Establishing clinical teaching online with Associate Professor Sonya Moore

Across continents, sports, and classrooms, Associate Professor Sonya Moore has forged a career that blends clinical excellence with online educational innovation, a combination that is now shaping the future of Sports Medicine at the University of Melbourne.

Sonya has always had a love of sport and a keen interest in health, passions that led her into a clinical career in sports and exercise. Her work has taken her from international sporting events such as the Olympics, to treating patients overseas and in Australia, and supporting athletes across a wide range of sports. Yet teaching, general practice, and servicing her community has always been her home base.

The experience and connections gained from her early career led to the opportunities to further her interest in education and design the curriculum for post-graduate university education in sports physiotherapy at the University of Bath. Sport and education were particularly closely tied as Sonya balanced completing a Doctorate in Health and playing in the English Netball Super League.

Sonya brought this breadth of experience to the University of Melbourne as the Master of Sports Medicine Program Co-ordinator, combining her practical and research expertise. She’s also been a pioneer in digital learning at the University, working to design initiatives that have helped progress digital learning practices now embedded within teaching and learning.

In 2015 Sonya led a successful collaborative proposal for Graduate Online Melbourne to design a new wholly online Master of Sports Medicine program, which is the established program she co-ordinates today. She was also awarded a GEM Scott Teaching Fellowship in 2021 to develop a project to bridge the gap between online education and in-person practice to advance clinical skill education. This Fellowship supported a team of clinicians, learning designers and learning technologists to transform pedagogical approaches and shift clinical teaching, which is traditionally taught in-person, to online learning.

Student feedback and continuously improving the student experience is at the core of Sonya’s teaching philosophy and how she approaches online education. Consistent feedback from her students is that the most challenging learning experiences are consistently the most rewarding.

“Students value supportive mentorship and role modelling towards extending themselves to new skills and capabilities which are aligned with recognised career progression. I therefore intentionally design curriculum which aligns with professional industry milestones and recognition.” said Sonya.

Sonya encourages students to embrace challenge, grow through adversity, and explore diverse viewpoints. She believes presenting students with alternative perspectives and constructive conflict fosters richer problem‑solving and deeper critical thinking.

To fuel this curiosity and connection in online classrooms, Sonya shares that it’s important to create an authentic and safe environment.

“Online classrooms are not bound by time, geography or space, so I like to create an environment which contains a diverse range of theory, audio-visual representation and authentic discussion of Sports Medicine practise, possibilities and debacles.”

Within this environment, classes work together to deconstruct scenarios, real or staged, to build real‑world skills and critical decision‑making. Students often draw on their own experiences of health or injury, or media coverage, and Sonya guides them to form evidence‑based opinions grounded in best clinical practice, scholarship and research.

Sonya has collaborated extensively with colleagues to drive her work forward. She notes that collaboration often begins with simple connections and encourages colleagues to reach out and engage.

“Speak to people and have coffee. The best projects begin with conversations that share expertise, land on common curiosity and set about networking collaborative teams with a drive for discovery and growth.”

For those early in their teaching career, Sonya suggests following their passions to uncover areas of curiosity and growth, supported by formal education qualifications that provide skills, confidence and recognised milestones in educational practice.

Recently, Sonya was awarded the University of Melbourne David White Award for Teaching Excellence and the MDHS Award for Sustained Teaching Excellence. She hopes this recognition will help further support innovation in online learning.

“These awards will provide the opportunity to undertake projects which further extend and transform education practice in a range of contexts.” Sonya said.

Alongside teaching Sonya works at a community clinical practice in a multi-disciplinary sports medicine clinic and provides on-field sports physiotherapy services at community, junior and high-performance sporting events. She balances this with her work at the University while caring for four children, finding that clear boundaries help her, especially while working remotely or in different time zones.