Synopsis

Synopsis

Synopsis

In an increasingly digital and complex educational landscape, health professions educators face the challenge of designing learning experiences that foster meaningful engagement, inclusivity, and professional readiness while addressing growing feelings of learner disconnection despite technological connectivity. This symposium explores how educational design can promote engagement, equity, and excellence across the continuum of health professions education.
The symposium begins by examining how educators can intentionally design engaging, inclusive, accessible, and transformative learning experiences. The session will explore how UDL principles can support diverse learners by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and participation, while OER can enhance equitable access to high-quality, adaptable, and collaborative learning materials. 
The session will then focuses on inclusive and culturally responsive curriculum design, particularly in aligning undergraduate and postgraduate training with professional practice. Drawing on principles of transfer of learning, the session discusses how authentic and contextualised learning experiences can support equity, adaptability, and workplace readiness.
The session also will discuss on what makes early clinical placements effective. Emphasis will be placed on how authentic clinical exposure supports integrative learning, professional identity formation, patient-centred care, and meaningful learner engagement.
Collectively, the symposium highlights practical and evidence-informed strategies for designing learner-centred and future-ready health professions education.

Designing Transformative Learning Experiences through Universal Design for Learning and Open Educational Resources in Health Professions Education
TBA (TBA)

This presentation explores how transformative learning experiences in health professions education can be enhanced through Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Open Educational Resources (OER). In increasingly digital and diverse learning environments, educators are challenged to design learning experiences that are engaging, inclusive, accessible, and adaptable to diverse learner needs.
The session discusses how UDL principles support learner-centred design by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and participation, while OER promotes equitable access to flexible and high-quality learning materials. The presentation also highlights strategies to foster active learning, collaboration, reflection, psychological safety, and meaningful human connection in both physical and digital learning spaces.
Drawing on practical educational approaches, the session emphasises how intentional integration of UDL and OER can support learner engagement, inclusivity, professional growth, and future-ready health professions education.

Designing Inclusive, Culturally Responsive, and Community-Engaged Learning
TBA (TBA)

Building upon the principles of learner engagement, this presentation expands the discussion toward curriculum design, educational continuity, and community engagement. It explores how inclusive, culturally responsive, and community-engaged curricula can support meaningful transfer of learning, social accountability, adaptability, and readiness for professional practice. The session will discuss how authentic partnerships with communities and contextualised learning experiences can strengthen learners’ understanding of diverse patient populations, healthcare realities, and professional responsibilities across the continuum of training.

“What Makes Early Clinical Placements Work?”  Holistic and Integrative Learning in Primary Care Placement
Chathuri Hadinnapola (United Kingdom)

This presentation examines how early clinical exposure supports holistic and integrative curriculum design, drawing on an evaluation of the first Primary Care Placement for Graduate Entry Medicine students. It explores how placement design, supervision structures, and team integration shape meaningful early clinical learning.
Findings from a structured, anonymised student evaluation highlight key factors underpinning positive learning experiences, including supportive supervision, inclusive clinical environments, and opportunities for active participation. The session demonstrates how early placements enhance the integration of academic learning with communication skills, professional identity formation, and patient-centred care.
The presentation will also consider the importance of strong curriculum–placement alignment in promoting learner engagement and effective transfer of learning. Practical recommendations for optimising early clinical placements, grounded in holistic educational principles, will be shared to support ongoing curriculum development in health professions education.

Synopsis

This symposium explores the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), professionalism, and humanistic learning within health professions education. As AI technologies increasingly influence teaching, assessment, clinical reasoning, and decision-making, educators and practitioners must critically examine the boundaries between machine-supported cognition and uniquely human professional attributes.
The symposium begins by differentiating cognitive tasks that can be effectively delegated to AI agents from affective and relational tasks that continue to require human judgement, empathy, ethical reasoning, and contextual sensitivity. Building on this foundation, the second presentation introduces the concept of “affectionate anchoring” in the AI era, highlighting strategies for maintaining meaningful human connections, compassionate communication, and learner engagement amidst growing technological integration. The final presentation focuses on cultivating altruism and professional identity formation in learners, addressing how values such as integrity, empathy, accountability, and service can be sustained in an increasingly AI-mediated educational and healthcare environment.
Together, the three presentations will provide participants with practical insights and critical perspectives on balancing technological advancement with the preservation of humanity, professionalism, and compassionate practice in the age of AI.

