Director's Message  
Director photo
 
How many times have you asked someone for a few tips to help point you in the right direction? As medical school faculty, we have just such a source.Twelve Tips... is an easy-to-access and useful resource for medical school faculty, particularly faculty new to medical school teaching. It is available as a monthly feature in the journal Medical Teacher.  Twelve Tips... provides a brief how-to focusing on topics familiar to basic science and clinical education. Each article is only three to four pages, providing a helpful introduction to the topic as well as references for further reading. It is a good starting place when faced with a problematic educational issue or when looking to enhance an educational experience or learning resource. These articles are presented as 12 tips to help you frame an issue, learn a new concept or point you to other resources.
 
Here is a sample of Twelve Tips... articles that have appeared in the past year:
 
Twelve Tips for...
  • Evaluating educational programs
  • Designing and implementing a learner-centered curriculum
  • Effective team-based learning
  • Introducing e-portfolios with undergraduate students
  • Presenting a clinical skills problem-solving exercise
  • Teaching diversity and embedding it in the medical curriculum
  • Authoring virtual cases
  • Successful e-tutoring using electronic portfolios.
Medical Teacher is available electronically to all MSU faculty through the MSU Library e-resources (http://er.lib.msu.edu/). The Twelve Tips... series was started in 2005, with contributors representing the efforts of talented educators from around the world.
 
Brian Mavis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director
Office of Medical Education Research and Development
College of Human Medicine
Announcements
  • The Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship Program, run by OMERAD for over 30 years, has received funding for two more years from the U.S. Health Services and Resource Administration. The Fellowship brings together academic faculty from family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics to provide them with the skills needed to be successful during an academic career and to assist them in the design, development and dissemination of a scholarly project.
     
  • Primary Care Research and Development Conference Each year fellows in the MSU Primary Care Faculty Development Fellowship Program design, develop, implement and evaluate a major research or curriculum project. We invite you to attend the poster and oral presentations of this years' fellowship class. 
Fellows' Major ProjectPoster Reception 
Thursday, May 20, 2010
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Michigan State University
Radiology Atrium
East Lansing, Michigan
Fellows' Major Project Oral Presentations and Graduation
Friday, May 21, 2010
8:00 am - 2:30 pm
Michigan State University
Kellogg Center, Red Cedar Room
East Lansing, Michigan
 
The oral presentations will be reviewed by two national leaders in medical education.  A complete list of this years fellows' Major Project topics can be found at:  www.omerad.msu.edu/fellowship.
 
If you are interested in attending, please RSVP by email.(There will be a conference registration fee of $35.00 for the Friday session.) For more information, contact William Anderson, william.anderson@hc.msu.edu or Donna Mulder, mulder@msu.edu or 517-432-8722.
  • Drs. Brian Mavis, OMERAD Director, and Christopher Reznich, OMERAD Associate Professor, have chapters in the newly published text "An Introduction to Medical Teaching" (Springer, 2010).  Dr. Mavis contributed a chapter on Assessing Student Performance, and Dr. Reznich a chapter on Designing a Course. The text was edited by Drs. William Jeffries and Kate Hugget of Creighton University.
     
    It has already received one review on Amazon.com: "Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks! This book is very helpful in developing new teaching skills for established educators. I would especially recommend it to my junior colleagues."
  • Screencasting and Podcasting with Camtasia on April 20, 4:00pm-6:00pm in A-211 East Fee. Learn how to use Camtasia Studio to quickly and easily create videos that meets the needs of todayıs medical students. This hands-on seminar will be an introduction to creating lectures or other course content to be made available to students online (as a screencast) or on-the-go (Podcast). To register for these workshops, email us at omerad@msu.edu. Enrollment is limited to 18.
Spotlight
The CHM Outcomes Database and Report 
 
The CHM Outcomes Report provides a statistical overview of CHM's students, alumni and the College's progress towards achieving its educational goals. The report is based on data from the CHM outcomes database, which comprises a comprehensive longitudinal data set describing CHM students beginning with their medical school application, through surveys and tracking data on their careers as physicians. The outcomes database contains largely complete information dating back to students matriculating approximately 20 years ago.  
 
The Outcomes Report is designed to provide a readily assessable summary of key statistical information that can answer the majority of the questions that arise concerning our students, their academic performance, perspective on CHM's educational programs and careers after graduation. In addition, OMERAD's evaluation group is available to perform custom analyses using the outcomes database to answer questions not directly addressed in the Outcomes Report.
 
