Advancing teacher skills while developing new learning materials for professional health education

Abstract

This paper describes the experience of a PhD candidate during during her teaching training period within the Human nutrition course in a Brazilian public university. The experience provided the doctoral candidate the opportunity to study and deepen knowledge in the field of educational psychology, including learning theories, instructional theories and instructional design. As a result, the Human Nutrition Course was restructured and new learning material supported by Information and Communication Technologies was produced and used during the semester. As a result, it was reported by students a greater level of satisfaction and learning. The supervised practice in teaching was perceived as an important and useful moment by the doctoral candidate as it enabled interactions between research and teaching, the improvement of classes, media and learning strategies. It also enabled a greater comprehension of the professors’ role and its importance in the educational process. Finally, the paper discusses new ICT skills recommended in teaching in undergraduate health courses.