Academic Project Gallery

This gallery illustrates some of the educational projects and ways the Academic Technology Services group has helped faculty integrate technology into their curriculum.

If you’re interested in integrating technology into your curriculum please feel free to contact us for a consultation. 

 

 

AAMC Project

At the request of the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Department of Behavioral Sciences at NEOUCOM, Academic Technology Services directed and produced the DVD entitled "Medical Specialty Preference Inventory: Strategies for Administration and Counseling."

 

The DVD and accompanying materials provide a training workshop for medical school academic advisors on how use an interest inventory during counseling sessions to help students select a medical specialty. 
 
The DVD was sent to the Deans of all USA medical schools with a cover letter encouraging them to continue to support Careers in Medicine projects at their schools and asking them to give the DVD to advising and counseling staff.
 
Sections of the DVD are streamed on the AAMC Careers in Medicine website.  This allows advisors who use the inventory on the website to learn more about its proper use.
 
Feedback from those who view the DVD continues to be superb.

 

 

 

The Academic Technology Services staff worked with Anatomy professor Jon Walro to produce several web based projects which are incorporated in the Human Structure in Pharmacy and Human Development and Structure courses.  This curriculum is used for the students in the first year of Pharmacy and Medical school. 

 

The Virtual Microscope

Concurrent with the development of a new integrated medical school curriculum, the Human Development and Structure (HDS) course transitioned from using microscopes and glass slides of human tissues to an intranet-based virtual microscopy program. This program, which uses digital scans of organs and tissues, allows students to pan across images and to magnify pertinent structures.  The advantages of this system are that student view the best examples of structures and that they can access these images both on and off-campus via the internet.

The Academic Technology Services group researched viable options available to Dr. Walro for creating a digital microscope and served as a technical liaison with the Zeiss company responsible for the digitization and software development.  ATS provided technical assistance in setting up student views, linking the system into the course management system and setting up student accounts and roles within the system.  

 

Electron Micrographs

The HDS course uses scanning and transmission electron micrographs of organelles and other subcellular structures to augment lecture materials for the teaching of cell biology. After receipt of copyright permission, electron micrographs were scanned, linked to a caption and stored in a folder on AIMS, NEOUCOM’s course management system, for access by students.

The Academic Technology Services staff assembled the micrographs into a web album utilizing Adobe Photoshop arranging images alphabetically and adding legends and links to scans which were enlarged for full screen viewing.

 

 

 

Pharmacy Preceptor Orientation and Training

This online distance education course was developed by the Academic Technology Services group in conjunction with the Office of Continuing Education to provide online orientation and training to area pharmacists, who will be providing, Pharmacist Patient Care Experiences (PPCE) to first year pharmacy students.  These site visits take place during the winter and spring of the first year in the professional curriculum. The primary goal of the first year PPCE site visits is for the student to gain exposure to a variety of practice settings and to begin the process of professional orientation to attitudes, values and behaviors expected in pharmacy practice. Pharmacists assist students in acquiring very basic skills in pharmacy practice and professionalism. Teaching students basic pharmacy practice skills, assigning them meaningful tasks and modeling the best in professionalism and ethical behavior. 

This distance education course provides the pharmacist preceptors the flexibility to complete this requirement online at their convenience.

Academic Technology Services staff created the website which incorporates CSS designed web pages, an electronic survey and produced the streaming lecture video.

 

CD/DVD-Rom Project

Human Development and Structure Laboratory Review – DVD

One of the educational goals for medical students at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy is to engage in more independent study and become lifelong learners.  A method to facilitate this goal is to organize gross anatomy laboratory materials into chapters on a DVD to provide convenient accessibility for medical students and create an individualized learning environment.  Three Human Development and Structure Gross Anatomy Review DVDs were designed to review laboratory dissections for use prior to exams.  The future development of instructive materials coordinated with educational technology will promote self study and create lifelong learners. 

Academic Technology Services staff worked with Anatomy professor Dr. Steven Ward and Joseph Bernard to produce the video, create the DVD with subchapters and burn individual DVDs for student use. 

 

 

Brain Mind and Behavior Atlas and DVDs

Brain, Mind, and Behavior (BMB) is a team-taught course that provides an interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach to the understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system and how these interplay in behavior. This course provides a background to understand structural and functional dysfunctions that lead to behavioral functions/dysfunctions. With both basic science and clinical faculty, we try to emphasize both basic science and "clinical" problem solving skills, by including problem sets on many aspects of the course material. Patient presentations, videos, and the essentials of a basic examination of a patient are used to emphasize and re-emphasize both principles of basic neuroscience and lessons that apply to the clinics. Clinical faculty representing Neurology, Psychiatry, Neurosurgery and Family Practice are engaged in the teaching.

Through the help of the Academic Technology Services Group, an Electronic Atlas was developed which provides the student with the ability to study laboratory materials from any remote site that has internet connections.  The Atlas is an extensive collection of images of brains, stained brain sections, magnetic resonance images (MRIs), and tissue sections whose contents are hyperlinked to labels.  This allows and promotes self learning by the students and provides a mechanism to quiz themselves on their progress. In addition, all of the brain structures that are mandatory for the student to learn are presented and highlighted in a Laboratory Study Guide and all highlighted structures are hyperlinked to an extensive glossary for explanation and review.

