I mentor my students and colleagues to take risks, to be accountable for their own learning and to challenge themselves to ensure their professional decisions have their own voice and stamp of integrity. I coined the term “evidence-farming” and use this so students can view failure as opportunities to reconfigure. I always look for new ways to engage and motivate. I believe I have done this by evolving authentic, work-integrated curricula and innovative teaching strategies and resources. A major significant pedagogical innovative initiative of mine is The Empathy Simulator which is a Virtual Learning Environment innovation with a digital patient “Jim”. Together, Jim and I are are transforming how we teach empathy in Australia and internationally as well.
I have worked with student learners for over 3 decades. During this time, I have treated 8,000 individuals in my clinic practice who have stuttered speech disorders and as an academic I have taught over 3,800 students. Having feet in the two camps of clinic and academia, has been a joy and a privilege.
As a young graduate, I was purloined into teaching which was very rudimentary. I started teaching neuroanatomy with a cerebral hemisphere floating in a bucket of formaldehyde stored in my office filing cabinet. I was an inexperienced, didactic lecturer demanding facts. When my work engaged new applied technologies, I grew and reached internationally for colleagues and research endeavours that I knew would continue to extend me.