The information in the outcomes database and Report comes from a variety of sources both external to and from within the college. These include: 
  • American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) database
  • CHM admission files
  • The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) matriculation questionnaire
  • CHM student academic performance records
  • US Medical Licensure Examination (USMLE) scores
  •  National Residency Match Program (NRMP) results
  • AAMC graduate questionnaire
  • A series of three surveys developed by OMERAD:
    • Survey of residency directors of CHM graduates (with permission) during their first year of residency
    • Survey of graduates 2 years after graduation focusing mainly on their perceptions of the CHM educational program
    • Survey of graduates 6 and 10 years after graduation focusing mainly on their practices.
  • AAMC Graduate Medical Education Tracking System (graduate and post-graduate training information)
  • The American Medical Association Physician Masterfile (practice profile)
The Outcomes Report is organized into three major sections: Admissions/Matriculation, MD Educational Program and Post-Graduation. Where possible the report provides comparison data based on all US medical schools. The report is generally updated semi-annually at the end of each semester and published in January and June. Most individual tables are updated once a year, although updates of the AAMC Graduate Medical Education Tracking System and the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile are only obtained every few years.
 
Please contact John Radford at john.radford@hc.msu.edu or call 517-353-2037 Ext 221 if you would like to obtain a copy of the CHM Outcomes Report.  If you are involved in a CHM educational program and need statistical information on CHM students that is not contained in the Outcomes Report, please contact David Solomon at dsolomon@msu.edu or call 517-353-2037 Ext 223.
B-CLR
Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials freely available in the public domain for use or repurposing. These materials include:
  • Learning objects (quizzes, crossword puzzles, flashcards, animations, etc.) 
  • Audio and audiovisual lectures
  • Images
  • Sounds and music
  • Entire course content and open courseware
  • Collections of journal articles and institutional repositories
  • Textbooks
OERs in Medical Education
There are repositories of OERs for medical education. The two largest are MedEdPORTAL and HEAL.
 
 
MedEdPORTAL is a free online peer-reviewed publication service provided by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in partnership with the American Dental Education Association (ADEA). MedEdPORTAL was designed as a repository for medical and oral health teaching materials, assessment tools and faculty development resources. All copyright and patient privacy issues are addressed during the submission process, so users around the globe can download and utilize any and all of the published resources for educational purposes without legal infringements (authors retain their original copyrights and indicate how others may use them). While MedEdPORTAL's primary audiences include health educators and learners around the globe, it is open and available for free to the general public. Users can access quality, peer-reviewed teaching material and assessment tools in both the basic and clinical sciences.
 
MedEdPORTAL is being used by all 143 US and Canadian AAMC member medical schools and over 1,000 teaching hospitals, international schools, and other health education institutions in over 20 countries.
 
Publishing in MedEdPORTAL
 
If you have worked hard to create a great educational resource and are ready to share it, you may consider publishing your medical or health sciences content using MedEdPORTAL.

From its conception MedEdPORTAL was designed to serve as a prestigious publishing venue through which educators may disseminate their educational works. Structured like a traditional print-based journal, MedEdPORTAL:
  • Maintains an editor and an editorial board.
  • Follows a peer review policy that mirrors practices employed by established biomedical print journals.
  • Employs a rigorous peer review process based on accepted standards of scholarship using invited expert reviewers to conduct all reviews.

An educational resource successfully peer-reviewed and published through MedEdPORTAL is considered a publication and is comparable to a peer-reviewed research paper published through a reputable print-based journal. Authors who publish through MedEdPORTAL benefit from the AAMC's authority and credibility, and have access to an audience drawn from its broad membership. Publications in MedEdPORTAL are considered compelling scholarly contributions suitable for use to support promotion and tenure decisions. For more information regarding MedEdPORTAL and educational scholarship, review the MedEdPORTAL Educational Scholarship Guides.  

 
HEAL is the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE) digital library and is another useful digital repository that allows medical educators to discover, download, and re-use over 22,000 medical education resources. The IAMSE and the co-directors of the Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) have been working together to further the development of HEAL to become a dynamic, user-centered digital environment to allow medical educators to share and discuss teaching resources and methods. This is being accomplished through the incorporation of key characteristics of Web 2.0 technologies, including user reviews of resources and user tagging (searchable keywords) of resources.
 
What is the difference between the types of resources published in HEAL and MedEdPORTAL?  
 
HEAL publishes images, video clips, animations, presentations and audio files that support healthcare education. These are typically objects that can be used in a variety of presentations across multiple disciplines. MedEdPORTAL typically publishes more complete, stand-alone resources such as tutorials, virtual patients, simulation cases, lab guides, videos, podcasts and assessment tools.
 
HEAL resources are "tagged" when added to the HEAL database, which allows users who search with those terms (tags) to easily find the resources authors submitted. HEAL features a "Top User Tags cloud" which shows the most widely used tags in the HEAL database. In addition to the tag cloud, the "Top 10 Resources"--those resources with the highest ratings--are displayed on the front page.
 
