Dr Kerry Gilbert

About me:

Kerry is a Senior Lecturer with a post-graduate education focused role at the University of Exeter Medical School. She is currently leading the development of a new NIHR funded Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Research Leadership aimed at healthcare professionals involved in the practical research leadership of clinical trial delivery. She is the Curriculum Design and Evaluation Module Lead on the Master's in Clinical Education and is also a techer and moderator on the same course.

Kerry is an Honorary Associate Professor of the Peninsula Medical School, Faculty of Health, University of Plymouth.

Interests:

Kerry has a keen interest in how students learn, particularly in terms of developing educational packages that appeal to broad groups of students, who may have different educational experience and needs. Her research has investigated and evaluated how students move from being consumers of teaching to adult learners with self-efficacy and the desire and ability to appropriately guide their own learning.

Kerry has used her experience in understanding learning to re-develop and re-write the Enquiry-Based Learning curriculum and cases at the University of Plymouth Peninsula Medical School to better reflect current educational thinking.

Kerry has a keen interest in educational relationships and has studied how mentorship in learning contexts can improve learning development for individual students. She has also researched and published on Threshold Concepts in learning in terms of development of understanding and transfer and application of knowledge to new scenarios and contexts, particularly with respect to learning to think like a doctor.

Qualifications:

• BSc (Hons) Biochemistry - 1991
• MSc Cell and Molecular Biology - 1993
• PhD - 1997
• Senior Fellowship of the HEA (now Advance HE) - 2016
• MSc Clinical Education with distinction - 2019

Career:

As a medical educator with over 14 years experience, I have a passion for teaching and learning in its broadest sense. I am currently working within postgraduate medical education in the College of Medicine and Health and have previous experience in undergraduate medicine at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, where I facilitated learning helping students to develop their approach to learning and learning skills. As the school lead for Enquiry- Based Learning I led the learning discovery curriculum within the Medical School for Medicine, Radiography and Physician Associate courses. I also played a leading role in reordering the BMBS curriculum and wrote the associated Enquiry Based Learning cases, to promote application and transfer of learning to new and authentic patients and contexts. I was als inaugural co-programme lead for the Foundation Year 0 of the six-year BMBS for which I wrote the curriculum, successfully guiding it through the University approvals process. This bespoke and innovative introduction to medicine is aimed at widening access to medicine for students from unconventional and disadvantaged backgrounds.

 
As well as being an innovator in medical education, I have been active in the wider university, whilst at Plymouth, through serving on senate and the teaching learning and quality committee, where I contributed to changing regulations in response to the pandemic to minimize impact on students in terms of learning, assessment and achievement. I have also acted as a panel chair on approvals committees, both internally and for partner institutions in the UK and worldwide.

I support students through being an Academic Tutor, whilst also extending this role for struggling students in terms of remediation and learning skills development. I have also been a pastoral tutor, attending to the wider needs of students, which was particularly important during the pandemic as students struggled to adapt to learning through lockdown and not meeting their peers and tutors face to face.

My research and scholarship areas include: How do students learn: Threshold Concepts in PBL; Barriers and Enablers to Student Learning following the Transition from School; How do Concept Maps Improve Understanding in an Integrated Medical Curriculum; Using Parallel Cases to Improve Learning Transfer between Clinical Scenarios.

 
I have a background as a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, where my interest in my own learning led me to pursue a career in education, following a lifelong passion to ensure that potential is unlocked in every individual, to help them follow their dreams and make an impact in their chosen field.