Category: Faculty Partner Project

Gamification, or the use of learning design coupled with game mechanics and logic, has been shown to be an engaging and useful strategy in the classroom. An escape room is just one example of gamification, and has been utilized across health profession students to promote collaboration and problem-solving. Through virtual experiential learning and team collaboration students are able to follow “Zack’s journey” and compete against the clock, and each other, in this virtual clinical application experience of didactic coursework.  

This session will describe the development, implementation, and outcomes (student satisfaction and engagement) of a virtual escape room incorporating a complex patient case for Doctor of Physical Therapy students. Participants will leave with the knowledge and resources of how to create a similar project in their own classrooms. 

Learning Objectives: 

• Describe the development, implementation, and outcomes of a virtual escape room 
• Identify how to create a similar project in one’s own classroom

Co-Presenter

Emmy award winning Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was Netflix’s first interactive movie that allowed the viewer to choose the movie’s storyline.  Like the popular Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 1970’s, Bandersnatch created multiple paths within the storyline based on the choices selected by the viewer. The question became, can we create an eLearning module based on the framework of Bandersnatch?

It was a question posed by a College of Pharmacy faculty member who wanted to reimagine their lecture on therapeutic medication for schizophrenia diagnosis. Bandersnatch’s creative layout and extensive branching scenarios provided the ideal format for a schizophrenia patient case study, and Articulate Storyline was the only authoring tool powerful enough to make this idea come to life.

The simulated case study follows the patient, PJ, through multiple medication timelines.  Similar to Bandersnatch, the student chooses which medication to prescribe PJ, and therefore chooses their own individual learning path.  Much of the module branching originates from the virtual pharmacy in which the student has six medications to prescribe to the patient.  Once a selection is made, the student travels down the education path.

Throughout the education path the student learns about the prescribed medication, answers questions, participates in interactions, and discovers common medication side-effects.  The side-effects ultimately overwhelm PJ, and the learner is forced to return to the virtual pharmacy slide to choose another medication for the patient.  Intricate triggers are integrated within the module forcing the student to learn about, and exhaust, all medication options until the correct medication appears on the pharmacy shelf thereby proving the ending path of the case simulation.

The complicated branching scenario in the eLearning module includes over 80 slides, 40 layers, 35 interactions, 20 variables, over 100 triggers, and a result slide that captures the student’s choices along the way.  Additionally, all the representative artwork integrated within the design was created by individuals living with schizophrenia.

In this session we will review the creative and design process that begun with generic PowerPoint themed slides supplied by the SME and discuss how the content was reimagined and retooled to be an engaging eLearning module student experience.

Co-presenter.

Recent prohibition of large group meetings has impacted all of us in academia causing the cancellation of conferences, symposia, college- and department-level faculty and staff meetings, etc. These current restraints have prompted us to think outside the box when it comes to the standards related to Scientific Poster Presentations.

As an IPE student at the COMP-NW campus, the final activity is an in-person scientific poster display presentation.  This is a group assignment in which 252 students from 4 colleges are organized into 28 different groups, and given a recent public health topic to research and present in poster-form.  As you can imagine, social-distancing has caused us to rethink how this activity can be completed given our new proximity constraints.

In an effort to maintain the project requirements, given our current social-distancing circumstances, CETL has developed a Virtual Poster Presentation forum.  During this session we will discuss the process of how this idea went from design to concept to creation.  Come see a real-world hot-off-the-presses implementation and hear about how it was done and lessons learned.

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

•  Describe how website and video conferencing technologies can be utilized  to  present student work to a wide audience.
• Identify some of the advantages of a virtual setting and some of its pitfalls.
• Engage WesternU IT and CETL staffs to create their own virtual poster presentation.

Co-presenter.

Electronic learning (e-learning) is gaining popularity due to technology trends, learner preferences, and evident need for curricula to be able to adapt to changing world conditions. Passive e-learning methods such as recorded Zoom lectures can be used in an emergency, although are far from ideal e-learning tools.

Interactivity in e-learning exercises changes the level of engagement students have with e-learning materials, which in turn can influence learning. In this session we describe the instructional design process of developing a branched e-learning interactive simulation for schizophrenia therapeutics and summarize course evaluation feedback pertinent to the branched e-learning simulation.

Learning Objectives:

1. Differentiate types of e-learning based upon levels of interactivity including basic (passive), intermediate (limited interactivity), and complex (branched simulations)
2. Describe instructional design process of branched e-learning simulation
3. Summarize course evaluation feedback pertinent to the branched e-learning simulation

Co-presenter.

This session will introduce you to a PBL game-changing format utilizing Articulate Storyline. Standard written medical cases studies were transitioned into e-modules allowing for better assessment of the student’s critical thinking and decision-making skills through case selection interactions.

The idea was to take the traditional case-based learning method and convert the model into a case scenario to be presented in an online environment, incentivizing correct answers and disincentivizing incorrect answers. This gamification pedagogy helps students to understand that in real-world scenarios not all diagnostics are necessary or appropriate and therefore their choices should be well thought out and intentional. The e-modules challenges learners to engage in decision-making that mirrors the clinical setting. The ending goal of the CBL e-module is to provide appropriate and cost-effective healthcare to the patient.

In this session, the presenters will discuss the e-module case study development process from planning to implementation.  During the session the audience will gain access to the e-module and experience the case via their tablet, mobile device, or wi-fi enabled laptop.  Group discussion about the Articulate Storyline implementation will commence and participants will get to see and learn about the structure of the e-module design.  Utilizing an online case development template, the audience will work in small groups to begin to develop their own case during the session.

Upon completion of this session audience members will be able to:

• -Describe how traditional medical case-based learning can be converted into an online e-learning module within a blended learning environment.
• -Identify how Articulate Storyline can be used to develop online e-modules for medical case-based learning.

*NOTE: Please bring a laptop to fully participate in the session