The Educator Beyond AI: Preserving Humanity in Learning
Heethal Jaiprakash (Malaysia)

The rapid integration of generative and agentic artificial intelligence in health professions education is changing the way in which learners access knowledge and develop clinical reasoning. While artificial intelligence can be effective in supporting cognitive learning activities, in the affective domain, it has limited benefits. This presentation provides educators with an opportunity to better understand the role of artificial intelligence in the affective domain and to differentiate between activities that can be effectively delegated to artificial intelligence and those activities that require human educators. This presentation, through the application of the Universal Design for Learning and Human-AI partnership models, will provide educators with an opportunity to better understand how to leverage the benefits of artificial intelligence in supporting learners in information processing while maintaining their role in the affective domain. This presentation provides an opportunity to better understand the role of educators as affective domain anchors in the development of ethically grounded, reflective, and patient-centered learners in an artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare system.

Mastering Affective Anchoring in the Age of AI
Soumendra Sahoo (Malaysia)

Being a successful anchor in the age of artificial intelligence requires deliberately applying uniquely human emotional and cognitive skills—such as empathy, creativity, moral judgment, and real connections. In a technologically advanced setting, these are necessary for stability, direction, and purpose. AI lacks the actual consciousness and lived experience that are the foundations of true human connection, despite being exceptionally good at efficiency, data processing, and even emotion imitation. The core principles of affective anchoring include valuing real connection, applying emotional intelligence (EI), providing moral and ethical context, and, of course, loving mankind. Our unique human temperament must be purposefully preserved in order to act as an emotional anchor as AI becomes more integrated into daily life. While pursuing human-centered solutions in this AI context, we must preserve our emotional authenticity and profound comprehension.

Cultivating Altruism and Professional Identity in the Age of AI: Embedding Values into Health Professions Education
Srikumar Padmalayam Sadanandan (Malaysia)

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in healthcare and education, there is a growing need to reaffirm the humanistic foundations of professional practice. Core values such as altruism, empathy, and ethical commitment risk being diminished within efficiency-driven, technology-mediated systems. This presentation explores how value-based education can be intentionally designed to support professional identity formation (PIF) and sustain altruistic practice in AI-augmented learning environments.
Grounded in socio-cultural learning theory and PIF models, it examines how formal, informal, and hidden curricula shape learners’ values and behaviours. It highlights tensions between technological efficiency and relational care, emphasising reflective practice, mentorship, and narrative learning in maintaining ethical sensitivity across diverse cultural contexts.
Practical strategies include longitudinal professionalism portfolios, structured reflection, ethics-integrated case discussions, and programmatic assessment of affective competencies. The session also considers how educators can model and reinforce values in digitally mediated environments, ensuring AI enhances rather than replaces humanistic care. Ultimately, it argues for positioning altruism and ethics as central to producing competent, compassionate, and socially accountable health professionals.

Synopsis

Professional Identity Formation (PIF) and wellbeing are increasingly recognised as interdependent outcomes of health professions education, shaped not only by curriculum design but also by the lived experiences of learners within clinical and institutional environments. This symposium explores how educators can intentionally design learning ecosystems that nurture both identity development and sustainable wellbeing.
The first presentation positions PIF as an evolving process emerging from the dynamic interaction between curriculum structures, clinical experiences, role modelling, and institutional culture. It highlights how these elements collectively influence how learners internalise professional values and make sense of their emerging identities.
The second presentation focuses on the critical role of role modelling and communities of practice in shaping professional identity. It examines how educators and clinical supervisors function as “identity exemplars,” and how participation in authentic communities supports legitimate peripheral participation, professional socialisation, and meaning-making.
The third presentation shifts the discourse from reactive wellbeing interventions to proactive educational design. It argues for embedding meaning, purpose, psychological safety, and relational trust into training environments. Emphasis is placed on the quality of supervision, relational continuity, and institutional cultures that sustain professional values while protecting learner wellbeing.
Together, the symposium offers an integrated perspective on how identity formation and wellbeing can be co-designed through intentional educational and cultural strategies in health professions training.

