2012 Example MSIS Learning OER Workshops

University of Michigan Medical School Information Services Learning Program occasionally facilitates workshops to build capacity in instructional design, multimedia development, and electronic publishing practices. Each of the workshops will include discussions for teaching and learning strategies that promote active student engagement and student knowledge production. Special emphasis will be devoted to the unique challenges and opportunities confronting educators developing materials and practices for medical, nursing, and other healthcare learners and professionals.

Example workshop topics include:

Curriculum review and visioning workshop
This workshop will bring together instructors to share current processes and learning materials used for targeted topics in their respective departments and institutions. This workshop will provide an opportunity for UMMS faculty to share lessons learned from the educational technologies and OER projects in Michigan and elsewhere in Africa and initiate discussions on how participants can adapt those models to suit their curriculum and institutional context. Exemplary and innovative approaches to developing learning materials and experiences that “flip the classroom” and promote social-cognitive learning will be featured. This workshop will result in a list specific topics to target for OER development and integration.

Materials design and development workshop
During the materials development workshop, instructors, technology support staff, and residents committed to authoring or advising learning materials will gather to develop materials for the previously identified topics. Participants will form project teams and begin to develop the overall purpose, learning outcomes, and structure for each module. This workshop will include an overview of instructional design methods and basic pedagogical principles for creating effective learning aids. The workshop will also include cover information literacy skills in order to find, use, create, adapt, and share educational content under open licenses. In addition, the workshop will introduce authors to simple tools that they can use to create their own cases and instructional materials.

Learning skills development workshop
This workshop will bring together medical students, residents, and instructors involved in the targeted topics to discuss self-directed learning techniques that students may use to guide their use of electronic learning resources. The workshop aims to empowering students to be effective learners and will include a group discussion of how students may strengthen their medical knowledge by developing their own learning materials. UMMS representatives will present a case study of how final-year medical students in an online course have authored instructional materials as class assignments and the types of quality assurance reviews conducted by peers and instructors. The workshop will also include cover information literacy skills in order to find, use, create, adapt, and share educational content under open licenses. In addition, the workshop will introduce students to simple tools that they can use to create their own cases and instructional materials.

Educational scholarship workshop
During this workshop, instructors, technology support staff, and residents will peer review the learning methods that have been collected and created for quality and context within the curriculum. Participants will identify mechanisms to evaluate and improve the quality of the educational materials, and will discuss how contributing learning materials and methods can be a form of educational scholarship. During the workshop, participants will also discuss the policy environment needed for effective use of OER, addressing relevant policies at the faculty, institutional, national, or association level (e.g. remuneration, promotion, intellectual property, quality assurance, etc).