Donna Wynne

Tell us something people may not know about you.

What people may not know about me is that I like to run. I like to run five and ten Ks, but I don’t run as much as I’d like to. I guess I’m a bit of a frustrated runner really. I’m quite competitive – I think that might come from being a physiotherapist by trade, but I do what I can by fitting it in among the other things I have to do as a busy mum of three. I don’t often get to put in the practice that I’d like, to get the running times that I want.

What made you apply?

I had previously been successful in applying for the Teaching Fellow position. I’ve always had a firm passion and desire for teaching. When I looked at the Teaching Excellence Fellow criteria, I thought that it was a fantastic way to continue the development that I’ve had but also to be in a position where I could help mentor and lead others in their development.

Tell us about your teaching style?

I like students to play an active part in their learning so that they really have the ability to problem solve and achieve deep learning as a result of any interaction they have with myself or any of the aspects of teaching I’m responsible for. For them to be active, quite often I might take a flipped classroom approach where students are coming in with theories, with research, with information and applying that to problem solve different cases or scenarios.

We try and get students to be the producers or co-producers of information sources so that they do a lot of fact-finding, problem-solving and put to use different cognitive skills to be able to actually produce something. Through this, and the flipped classroom style, we are able to support students to have flexibility in innovation, thought and creativity. That is something central to how I like to teach. Some students find it quite challenging, but what it does do is ensure that students come fully engaged in the learning and most importantly – for practitioners in health – they develop the skills early on that allow them to problem solve and deal with the population of patients with a myriad of conditions who come with their own unique differences and challenges. It helps the students become flexible enough to give patients the right intervention at the right time.

Really, at the heart of what we do is making sure students are ready to be practitioners for patients. In order to do that, everything that we do has to have some sort of context to it, whether that’s the context of particular patient groups or the context of particular patient cases or in a larger sense of how we deliver services.

What are you most proud of?

I’ve been able to help and be responsible for a myriad of assessment practices – not just one particular approach but the collection of approaches that we take towards assessment across The School of Health Sciences. These allow us to have an authenticity of assessment for students, which allows them to maximise their skill-based development but also helps students to understand, from the outset, their module and what their assessments are going to be like.

Each module will adopt the same assessment practice but, within that, you have cohorts and stages that we map different assessment practices to so that we’re encompassing all types of learning across each stage and across an entire course. We use a developmental approach to learning where students have the opportunity to build on their skills at each stage by using the knowledge they’ve acquired to further their learning. Our approach is really assessment for learning rather than the assessment of learning.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What I really like about my job is seeing the students develop session by session. Really importantly – from a workshop scenario to a practical scenario – seeing the students able to problem solve and practice their skills and knowledge in real terms is really rewarding.

Teaching Excellence Fellow is a Grade 9 role which looks to promote those who have achieved a significant level of activity in the effective enhancement of Teaching & Learning. If you are interested in applying for a Teaching Excellence Fellow position, take a look at the Annual Appointment Process document.