangible and agreed currency of learner and learning achievement. Learners benefit most from digital badges when they are linked to and facilitate the development of personal identities associated with disciplinary and professional communities.

There is increasing interest in the application of game-based learning approaches to education. Educators across a wide range of contexts are using digital games such as educational escape rooms to promote learner motivation and support skills development. Whilst the literature describes multiple game-based learning theories that can underpin such strategies, there is little practical guidance on how to integrate such conceptual elements into the design of digital educational escape rooms. This study aims to address this gap, outlining the use of an online design-thinking process to plan, build, and test a digital educational escape room. Our findings suggest that this process provides an effective way of harnessing team collaboration and innovation in the development of digital educational resources. The process provides structure for game design teams, enabling them to address complex or “messy” educational development problems. In utilising an online design-thinking process to design games for learning, we make a number of recommendations. These include taking time to establish psychological safety within the design team so as to facilitate creative team processes and supporting team members to adopt a design-thinking mindset throughout (e.g., regularly taking the perspective of the game user, and testing game prototypes early and frequently). Finally, our study offers a detailed description of how the online design-thinking process can be applied in an education context with the aim of offering guidance to educators and students who may want to design, build, and test their own digital educational escape rooms.

Introduction:The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly altered the ways in which health care professionals engage with continuing professional development (CPD), but the extent to which these changes are permanent remains unknown at present. This mixed-methods research aims to capture the perspectives of health professionals on their preferences for CPD formats, including the conditions that inform preferences for in-person and online CPD events and the optimum length and type of online and in-person events. Methods: A survey was used to gain a high-level perspective on health professionals' engagement with CPD, areas of interest, and capabilities and preferences in relation to online formats. A total of 340 health care professionals across 21 countries responded to the survey. Follow-up semistructured interviews were conducted with 16 respondents to gain deeper insights into their perspectives. Results: Key themes include CPD activity before and during COVID, social and networking aspects, access versus engagement, cost, and time and timing. Discussion: Recommendations regarding the design of both in-person and online events are included. Beyond merely moving in-person events online, innovative design approaches should be adopted to capitalize on the affordances of digital technologies and enhance engagement.

BackgroundThe study emerged from the necessity to reschedule an in-person long case examination to an online platform for Physician Associate students’ final clinical examination. The group had already experienced a delay in taking this clinical examination due to missing clinical hours, during Covid-19 restrictions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the experiences of students and examiners for a high stakes’ clinical examination online. Research suggests that the long case is the only clinical examination that promotes holistic assessment. However, a disconnect between the patient’s presence and the student in the virtual environment was a key finding in this study. Methods This was an evaluation research study, using the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model, which provided a framework to establish the effectiveness and/or success of an online format for a high stakes’ clinical examination. All students and examiners were invited to take part in virtual interviews. ResultsResults suggest that both students (n=5) and examiners (n=7) agree that, while the stress of a face-to-face examination was lessened for the student, this was balanced by a new stressor of potential internet problems. All agreed that a virtual setting for a high stakes assessment is not transferable, with both groups citing the lack of opportunities to ‘read the patient’ and ‘showcase their physical exam skills’ as challenging. Conclusions Our study suggests that, in the context of balancing the risks of the pandemic with graduating healthcare professionals, the online format was a success. The benefits cited included the preparation of students for real life situations in a clinical setting, with a healthcare system now more reliant on virtual consultations, and the capacity to offer increased opportunities for formative assessment of consultation and clinical reasoning skills. However, recommendations suggest that the long case could be planned so that student and patient are in the same setting to perform a ten-minute physical exam, confirming the finding that questions on ‘how to’ examine a patient are no substitute for ‘doing’.

Introduction: Medical professionals meet many transitions during their careers, and must learn to adjust rapidly to unfamiliar workplaces and teams. This study investigated the use of a digital educational escape room (DEER) in facilitating medical students' learning around managing uncertainty in transitioning from classroom to clinical placement. Methods:We used design-based research to explore the design, build, and test of a DEER, as well as gain insight into how these novel learning environments work, using Community of Inquiry (CoI) as a guiding conceptual framework. This study represented a mixed methods pilot test of a prototype DEER. Twenty-two medical students agreed to participate, and data were collected through qualitative (i.e., focus groups, game-play observations) and quantitative (i.e., questionnaires) methods.Results: Eighty-two per cent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the DEER supported their learning around uncertainty. Participants offered diverse examples of how the game had facilitated new insights on, and approaches to, uncertainty. With respect to the learning environment, multiple indicators and examples of the three domains of CoI -cognitive, teaching and social presence -were observed.Discussion: Our findings suggested that DEERs offer a valuable online learning environment for students to engage with complex and emotion-provoking challenges, such as those experienced at transitions. The study also suggested that CoI can be applied to the design, implementation, and evaluation of DEER learning environments, and we have proposed a set of design principles that may offer guidance here.