Educational Research Series for Clinical Faculty

The design ask here was to translate complex educational research topics from a synchronous to asynchronous format. The project sponsor, a research office that supports clinical faculty at a college of medicine, had traditionally offered a series of Zoom-based educational research webinars over the Spring semester. They wanted to offer greater flexibility to the learners, who are often overburdened from juggling clinical and teaching duties. To help manage the high intrinsic cognitive load, we decided to create short, animated videos with an avatar narrator providing the didactic content. The videos were shared in a learning managements system and followed by quizzes to provide opportunities for active learning.

SME Content

I worked with two researchers and another instructional designer on this project. The researchers acted as subject matters and prepared simple PowerPoints with content for each topic. The three videos below, made in Vyond, are ones I created from these PowerPoints. I feel they especially help the learners by providing strong visualizations related to the often abstract concepts found in quantitative survey design.

Basic Concepts of Survey Design

This video focused heavily on the concept of response rate, so I relied on a pictogram comprising 100 people icons. I could then easily manipulate the pictogram chart with color to show an increase or decrease in response rate.

Survey Flow

The topic of this video was on creating a strong survey flow. I used simple shapes (i.e., circles, squares, triangles, and hearts) to represent different concepts addressed in different survey questions. With this representation, I was able reduce the amount of text on the screen that would be inevitable by showing actual survey items.

Survey Length

Survey length is strongly tied to survey completion. To mimic respondents behaviors, I decided to replicate a Likert-type matrix with circles. Then I changed the color of the circles to represent a respondent completing - or not completing - an online survey.

Results

The asynchronous materials, including the videos above on survey design, were piloted with a cohort of clinical faculty during the Spring semester of 2023. Participant comments are provided below.

The videos are informative, clever and well animated. I did not feel overwhelmed by them, and I think their duration is appropriate for the subject matter.

I came across Jaclyn’s work as part of the The Educational Research Series (ERS) of the Educator Development Program (EDP), which is a 11-month program that combines virtual workshops, independent work, and personalized one-on-one consultation services to help faculty learn the research process as it relates to health professions education. As a part of this curriculum, Jaclyn created many videos which were highly helpful in understanding the various stages of educational research. I have gained more knowledge about how to design, and prepare to conduct, my own educational research over the course of the program.

The EDP-ERS videos are just perfect for a busy physician trying to learn about educational research. They are to the point and effective in conveying the key information to gain understanding of the concepts.

The videos that are created as a part of the EDP-ERS curriculum are very effective and efficient in transferring knowledge to the learners. Each video is short addressing a particular concept from a broad topic, making it easier for the learners to be attentive and focused. The material in each video is presented in a very lucid style and it makes the course a fun experience. It is also presented as text after each video for easy reference. Every educator should emulate this style of curriculum design.

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