Using eMedici to Support Medical Teaching

Medical teaching is often at its best for both students and educators when it is practical, interactive, and grounded in real-life practice. In reality, educators are usually balancing limited time, busy clinical workloads, curriculum requirements, and the challenge of keeping learners engaged.

Over time, we have spoken to educators who felt overwhelmed at the prospect of building entire courses and programs from scratch - curating materials from multiple online resources, stitching them together into a logical module, while also trying to make them interactive and engaging for students.

The educator features on eMedici were built to support existing teaching practices in a structured and accessible way, helping educators save time so they can prioritise teaching delivery rather than searching for appropriate materials.

Rather than replacing how educators teach, the goal is simply to make it easier to find useful material, organise sessions, and create opportunities for active learning.

Our Community of Practice

One of the things educators often mention is wanting resources that are relevant to Australian clinical practice and appropriate for different stages of training.

eMedici’s content is written and reviewed by Australian clinicians and educators, with material aligned to Australian undergraduate and postgraduate curricula.

The platform includes resources across all stages of medical training, from pre-clinical years through to fellowship exams and beyond. This includes MCQs, case studies, OSCE stations, tutorials, and mock exams across multiple disciplines.

This breadth allows educators to adapt the platform to different teaching styles without needing to build entirely new resources from scratch.

Finding custom content to fit your objectives quickly and easily

A common frustration in medical education is the amount of time it takes to locate good questions or cases for teaching.

The Question Bank Search feature allows educators to search by specialty, diagnosis, presentation, investigation, topic, or difficulty level.

This can be helpful for structured curriculum teaching. For example, educators can pull together content in specific areas such as:

• Dermatology MCQs

• Updated Asthma handbook MCQs

• Cardiovascular disease Case Studies

• Common OSCE stations

The emphasis is less on “delivering content” and more on creating discussion and clinical reasoning opportunities.

Structuring teaching using Collections

One feature many educators find useful is Collections. Collections allow educators to save MCQs, case studies, and OSCE stations into grouped sets that can later be shared with learners.

This can be used for:

• Pre-reading activities before tutorials

• Flipped classroom teaching

• Revision sessions

• Reinforcing learning after teaching

Because the material stays on-platform, it can make teaching sessions easier to organise without relying on multiple documents, links, or slides.

Educators can also structure learning in a way that mirrors clinical reasoning. A session might begin with a patient case, move into MCQs that explore key concepts, and finish with OSCE practice or discussion.

Active learning is where students are most engaged

Large group teaching can sometimes make it difficult to know whether learners are following along or actively engaging.

The eMedici platform includes a built-in Audience Response System (ARS), designed to support interactive teaching by allowing learners to respond to questions live through polling.

Educators can use this in different ways:

• Individual response polling

• Think-Pair-Share activities

• Team-based learning

• Revision quizzes

What often matters most is not necessarily whether learners get the question right immediately, but the discussion that follows - including why an answer was chosen and addressing misconceptions.

For many educators, the live polling feature creates an easier way to facilitate those conversations.

Case studies that emulate the patient journey

The case studies and tutorials on eMedici are structured around patient journeys and clinical decision-making.

Rather than isolated learning points, learners move through presentations, investigations, management decisions, and interpretation of findings with integrated questions along the way.

These cases can work well in:

• Small group tutorials

• Flipped classroom sessions

• Pre-reading

• Self-directed learning

They also help create a more consistent learning experience across different teaching groups, including rural clinical schools and geographically dispersed learners, as well as across different tutors.

Practising OSCEs

Organising OSCE teaching can sometimes be logistically difficult, especially when coordinating stations, timing, marking, and participant roles.

eMedici’s OSCE features are designed to simplify that process. Educators can search for stations by specialty or topic, save them into Collections, and run structured practice sessions either in person or virtually.

The platform includes:

• Modifiable station timings

• Integrated bell sound

• Examiner marking sheets and marking guides

• Standardised patient instructions

• Functionality to support interactive group practice

For tutors and clinical schools, this can make it easier to run consistent OSCE practice sessions while still allowing flexibility in teaching delivery either online or in-person.

Bringing digital technology to the fingertips of educators

Ultimately, good medical teaching still comes down to educators themselves - the discussions they facilitate, the clinical insights they share, and the learning environments they create.

The eMedici platform is simply a tool to support this process.

The Educators’ Access Program was developed to give academics and titleholders at Australian and New Zealand medical schools access to resources for teaching purposes. Educators can register at this online form.