Introduction
The Office of Educational Affairs provides faculty and staff with technology solutions that support curriculum delivery, assessment, and student engagement. These tools are designed to make teaching more effective, accessible, and efficient across all campuses.
Categories of Tools
- Learning Management: Platforms that organize courses, deliver content, and integrate with other technologies.
- Assessment and Evaluation: Tools for building, delivering, and analyzing exams, as well as tracking curriculum outcomes and course evaluations.
- Instructional Content and Resources: Systems that provide modular learning content, question banks, and supplemental study resources.
- Engagement and Collaboration: Video conferencing, polling, and interactive tools that support active learning and communication.
- Accessibility and Inclusivity: Resources that help faculty ensure course materials meet accessibility standards and provide an inclusive learning environment.
Resources
Articulate Module Best Practices and Guidelines
Articulate is a high-end software package with multiple programs that can help content us to create well-designed interactive web-based modules.
Blackboard Best Practices and Guidelines
Best practices for Blackboard might vary slightly by campus and where there are different programs such as the Rural Health Program. Overall, we strive to maintain comparability of design and user experience for the three campuses.
Box Best Practices and Guidelines
UICOM uses Box (cloud storage) to house all curricular materials. Because there are so many files associated with activities and people from all campuses who need access to these files, it is important to ensure that the structure of Box is easy for everyone to follow.
Delivery of Instructional Content
After you have worked with your colleagues at all three campuses and instructional designers to design instructional content, the next step is to deliver it to our learners.
Design and Development of Instructional Content
We are a multi-campus medical school, which means collaboration is key! For each block, clerkship, and elective course, colleagues at all three campuses work together to create engaging and effective instructional activities.
Echo360 Best Practices and Guidelines
Echo360 is the lecture-capture system that is used by the College of Medicine. We use it to create placeholders for upcoming live activities and to upload previously created video tutorial content, typically created by faculty to be used by students as prep work for an active learning session.
Ensuring Content is Accessible
Accessibility in higher education ensures that any student can access digital content and information regardless of ability or disability. Accessible course content plays a huge role in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), as it removes barriers for every student.
Multimedia Resources
We have identified some helpful information to guide you as you consider what type(s) of multimedia elements you are considering for your needs.
ScholarRx
The College of Medicine uses ScholarRx as a curricular resource which is a repository of high-yield information for Phase 1 students. It also contains question banks for practice answering USMLE-style questions.