Remember how it feels to be a student?

Students' education in their clinical placements is often supervised by practising clinicians. Most health care professional programmes provide workshops and short courses to train clinicians for supervising student learning.

Although clinical educators are often expert clinicians with extensive years of clinical experience, they are not necessarily expert educators. The lack of educational experience can lead to clinical educators having difficulty relating to the student experience, and subsequent difficulty in planning a meaningful and effective learning experience.

We incorporated Kolb's model of experiential learning into the curriculum of a workshop that is regularly offered by the local university for training physical therapy educators. Using this model, participants had to feel and think like a student by putting themselves in a student's role. Over 3 years (2009-2011), 302 participants attended the workshop. Participants were asked to fill out a survey after the workshop to evaluate the incorporation of Kolb's model into the curriculum. After the workshop, participants reported a high level of satisfaction with the workshop (9.2/10), as well as a 50 per cent increase in their readiness and comfort in planning and supervising student learning.

Kolb's model is a highly adaptable model that can be used effectively in the training of clinical educators. The experiential approach of this model enables educators to understand 'how it feels to be a student' and carry that understanding forward into planning learning experiences for their own students.