Teaching
Having completed the first five-year cycle of assessment under the auspices of the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, the University is coming to grips with the assessment methodology to be used by the new UK-wide Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education whose visits to departments will commence in 2000-2001. During the past year there has been a lull in the programme of external assessment of teaching standards. Therefore, in this ‘gap’ year for reporting on teaching quality assessment, this section of the Annual Report focuses on innovative teaching in non-mainstream education.
Asthma Care An important aspect of ‘teaching’ is keeping professionals up-to- date on best practice. A new initiative to help improve asthma care has been launched by the Scottish Office. Over the past year all general practices in Scotland have received a distance learning package to help doctors review and assess their asthma patients. The material, provided by the Asthma Research Unit of the Department of General Practice, is intended to provide a benchmark for the standard of clinical care each patient should receive. Medical and Dental Education Development Unit The Scottish Council for Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education - the body responsible for managing and funding the postgraduate training and education of doctors and dentists in Scotland - has decided to base its new Education Development Unit in Dundee under the direction of Professor Ronald Harden. The new Unit is designed to ensure that Scotland continues to lead the way in the training of doctors and dentists and also to create a culture of research in the NHS. The appointment of Professor Harden recognises his role in taking the Centre for Medical Education to the cutting edge of many innovations in Medical Education.	Distance Learning For 25 years the University has been at the forefront of distance learning and now provides courses to students from over 50 countries worldwide. These ‘remote students’ are not completely isolated. Some participate in telephone tutorials while others may network with fellow students through tele-conferencing and the internet. An innovative partnership between Scottish Knowledge, the agency marketing distance learning courses on behalf of Scottish Universities, and the Centre for Medical Education, has opened up a potentially lucrative market (estimated at $5 billion) in the USA. The Centre has been accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education - the first time the American Nurses Credentialing Centre has endorsed a provider outside the US. Recent figures show that as many as 1.2 million US nurses do not have a degree, which is seen as the only way of gaining promotion in the profession. Wider Access The Twilight Academic Studies course is designed for students in day-time employment or with day-time caring responsibilities to return to study in preparation for entry to higher or further education. Since 1993, the acclaimed Summer Access School has provided over 400 students with a history of disrupted education with the chance of going to university. The course, co-ordinated by Dr John Blicharski, Institute for Education and Lifelong Learning, was singled out as an example of ‘best practice’ at a major national conference on ‘Elitism to Inclusion’.

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