Additionally, the Academic Technology Group helped in the editing and presentation of a number of DVDs that take the students on a “journey” through the central nervous system.  These videos are posted on the BMB webpage for use by the students from local and remote sites with internet connections.
 
Past, Present and Future DVD
 
Members of Leadership from the Inside Out, a leadership development group of NEOUCOM faculty and staff partnered with Academic Technology Services group to produce the Past, Present and Future DVD.  The content consisted of interwoven interviews from the founding leaders and faculty as well as alumni reflecting on the challenges, accomplishments and positive impact that NEOUCOM has had on healthcare in northeastern Ohio.  The program also looks toward a new era with the addition of the college of pharmacy. 
Academic Technology Services staff directed, videotaped, edited and assisted in writing the script for this production.  
The DVD is used for new employee orientation and Admission activities.

Neuroscience Glossary
 
A large Glossary of neuroscience terms was developed to complement the Laboratory Guide provided for the first year health professional students in the Brain, Mind and Behavior course. Terms that are identified in the Lab Guide that are necessary for the students to learn are highlighted and electronically linked to the Glossary of Neuroscience terms. As the students are studying laboratory materials and utilizing their laptop computers, by “clicking” on the terms in the guide, they can instantaneously access definitions of terms and descriptions of structures in the human brain. This substantially aids the efficiency of laboratory study, promotes independent learning, and enhances the ability of  students with less undergraduate preparation to keep up with the material in the course. 
 

 

Step 4 Clerkship Competency Based Self-Directed Learning Module – Streaming Video

Academic Technology collaborated with the Office of Health Professions Education to integrate lecture capture technology by custom producing didactic lectures that have been traditionally presented by clinical faculty at consortium hospitals.  The goal is to video stream approximately twenty presentations in six clerkships (family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics & gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery).  This initiative academically supports year three medical students who are off campus with rich media content anytime, anywhere to accomplish the following goals:

Efficiency – removes didactic hours from clerkship time to allow more time for direct patient care

Access – offers students opportunities to access information regardless of rotation to enhance their  learning and patient care (ex. patient seen on internal medicine clerkship that presents with abdominal pain that results in an acute abdominal with patient ultimately transferred to the surgical service)

Review and Repetition – provides students with access to the material as many times as needed

Financially – reduces costs by not paying for multiple faculties to present the same lecture at multiple sites.

Faculty Resources – frees up faculty time for other educational activities

Consistency of Content – insures that the same content is presented across a consortium based medical school with multiple teaching sites which can be used for assessment of clinical competency at end of rotation.

 

 

Course Management System, AIMS

The selection process and first year with AIMS: an open-source course management system

One of the major highlights during the 2007 academic year was the coordination and implementation to a new course management system. ATS staff transitioned 42 courses from WebCT course management system to the open source system, Sakai.

Our implementation of this software was branded as AIMS (Academic Integrated Management System). This project was conducted over an 11 month period from October 2006 to August 2007 when the system went live. The project included review of one proprietary and two open source systems. ATS staff reviewed feedback from a working and core group. The core was responsible for reviewing faculty feedback along with evaluating the instructional design of each CMS. Based on feedback and reviews, this group recommended a final selection.

ATS provided application administration and course management development and support for 42 courses transitioned from WebCT in addition to development of 15 new courses in AIMS. Support included enrollment, training, conversion, course home page design, posting of curriculum, and help desk support to over 200 active instructors and course designers.

New iniatives for the upcoming academic year include integration with Banner SIS for automatic enrollment, inclusion of the new Test and Quiz Center, and testing of additional tools for podcasting and clicker systems.


Academic Surveying Software Selection Project

A Selective Software Review of – ASSET (Academic Survey System and Evaluation Tool) & The TLT’s (Teaching, Learning and Technology) Flashlight Online

During the months of May and early June reviewers will begin testing two online systems for replacement of our current survey software, Perseus. Members from Health Professions Education, Student Services, Public Relations and the Offi ce of Career Development and Advising will partner with the staff of Academic Technology Services in order to complete a selective software review of TLT’s online survey tool, Flashlight and Seton Hall’s ASSET tool.

Faculty and staff from any area within the college interested in reviewing the software is welcome to participate (although some accounts may be shared). Emphasis will be placed on academic surveying needs for NEOUCOMP’s curricular evaluation and assessment.

For more information about each tool please visit the following web sites:

ASSET
http://technology.shu.edu/page/ASSET!OpenDocument TLT’s Flashlight Tool
http://www.tltgroup.org/ 

Labs Online

Medical students in Doctoring 3 (M2 year) utilize the computer program, “Labs Online”, to request and obtain lab results for standardized patients they interview as part of the course.    Students conduct an interview with a standardized patient in the Wasson Center.  Upon completion of the interview, students conduct research, complete an assessment and plan, and select lab tests they would like to order for their patient.  Using the “Labs Online” program, students select their lab tests and then receive results.  Students then incorporate those results to develop their revised assessment and plan.  In one interview, students go back to the exam room to give the patients the “results” of their tests.

Students’ interviews, medical write-ups, selection of diagnostic tests and clinical reasoning are subsequently reviewed in small groups with physicians.

The “Labs Online” program mimics real test ordering in that any test is available to the students to order.  Students will receive results for every test ordered.  This process allows us to assess clinical reasoning skills and the ability to act on information gathered during simulated patient interviews.  In this exercise students are also asked to develop an initial plan, and adapt the plan to address pertinent laboratory findings, further mimicking the real life practice of medicine.