AN EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING AND LEARNING MODULE IN CHINESE MEDICINE: FIELD TRIP

Abstract

Chinese medicine has been used as one of complementary and alternative medicines in the world. Chinese medicine education is also one of medical professional programs in many countries. Chinese Medicine students should be encouraged to learn not only from textbook but also real life experience. Experiential learning is the key element of educational reform in the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and has been integrated into Chinese Medicine Bachelor program. This article introduced an educational course in Chinese Medicine: field trip, which is a feature experiential education module and outcomes of the teaching and learning in this module in School of Chinese Medicine (HKU) are discussed. Organization and flowchart of field trip were introduced, which include pre-field trip briefing, four cases of field trip activities and assessment approaches. Students’ evaluation and feedbacks were reviewed and discussed. Field trip has been shown benefits to students, teachers and the institute, but shortcomings including teacher-student ratio, lack of post-field trip review and self-study setting and incomplete assessment system needs more improvement in future education reform.