Virtual Learning

Our research team critically examines the role of learning technologies in medical education. Teaching and learning often rely on various technologies. However, we seldom stop to think about how those technologies change what people do in educational encounters.

Our team has applied sociomaterial theories to medical education to this impact of tools on human actions. From high fidelity manikins to videoconferencing systems, mobile apps, and online learning modules, we have gained new ways of understanding the effects of learning technologies on the complex and ever-human processes of teaching and learning.

We study how distance learning technologies shape how medical education is designed, delivered, and experienced.

This includes two studies funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC):

1. Higher Education in a Digital Economy: An Institutional Ethnography (2016-2020); and,

2. Educating future physicians in the time of COVID: A scoping review of online medical education

(2021-2022).