To submit an object to HEAL, go to the HEAL home page and click on Submitting to HEAL.
 
To find out more about B-CLR (free) consultation services to CHM faculty, please contact the B-CLR Manager Geraud Plantegenest at: plantege@msu.edu. You may also visit us on the web at http://omerad.msu.edu/bclr/index.php
CHM Program Evaluation
CHM Mission Focuses on Health Care Needs and Workforce Diversity
 
While all US medical schools engage in teaching, biomedical research and health care delivery, the institutional missions of medical schools vary, with each placing different emphases on these activities. The Medical School Missions Management Tool (MSMMT) was developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges as a means of providing medical school leadership benchmarks for the core functions and outcomes of medical schools.  The MSMMT is based on information derived from multiple sources, and summarizes outcomes over multiple years.
 
One of the organizing themes of the 2009 Medical School Missions Management Tool was graduating a workforce that will address national health care priorities. Based on self-report data from CHM graduates of 1994 through 1998, CHM placed above the 50th percentile in three of the four indicators reported: primary care, in-state practice and practice in rural areas. These data reaffirm our historic commitment to primary care and serving the people.  
 
 

 
The 2009 missions management tool also compared CHM to other medical schools with regards to preparing a diverse physician workforce.  Four indicators were reported: two related to the diversity of CHM graduates and two related to the diversity of CHM faculty.  The data were aggregated from 2002 through 2007, and show that CHM was above the 50th percentile on all four measures.  These data provide independent evidence of our continuing commitment to enhancing the diversity of CHM, as well as our relative success in comparison to other US medical schools.
 
 

Faculty Development
Videoconferencing
 
Do you need to travel somewhere to meet with someone, or to teach something, or to attend a course yourself? Do you have time to do this? Do you have the money to do this? If not, consider videoconferencing instead.
 
Videoconferencing allows people in two or more locations to see and talk with each other in real time, using two-way video and audio technology. Yes, the technology to do this can be expensive, but on the other hand, there is technology you may already have in your office or house that will let you videoconference from your desktop. All it takes at a minimum is:
  • a computer
  • an internet connection
  • a modern web browser (the latest version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
  • a microphone (usually built in to computers) and
  • web videoconferencing software that MSU employees can use for free
MSU has chosen Adobe's Acrobat Connect as the desktop videoconferencing solution for all of campus. Acrobat Connect can be used to conduct face-to-face meetings, present lectures, give case presentations, give oral examinations, consult with colleagues, and present research conferences. In an Acrobat Connect meeting you can give a slide presentation, share applications and documents for group review and editing, take online polls, chat, and share whiteboards for brainstorming.
 
If you want to use Acrobat Connect to its full potential, you will need the specifications listed above plus a high speed internet connection and a web camera.
 
In order to manage and create new meetings you need to set up a Connect account through MSU Academic Technology Services (http://ats.msu.edu/organization/computing/instructional-systems/). Anyone on the web can participate in a Connect meeting if they are given the URL for that meeting. And since meeting rooms are persistent, you can use the meeting URL any time you need to meet. Meetings can also be recorded and made available to anyone who could not participate in the meeting.
 
OMERAD provides seminars on using Acrobat Connect. Contact John Williamson at wmsonj@msu.edu for information. 
 
In This Issue
Spotlight
B-CLR
CHM Program Evaluation
Faculty Development
 
Hot Off the Press
New publications by OMERAD faculty:
 
An Introduction to Medical Teaching 
 
 
Chapters Authors: Mavis, B,
Reznich CB.   Springer, 2010 
 
See more info. 
 
 
Resources
 
A Medical Education listserv maintained by OMERAD.

MEO is a peer-reviewed international
Open Access journal for disseminating information on the education and training of  physicians and other health care professionals.
 
Click on the link to view past issues of our newsletter
 
Medical Education Scholarship Group
Meets 1st Wednesday of each month in room A216 East Fee Hall from 1:30pm-3:00pm
For questions about this group contact Dr.  Mavis: mavis@msu.edu
 
OMERAD Technology Center (OTC) 
Units within the College of Human Medicine interested in sponsoring faculty and/or staff development programs in support of education and scholarship may request use of the room.
 
The OTC is located in A211 East Fee Hall.
For questions about the OTC contact John Williamson: wmsonj@msu.edu
 
 
 
Contact  Us
For questions about this newsletter, please contact us at:
VitalSignsNews 
 
Visit our website for more information:

 
 
 
The Office of Medical Education Research and Development is a unit within the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University. Its mission is to improve medical education and related service programs through evaluation and research consultation, relevant instruction, and programs of faculty development.
 
Established in 1966, OMERAD is the oldest continuously operating office of medical education in the United States.
 

A-202 East Fee Hall
East Lansing, Michigan 48824
http://omerad.msu.edu