Professional Identity Formation as an Emergent Systems Process: Curriculum, Culture, and Clinical Reality
TBA (TBA)

Professional Identity Formation (PIF) is increasingly understood not as a linear developmental outcome, but as an emergent process shaped by interacting educational systems. This presentation explores how curriculum design, clinical learning experiences, role modelling, and institutional culture collectively shape how learners construct their professional identities. Rather than isolating PIF within formal teaching activities, it positions identity formation as something continuously negotiated in authentic clinical environments. The discussion highlights how contradictions between taught values and observed practices can either strengthen or destabilise identity development. It also examines the importance of coherence across the formal, informal, and hidden curriculum in supporting identity alignment. By adopting a systems perspective, this presentation encourages educators to view PIF as a shared institutional responsibility that requires intentional alignment between educational design, clinical practice environments, and organisational culture.

Becoming Through Belonging: Role Modelling and Communities of Practice in Professional Identity Formation
TBA (TBA)

This presentation examines the central role of role modelling and communities of practice in shaping professional identity formation among health professions learners. Professional identity is not simply taught; it is observed, experienced, and gradually internalised through participation in authentic clinical communities. Educators and clinical supervisors serve as powerful identity exemplars, consciously or unconsciously transmitting professional norms, values, and behaviours. The presentation explores how learners move from peripheral participation towards fuller engagement within clinical teams, and how this process supports identity development. It also highlights the conditions that strengthen or weaken this process, including continuity of supervision, team integration, and the visibility of professional reasoning. By framing learning as participation in communities of practice, the session underscores the importance of relational learning environments where identity is shaped through belonging, observation, and guided participation.

Designing for Meaning and Resilience: Reframing Wellbeing Through Relationships, Purpose, and Psychological Safety
Ellisha Othman (Malaysia)

Traditional approaches to learner wellbeing in health professions education have often focused on reactive support mechanisms such as stress management or counselling services. This presentation argues for a shift towards proactive educational design that embeds wellbeing within the learning environment itself. It explores how meaning, purpose, and alignment with professional values can be intentionally cultivated through curriculum and workplace design. Central to this approach are relationships, psychological safety, and the quality of supervision, which collectively influence how learners experience stress, growth, and professional development. The presentation also examines how institutional culture can either reinforce or undermine well-being, depending on the degree of support, trust, and relational continuity present in clinical learning settings. By integrating wellbeing into the fabric of training environments, this session proposes a model where flourishing is not an add-on but an expected outcome of thoughtful educational design.

Synopsis

This symposium explores how interprofessional education (IPE) is being redefined in response to contemporary global health challenges. It examines how, beyond driving changes in HPE and delivering measurable impact of the curriculum on communities and population health, health professions educators are moving beyond discipline-bound teaching toward integrating sustainability principles into clinical and health system practice and real-world health systems.
The first presentation addresses how health professions education can respond to community and health system priorities. The second presentation addresses how the clinical learning environment impacts student learning and suggests ways for health professions educators to enhance experiential, context-driven, work-based learning. The third presentation addresses how the health care system responds to social accountability.

Redefining Educators: Designing Health Professional Education Curriculum for One Health and Population Health
Sivalingam Naliah (Malaysia)

Educators are no longer transmitters of knowledge but designers of collaborative learning ecosystems that produce measurable health and societal impact. This presentation explores how health professions educators can redesign curricula to enable interprofessional learning and One Health approaches in Malaysia. It highlights educators as change agents who create collaborative, inclusive, and community-responsive learning experiences that prepare graduates to improve population health and deliver meaningful societal impact.

Sustainable Interprofessional Education (IPE) in the Clinical Workplace
Shalini Gupta (United Kingdom)

This presentation explores how interprofessional education (IPE) can be leveraged to prepare future healthcare professionals to meet the challenges of patient-centred healthcare delivery. Interprofessional working is a powerful driver of sustainable healthcare practice because it advances multidisciplinary coordinated care and resource stewardship through collective decision-making. The presentation will focus on the unique attributes of the clinical learning environment that impact student learning and suggest ways for health professions educators to enhance experiential, context-driven, work-based learning that prepares students for the real-world collaborative practice. The session will draw on existing empirical work to share strategies that may aid in creating sustainable communities of practice in the clinical workplace, which have the potential to nurture healthcare students into a sustainable workforce capable of addressing complex healthcare challenges.

Interprofessional Education for Socially Accountable Health Systems
Hoo Ling Lee (Malaysia)

This presentation examines the role of interprofessional education /practices in strengthening social accountability within health care services. It highlights how collaborative experiences can be designed to align educational outcomes with the health needs of communities, particularly underserved and vulnerable populations. The session discusses frameworks that would connect the learners across professions with real-world health system challenges, fostering shared responsibility for population health outcomes. It also reflects on the educator’s role in ensuring that IPE & IP practices move beyond classroom collaboration to meaningful engagement with health equity and service transformation.

