Examples of My Work

This project developed functional and technical requirements for LMSs supporting the NextGenMD curriculum, which then enabled us to better formally evaluate available LMS solutions. Read the full description.

This project describes the change management strategy for ongoing maintenance of the curriculum map in NextGenMD courses at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Read the full description.

Ally is a product for accessibility to ensure content is accessible to all people, regardless of disability. A pilot was implemented in fall 2019 at the University of Illinois Chicago which included instructional designers, faculty, and students to test it out. Ally uses machine learning algorithms to check uploaded documents and makes suggestions for how to improve them. Read the full description.

For the Information Technology in Academic Medicine conference in May/June 2023, I took part in two panel discussions. One of the panel discussions is on DEIA (or sometimes listed as IDEA) efforts at our institutions. I present on two specific resources we provide at our institution: VisualDx and Articulate modules – highlighting the DEIA aspects and how the resources positively impact our community. Read the full description.

We identified a gap in the curricular material we provide to students as pre-work for interactive sessions. Most pre-work has been passive readings and watching videos. Theories for multimedia design, andragogy, and cognitive load posit that adults retain information better if there are ways for them to practice what they have learned. The evidence shows that interactive learning is better than passive learning. Articulate is one of the top-line resources for interactive module development. The college purchased 10 seats for instructional designers, specific faculty, and multimedia design specialists to use the software package. Read the full description.

Since I arrived at the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) in fall 2013, I have worked closely with our faculty to ensure they are prepared for teaching in different modalities. In the current UICOM curriculum, the number of traditional didactic lectures has been reduced in favor of more interactive teaching modalities. As we want students to come to interactive sessions prepared to participate in their own learning, some of the prep work they are required to do includes readings and videos to watch. For video content, some of them come from Osmosis, others are from YouTube or other sites. Read the full description.

Video content is a part of the delivery system for the medical curriculum at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Live lectures and other activities are typically recorded. Faculty also create short videos on specific topics. The latter is often used as prep work for an upcoming session. There are two lecture capture systems used at UIC, Panopto and Echo360. UICOM uses the latter one. Students can access these recordings at any time for study / review. Read the full description.

The learning management system at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is Blackboard. The university pays Blackboard for cloud storage space. We determined many people across the university do not know how to use the content system that is built into Blackboard. I completed a comprehensive and systematic review of all of the courses for the college of medicine to determine overall course file size and provided training for our staff. Read the full description.

This project came about from multiple angles. The University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) provides students who are about six months away from taking their first board exams a question bank resource with which to study for the board exam. UICOM also provides a co-curricular resource that includes a question bank, thousands of relevant videos and other content to help students study. Faculty use the resource as well by reviewing content within the system and utilizing many of the videos as pre-work for students to complete so they can contribute to interactive class discussions. Read the full description.

In preparation for the redesigned medical school curriculum that debuted in fall 2017, I presented a design mock-up with a colleague from another campus to the faculty and administration to demonstrate how to create connections between various services and products that students, staff, and faculty use. This mock-up was specific to what is called ‘Phase 1’ of the curriculum, which includes the M1 and M2 years. Read the full description.

As I worked with faculty to try different educational technologies for instruction, I thought it might be helpful to create short videos of our faculty describing and demonstrating how they have used educational technologies or applied different teaching modalities. These videos demonstrated to other faculty the challenges and successes in their work as they try out different ways to deliver content to students. It can be challenging to keep the attention of students. Tried and true methods encourage the inclusion of relevant activities to keep the student focused on the material. The methods these faculty implemented shows their ingenuity in focusing student attention. Read the full description.

After the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM) went through a process to redesign the curriculum, new methods of delivering content have been introduced. For example, faculty tended to rely heavily on didactics / lectures that do not naturally promote student involvement in their own learning. While there was some faculty / professional development (I prefer the term upskilling) that took place, I thought it might be useful if we had a website where we could house best-practices and teaching tips.. Read the full description.