Van Fleet Facilitates IAMSE Conference Session

NWHSU faculty member Verena Van Fleet, PhD, MEd facilitated a 90-minute session at the 2023 International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) conference in Cancun, Mexico.  

The session, “All on the Same Page: Bridging the Knowledge Gap for Incoming Healthcare Professional Program Students,” was a collaboration with Raquel P. Ritchie, PhD and Mariluz Henshaw, MD, PhD.  

Exploring How Students Respond and Learn

Dr. Van Fleet explained the session: “The workshop came out of a small community of biochemistry instructors. Currently, we are exploring how students respond to and learn from activities surrounding different dietary approaches to deepen students’ understanding of the human metabolism.”

“Anecdotally, we can report that students enjoy these activities because they can relate to them and like to learn about how to help patients stay healthy, rather than focusing on metabolic diseases. The next steps are for our group to systematically collect student’s feedback regarding these activities, as well as whether their performance on related exam questions is improved compared to previous cohorts.” 

An Opportunity to Connect with Other Educators

Dr. Van Fleet teaches Biochemistry 1 & 2, Immunology, and Clinical Microbiology, providing foundational chemistry content to incoming students. The conference featured keynote talks from international leaders in healthcare education, focus sessions, presentations and posters presented by faculty and students from diverse healthcare programs.  

“At annual meetings, in webinars and at a newly launched online conference I have met incredible educators and learned about the best activities in teaching and learning, new educational technologies and online platforms that can enhance our instruction,” shared Dr. Van Fleet. “During the first year of the pandemic, IAMSE offered a weekly, then bi-weekly forum to connect with other educators from all over the world where participants freely shared resources and ideas for novel approaches to teaching when meeting in person was impossible or very limited.” 

Minneapolis will host the 2024 annual meeting of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), from June 15-18. Next year’s theme is ‘Empowering Educators – Embracing the Evolution of Health Science Education.’  

Story by Kit Harlow, Chiropractic Student