Synopsis

From Learners to Partners: Student Contributions to Curriculum Redesign in Medical Education
Tan Ryo-En (Malaysia)

Students are increasingly recognized as active partners in curriculum development rather than mere learners. This presentation highlights IMU University clinical school student contributions across four key domains: technology-enhanced learning (TEL), interprofessional education (IPE), peer-assisted learning (PAL), and assessment partnership.
In the TEL domain, students develop digital resources like microlearning videos on clinical topics such as appendicitis. This co-creation process deepens their conceptual understanding and produces peer-relevant materials, with faculty oversight ensuring clinical accuracy. In IPE and community engagement, students from various disciplines lead initiatives like health screenings and awareness carnivals. While cross-disciplinary scheduling remains a challenge, these experiences foster social accountability and collaborative skills through the use of shared digital platforms.
Peer-assisted learning is exemplified by student-led OSCE simulations. Senior students design scenarios and marking schemes, serving as examiners for their juniors. This model enhances examination preparation while building leadership and teaching competencies, though it requires significant institutional support to manage logistical constraints. Finally, assessment partnership involves students providing structured feedback on examinations and postings. These fosters shared responsibility, provided the institution "closes the loop" by demonstrating tangible changes based on student input.
Collectively, these initiatives demonstrate that student partnership shifts the educational paradigm. By moving beyond passive consumption, students develop greater ownership of their curriculum and increased motivation. These collaborative efforts not only improve the immediate quality of healthcare education but also equip students with the professional competencies necessary to contribute to future educational improvements and clinical excellence.

Students as Educational Partners: Redefining Roles to Shape Learning and Catalyse Change
Thiti Thaloengboonsiri (Thailand)

This presentation explores how students can take on roles as educators in partnership with teachers. Drawing on contemporary literature and institutional practice, the session brings together perspectives from student leaders and educational leaders at the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University.
The presentation examines how extracurricular activities can be intentionally designed as learning platforms to complement the formal curriculum by supporting program learning outcomes and fostering professional identity formation. It also explores the role of students as educators, particularly in advancing professionalism. Practical examples will illustrate how these concepts can be sustainably translated into institutional practice through student-led initiatives and partnership in curriculum development. These collaborations yield distinct benefits for the curriculum and the participating students. Challenges related to engagement, wellbeing, sustainability, and the characteristics of the current student generation will also be addressed.

Students as Partners in Curriculum and Learning Method Development: Student Voices for More Effective Education
Elysia Totok Cheryl Soecipto (Indonesia)

Medical education is increasingly transitioning from traditional models to responsive frameworks where students serve as partners in curriculum design rather than passive recipients. 
At Universitas Ciputra, this partnership is institutionalized through structured mechanisms, primarily the mid-semester Focus Group Discussion (FGD). This forum brings together faculty, staff, and student representatives to review peer-collated feedback on learning challenges and suggestions for improvement. Complementing this is the "i-box" digital platform and an open-door policy, fostering a culture of continuous dialogue and shared responsibility. A significant outcome of this collaborative approach was the refinement of the Small Group Discussion (SGD) method. 
Previously, inconsistent tutor styles and assessment methods led students to focus on memorizing specific cases rather than engaging in critical inquiry. Following student-led feedback, SGD cases were strategically realigned with current curriculum blocks, resulting in deeper student engagement, richer exchange of perspectives, and enhanced interactivity. While these partnerships cultivate essential soft skills—such as leadership, reflection, and ownership—they also present challenges. These include concerns regarding academic standards, students' initial lack of pedagogical expertise, and the inherent rigidity of medical curricula, which can delay implementation. 
However, the experience at Universitas Ciputra suggests that these hurdles are manageable through sustained engagement and mutual understanding. By bridging the gap between learners and educators, authentic student-staff partnerships create a more effective, student-centered educational environment that better prepares future doctors for the complexities of medical practice. Such collaborative models are vital for ensuring that medical education remains dynamic and excellence-driven.

