Step Up to the Plate! Using Multimedia Content and Game Winning Strategies for Implementation

The working memory, also known as cognitive load, has a limited capacity and course learning materials should avoid overload. There are content development strategies using visual and auditory channels to maximize learner efficiency and minimize distractions for long-term memory development (Clark, Nguyen & Sweller, 2006). For example, diagrams with embedded labels next to the graphic they describe can lower the working memory demand. Multimedia e-learning materials abound and should be designed with sound educational theory (Clark & Mayer, 2011). Guiding this interactive session are two people with a shared interest for using technology to help students learn. One is a faculty member with a passion for assisting students understand complex processes utilizing innovative teaching strategies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The other presenter is an instructional designer with extensive experience creating adult learning in both corporate training and higher education. They will use an entertaining case study approach, based upon their practical experiences, showing how to enhance existing or new course content. Participants will summarize the importance and impact that design can make on a learner’s ability to process large quantities of information more effectively. Exemplars will illustrate best practices that add value to the learner’s experiences

Student Builders of Online Curriculum Content. What Are Their Perceptions and Motivations?

Objective/Purpose: 1. Describe the benefits and challenges of establishing a campus-wide student-centered program to create online curricular content. 2. Gain insight about student perceptions and motivations for becoming curriculum content developers. Need for Innovation: Faculty receive constant encouragement to discover methods for transforming health science instructional materials using active learning. Faculty identify lack of time as the most significant barrier to developing blended and online materials. In 2014, our academic medical center issued a student-centered call for proposals to create online materials for the Interactive E-Learning Program as a means to include students in the curricular change process. By pairing student creators, many of whom are fluent consumers of technology and digital education, with content expert faculty, the program uniquely capitalized on the students desire to contribute with the identified need of faculty for production time. Instructional Methods/Materials Used: The first call for student proposals was conducted in the fall of 2014, with the second in the fall of 2015. The competitive application required the following information: project members, faculty advisors, learning objectives, budget worksheet, description of the proposed module, and implementation plans for the curriculum. Awardees received $1000 per project for project expenses or student stipends. Students developed modules in six months with guidance from faculty advisors using resources available in the campus e-learning studio. Program completion was recognized by a letter of commendation. During the summer of 2016, students from both cohorts took part in a survey to assess their motivations and perceived benefits of participating in the Interactive E-Learning Program. Educational Outcomes: The two calls for proposals resulted in 30 funded student projects covering curricular topics for medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, allied health, and public health. A total of 58 students were involved and worked solo or in groups of 2-4 people. Survey results indicated students were motivated to participate by the desire to contribute to or enhance the curriculum and to develop their own e-learning skills. Students perceived an enhanced relationship with their faculty advisors and increased e-learning skills to be benefits of the program. Students also perceived participation in the program as a positive addition to their CV. Strengths/Areas for Improvement: The energy and creativity with which students approached the modules they designed resulted in many novel projects. The centralized e-learning studio and instructional design staff are strengths of the program, ensuring the modules meet instructional design principles, university branding requirements, copyright guidelines, and accessibility rules. An internal rubric and project checklist provided a guide for development and served as a tool for evaluation and feedback. Areas for improvement include the development of more interprofessional student teams that can lead to content applicable in more than one curriculum (eg professionalism skills, vital signs, medical history, etc). Approaches for identifying opportunities to implement the student-developed materials into courses on campus is also under consideration. Feasibility of Program Maintenance/Transferability: Many health sciences programs are facing curriculum redesign to meet the learning needs of current and future students or are seeking ways to engage students in the learning process. Based on our findings, extending the opportunity to students to become creators in partnership with faculty content experts was highly successful. Students are now more than just learners, but are also demonstrating altruistic behaviors to contribute and enhance curriculum for future students. After initial expenditures are made to acquire the proper software and hardware needed to support a formal e-learning program, the cost of maintaining such equipment is of small consequence when considering the impact of this program for the student developers, their faculty mentors, and the entire campus community

