A University of the Sunshine Coast bioscientist has received a national award for her back-to-basics method of teaching body functions to help student nurses improve patient care.
UniSC Senior Lecturer Dr Judy Craft was recognised in the recent Australian Awards for University Teaching for her excellence in the development and delivery of bioscience programs and resources for nursing and health students.
Dr Craft’s method – hand-drawing simple diagrams and asking students to do the same – has proven so successful that she also teaches registered nurses in workplaces such as hospitals how to update their science skills.
“While teaching and researching, I found that nursing students were challenged by bioscience subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology due to the level of difficulty and perceived lack of clinical relevance,” she said.
“However, studies show that patient outcomes can be affected by insufficient bioscience understanding in clinical settings.
“I use coloured biros to draw images in videos for UniSC students, creating simple depictions of functions relating to blood vessels, the digestive tract, muscle contractions, cell structures and others relevant to nursing.
“This approach is novel compared to textbook images and sophisticated digital resources. It has demystified concepts and given students so much confidence.
“An added benefit is the importance of these active learning processes, given concerns about the use of generative artificial intelligence in university settings.”
Dr Craft, who teaches across UniSC’s campuses in South East Queensland and is based at the Caboolture campus, received one of 60 citations in the category of the annual national awards.
Judges heard that her teaching method had halved failure rates in a science course for nursing students and had contributed to her 2023 UniSC Learning and Teaching Excellence Award for “development of curricula that reflected a command of the field”.
With a focus on the preventative aspects of diseases common to Australia’s population such as diabetes and cancer, she is also lead author of a pathophysiology textbook for nursing students.
Dr Craft said her passion for teaching came from reflecting on her time as a student, when learning content such as bioscience could feel overwhelming.
“An excellent teacher is one who can step outside of their own knowledge, and see the material being taught through the student’s eyes – they need to consider how to take the student from having limited or no knowledge of the concept, through to the complete and advanced level,” she said.
“It takes deliberate attention to balance the simplicity in teaching with the content that needs to be learned.
“Success as a teacher is knowing that you have facilitated student learning. When they succeed in learning, I know that I’ve done a great job.”
Dr Judy Craft is a Senior Lecturer, Physiology Microbiology in the School of Health
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