Synopsis

Synopsis

As health professions education continues to evolve in response to rapid technological advancement, educators are increasingly challenged to redefine their roles, pedagogical approaches, and learning environments. This symposium explores how technology-enhanced learning is reshaping contemporary education. Anchored to the conference theme, Educators Redefined, the session highlights how educators can harness emerging technologies to create adaptive, immersive, and learner-centred experiences while maintaining the humanistic and professional values essential in education.
The symposium brings together three speakers with expertise in educational technology and innovation. The first presentation will examine the transformative role of AI in personalised learning, assessment, feedback, and academic support. The second presentation explores the integration of AI in supporting educators and faculty development. It highlights how AI can enhance teaching efficiency, provide data-driven insights for decision-making, and enable personalized learning pathways for both students and faculty. The session also critically addresses the role of AI in faculty training, including opportunities for adaptive professional development, workload optimization, and the evolving competencies required of educators in the AI era. The third presentation focuses on simulation-based education and immersive learning environments, including Virtual Reality (VR) and related technologies. It discusses how simulation and VR together create authentic, safe, and scalable learning experiences that enhance clinical competence, teamwork, and reflective practice. Emphasis is placed on how these modalities extend beyond technical skills training to support experiential learning, interprofessional education, and assessment of performance in realistic contexts. Collectively, the symposium aims to inspire educators to embrace innovation, critically evaluate technological integration, and redefine their educational practices to meet the demands of future-ready learners and healthcare systems.

AI as a Learning Companion
Colin Lumsden (United Kingdom)

This presentation explores how AI is reshaping learning by acting as an intelligent companion that supports personalization, feedback, and assessment. It highlights how AI-driven systems can adapt learning pathways to individual learner needs, enhance formative and summative assessment practices, and provide timely, data-informed feedback. The session will also consider how these capabilities are influencing the design of modern educational experiences, enabling more responsive and learner-centred approaches in health professions education.

The AI-Enabled Educator: Reimagining Teaching, Assessment and Professional Growth
TBA (TBA)

This presentation examines the evolving role of educators in the age of AI, focusing on how AI can support teaching practice and professional growth. It discusses the use of AI tools to enhance instructional design, assessment practices, provide actionable insights into teaching effectiveness, and streamline academic workload. The session also explores how AI-enabled approaches can support continuous faculty development, helping educators build new competencies and adapt to changing educational demands.

From Lab to Lifeworld: Simulation and Immersive Technologies for Competency-Based Education
TBA (TBA)

This presentation explores the integration of simulation-based education and immersive technologies, including virtual reality, in developing clinical competence. It highlights how these approaches bridge classroom learning and real-world practice by providing safe, authentic, and scalable learning environments. The session will demonstrate how immersive simulation enhances experiential learning, supports competency-based education, and strengthens clinical reasoning, teamwork, and reflective practice in health professions education.

Synopsis

Health professions education is rapidly evolving through innovations in curriculum design, digital learning, simulation, and artificial intelligence. However, as educational models diversify, the central challenge becomes ensuring that innovation is matched with robust systems of quality assurance, accreditation, and evidence-informed decision-making. This symposium explores how institutions can move beyond compliance-driven accreditation towards dynamic, evidence-rich quality ecosystems that both enable innovation and safeguard standards. The three presentations will collectively examine how educational quality can be defined, measured, and sustained in an era of rapid transformation.

Evidence in Action: What Counts as Quality in Innovative Health Professions Education?
Mairead Boohan (United Kingdom)

As innovation continues to reshape health professions education, questions about what counts as quality and how it should be evaluated have become increasingly important. This presentation explores the evolving nature of evidence, highlighting the value of methodological pluralism through qualitative, quantitative and design-based research approaches. It considers how different forms of evidence can be combined to evaluate educational innovation and support meaningful judgements about educational quality.

Reframing Accreditation: From Compliance to Continuous Quality Intelligence
Er Hui Meng (Malaysia)

This presentation examines the limitations of traditional accreditation models and explores emerging approaches that embed continuous quality monitoring. It highlights how real-time data, learning analytics, and outcome-based evaluation can shift accreditation from episodic audits to ongoing quality intelligence systems.

Designing for the Future: Aligning Innovation, Standards, and Accountability
Muhammad Nurman Yaman (Malaysia)

This presentation explores how institutions can balance creativity and compliance by aligning curriculum innovation with accreditation standards.
The presenter will discuss on how new learning pathway (eg: APEL, ‘Netflix of Education’)  enables professionals to turn work experience and informal learning into accredited academic credits, fostering greater accessibility, particularly for non-traditional learners. The presenter will also propose a forward-looking framework that integrates institutional values, stakeholder expectations, and global quality benchmarks to future-proof educational programmes.

Synopsis

Synopsis