Developing Interactive Curricular Elements with Teams of Faculty, Staff and Students

Students are continually searching for new resources to augment their learning. Online resources have become highly favored, especially by the millennial age group, for convenience, self-paced content, and versatility across learning styles. It has been reported that e-learning platforms are as effective as traditional face-to-face instruction, but may be best utilized when used as an adjunctive resource for teaching psychomotor skills.1,2 In a study about student confidence, results showed an increase in self-efficacy following the use of online learning materials.3 Blended learning, the next generation of web-based education, mixes advances in technology with creative faculty to fuse effective delivery methods that promote student engagement and learning. Re-designing all or portions of a course with a fresh prospective can re-energize faculty and render content more engaging for the learner but development can be hampered by limited time and resources. Our academic health science center launched a strategic initiative in 2013 for interprofessional student and faculty teams to build interactive e-learning modules. This presentation will focus on the significant role of medical and allied health science students in the development of interactive curricular elements, which can save faculty time and resources while enhancing student learning. Through this program, a large interprofessional network of collaborators with varying skill sets was created. The network includes nearly 100 students and faculty members from medical and allied health professions that have created over 50 e-learning projects. The greatest benefits of engaging student-faculty teams as e-learning developers have been the trust and cohesion, resource sharing and brokering of information consistent with the social capital theory. In addition, the high quality of e-modules resulting from the creative use of media-rich content in student designs increased peer engagement. With students as e-learning collaborators, faculty as content experts, and instructional design expertise we increased the production of curricular-based e-learning modules within a budget-friendly model while reducing faculty time required for development. More importantly, many additional modules have been created by teams outside of the formal institutional mechanism, suggesting the widespread adoption of this teaching modality in an expanding network. Regardless of educational trends, faculty who implement a novel learning tool should be aware of the learner’s cognitive load, or working memory, which has a limited capacity. Each module is evaluated using a checklist to examine accessibility and educational design. There are content development strategies using visual and auditory channels to maximize learner efficiency and minimize distractions for long-term memory development.4 The presenters will share an overview of this initiative and practical experience. We will a) describe the resultant network structure and composition of faculty, students and staff involved; b) provide a step-by-step timeline of how the e-learning modules went from a sketch and brainstormed idea to a tangible and useful product and the important role of instructional designers and an interprofessional peer-faculty team, c) share resources used for creation, and d) demonstrate exemplars on topics such as joint examination, the cardiopulmonary system, International Classification of Functioning, scanning a hospital room, and reviewing a medical chart

Development of a Leadership Mindset Scale

The purpose of the study was to construct a Leadership Mindset Scale (LMS) and to assess its reliability and construct validity. Participants were 100 employees in a variety of leadership and non-leadership positions at various organizations in three states. An item and factor analysis on the 13 LMS items led to a scale with 11 items (Cronbach α = .80). A Principal Axis Factor analysis with Promax rotation suggested three factors: Leadership Mindset Teachability (LMS-T), a belief in leadership teachability; Leadership Mindset Improvability (LMS-I), a belief in leadership improvability over time; and Leadership Mindset Predictability (LMS-P), a belief that leadership cannot be predicted at an early age. Convergent validity of LMS-Total and Teachability was evidenced by significant correlations with the implicit theories of intelligence and anxiety scales, and developmental leadership and transactional leadership scales. Divergent validity was evidenced by a non-significant correlation with social desirability. The results suggest that the LMS measures a construct different from those of other leadership scales used in the study. The LMS can be helpful in leadership training programs to promote a growth mindset about the trainability of leadership skills

Interprofessional Education Checklist

The IPE Checklist is a tool for appraising the quality of interprofessional health professions education resources. This IPE checklist was designed to assist educators as they develop and assess the value, relevance and utility of interprofessional resources and educational materials.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/ipe_tools/1000/thumbnail.jp

Impact of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network: Accelerating the Translation of Research Into Practice

The Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) is a thematic network dedicated to accelerating the adoption of evidence-based cancer prevention and control practices in communities by advancing dissemination and implementation science. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Cancer Institute, CPCRN has operated at two levels: Each participating Network Center conducts research projects with primarily local partners as well as multicenter collaborative research projects with state and national partners. Through multicenter collaboration, thematic networks leverage the expertise, resources, and partnerships of participating centers to conduct research projects collectively that might not be feasible individually. Although multicenter collaboration often is advocated, it is challenging to promote and assess. Using bibliometric network analysis and other graphical methods, this paper describes CPCRN’s multicenter publication progression from 2004 to 2014. Searching PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science in 2014 identified 249 peer-reviewed CPCRN publications involving two or more centers out of 6,534 total. The research and public health impact of these multicenter collaborative projects initiated by CPCRN during that 10-year period were then examined. CPCRN established numerous workgroups around topics such as: 2-1-1, training and technical assistance, colorectal cancer control, federally qualified health centers, cancer survivorship, and human papillomavirus. The paper discusses the challenges that arise in promoting multicenter collaboration and the strategies that CPCRN uses to address those challenges. The lessons learned should broadly interest those seeking to promote multisite collaboration to address public health problems, such as cancer prevention and control

[Comment] Redefine statistical significance

The lack of reproducibility of scientific studies has caused growing concern over the credibility of claims of new discoveries based on “statistically significant” findings. There has been much progress toward documenting and addressing several causes of this lack of reproducibility (e.g., multiple testing, P-hacking, publication bias, and under-powered studies). However, we believe that a leading cause of non-reproducibility has not yet been adequately addressed: Statistical standards of evidence for claiming discoveries in many fields of science are simply too low. Associating “statistically significant” findings with P < 0.05 results in a high rate of false positives even in the absence of other experimental, procedural and reporting problems. For fields where the threshold for defining statistical significance is P<0.05, we propose a change to P<0.005. This simple step would immediately improve the reproducibility of scientific research in many fields. Results that would currently be called “significant” but do not meet the new threshold should instead be called “suggestive.” While statisticians have known the relative weakness of using P≈0.05 as a threshold for discovery and the proposal to lower it to 0.005 is not new (1, 2), a critical mass of researchers now endorse this change. We restrict our recommendation to claims of discovery of new effects. We do not address the appropriate threshold for confirmatory or contradictory replications of existing claims. We also do not advocate changes to discovery thresholds in fields that have already adopted more stringent standards (e.g., genomics and high-energy physics research; see Potential Objections below). We also restrict our recommendation to studies that conduct null hypothesis significance tests. We have diverse views about how best to improve reproducibility, and many of us believe that other ways of summarizing the data, such as Bayes factors or other posterior summaries based on clearly articulated model assumptions, are preferable to P-values. However, changing the P-value threshold is simple and might quickly achieve broad acceptance

Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets

Employers structure pay and employment relationships to mitigate agency problems. A large literature in economics documents how the resolution of these problems shapes personnel policies and labor markets. For the most part, the study of agency in employment relationships relies on highly stylized assumptions regarding human motivation, e.g., that employees seek to earn as much money as possible with minimal effort. In this essay, we explore the consequences of introducing behavioral complexity and realism into models of agency within organizations. Specifically, we assess the insights gained by allowing employees to be guided by such motivations as the desire to compare favorably to others, the aspiration to contribute to intrinsically worthwhile goals, and the inclination to reciprocate generosity or exact retribution for perceived wrongs. More provocatively, from the standpoint of standard economics, we also consider the possibility that people are driven, in ways that may be opaque even to themselves, by the desire to earn social esteem or to shape and reinforce identity

Enhancing Your Enhancement Request

Enhancement requests can be challenging. What should you write? How much information should you give? What do you do with your "wish list" requests? This presentation will explain what makes a great (easily understood and broadly impactful) enhancement request