A client of ours recently approached to us with an interesting challenge.  How could they take the best of a process to improve a learning process on to the Web, while at the same time ensure that both the measurement of comptencies and the dialogue between teacher and student were captured?

Well, I am delighted to finally blog on this project.  We've been keeping this project under wraps because for a while we were not certain if the pilot launch would go ahead on the originally scheduled July 1 deadline.  We will be meeting this Friday, where the client will make the decision about the July 1 launch.  However, this project has provided a clear reminder that the use of any technology should be founded upon an understanding of what you do (the process), what information you need to do what you do (information in relation to the process), and the objective proof of success (the measurement of process performance). 

The attraction of this project, and the client, was that from the very beginning they had a clear sense of what needed to happen process wise.  In fact, they had spent many months considering the current learning process.  To set the stage I should provide some context.

The client is in fact a department within the University of Alberta.  They are charged with overseeing the residency of Physicians.  As projects come this is about as "high-stakes" as it gets.  The result of this project will have a significant impact upon the way in which Physicians are evaluated prior to licensing and will influence the quality of Physicians that go into practice in Alberta and, to some extent, Canada.  Needless to say we are very proud to be able to help with such a challenge.

What was most intriguing was the work done prior to our arrival.  The team was clear that medical education throughout the world had some gaps.  In their particular case they realized that most importantly that there was no body of evidence collected around the competencies of the Resident (learning Physician).  The experts (Advisors/Preceptors) would make observations informally but these observations were not tracked.  In addition, no record of feedback and conversation was kept.  This has been the way things have been for many years apparently.

The team considered their own situation and also did some benchmarking against the efforts of other medical education institutions throughout the world.  Many peer organizations were struggling with the same challenge.  A couple of efforts had been specifically made in various parts of the world to date.  One particular example had the learners keeping a log of their efforts on tablet PCs.  But the challenge there was that the body of evidence was not clear and that it was just a monologue (not a capture of the dialogue between teacher and learner).  The team felt that this did not quite hit the mark for them. 

And so they came up with the idea of building on something called a 'Field Note', a piece of paper where the learner or teacher could capture an observation.  Field Notes would then be grouped in stacks of competencies.  These stacks would be used to support the learning feedback loop between the teacher and learner, and so support the assessment process by providing a body of evidence around competencies.

However, the challenge with such a paper system are many.  And this is where Collaboration Consulting Inc. came in.  The client had happened upon a presentation where we explained our focus on process and people before collaborative technology.  They approached us and indicated that our approach to solving collaboration challenges appealed.  We met to discuss their challenge and it was not long before we were engaged by them to solve the challenge of taking the paper field note into an electronic format.

I will save the details for another blog once we launch the pilot and collect some performance metrics, but I will share the following key points:

• The clarity around the process made this the ideal project.  It is a very powerful foundation to build an electronic collaborative solution when everyone is clear about what people do
• We have spent only 75 hours so far in over two months of project duration to build the solution.  The project is dwarfed in terms of cost and time when compared to other investments in electronic approaches.  We anticipate an outstanding ROI
• We are leveraging SharePoint's out of the box functionality to make the electronic field note system available to Physicians through their PDAs.  In particular, this addresses feedback from Physicians during development (or I should say, configuration) that at the time they want to make an observation they are not at a computer but in the hospital or offsite.  However, they always have their PDA/Blackerry with them.  This particular feature is beyond the original project scope but I suspect could prove to be one of the most significant elements of the project's success when all is said and done
• When compared to other existing efforts to take medical processes into an electronic format, the cost and duration of this effort will be insignificant against any other comparable effort that we are aware of
• And most interestingly of all, this approach could be replicated to help answer the riddle of tracking competencies in any field of learning (at least if feedback from third party observers is any indication)

And now we await the coming weeks.  If the initial signs of feedback from the field are any indication the results of this project will be worth examination (no pun intended).

A client of ours recently approached to us with an interesting challenge.  How could they take the best of a process to improve a learning process on to the Web, while at the same time ensure that both the measurement of comptencies and the dialogue between teacher and student were captured?

Well, I am delighted to finally blog on this project.  We've been keeping this project under wraps because for a while we were not certain if the pilot launch would go ahead on the originally scheduled July 1 deadline.  We will be meeting this Friday, where the client will make the decision about the July 1 launch.  However, this project has provided a clear reminder that the use of any technology should be founded upon an understanding of what you do (the process), what information you need to do what you do (information in relation to the process), and the objective proof of success (the measurement of process performance). 

The attraction of this project, and the client, was that from the very beginning they had a clear sense of what needed to happen process wise.  In fact, they had spent many months considering the current learning process.  To set the stage I should provide some context.

The client is in fact a department within the University of Alberta.  They are charged with overseeing the residency of Physicians.  As projects come this is about as "high-stakes" as it gets.  The result of this project will have a significant impact upon the way in which Physicians are evaluated prior to licensing and will influence the quality of Physicians that go into practice in Alberta and, to some extent, Canada.  Needless to say we are very proud to be able to help with such a challenge.

What was most intriguing was the work done prior to our arrival.  The team was clear that medical education throughout the world had some gaps.  In their particular case they realized that most importantly that there was no body of evidence collected around the competencies of the Resident (learning Physician).  The experts (Advisors/Preceptors) would make observations informally but these observations were not tracked.  In addition, no record of feedback and conversation was kept.  This has been the way things have been for many years apparently.

The team considered their own situation and also did some benchmarking against the efforts of other medical education institutions throughout the world.  Many peer organizations were struggling with the same challenge.  A couple of efforts had been specifically made in various parts of the world to date.  One particular example had the learners keeping a log of their efforts on tablet PCs.  But the challenge there was that the body of evidence was not clear and that it was just a monologue (not a capture of the dialogue between teacher and learner).  The team felt that this did not quite hit the mark for them. 

And so they came up with the idea of building on something called a 'Field Note', a piece of paper where the learner or teacher could capture an observation.  Field Notes would then be grouped in stacks of competencies.  These stacks would be used to support the learning feedback loop between the teacher and learner, and so support the assessment process by providing a body of evidence around competencies.

However, the challenge with such a paper system are many.  And this is where Collaboration Consulting Inc. came in.  The client had happened upon a presentation where we explained our focus on process and people before collaborative technology.  They approached us and indicated that our approach to solving collaboration challenges appealed.  We met to discuss their challenge and it was not long before we were engaged by them to solve the challenge of taking the paper field note into an electronic format.

I will save the details for another blog once we launch the pilot and collect some performance metrics, but I will share the following key points:

• The clarity around the process made this the ideal project.  It is a very powerful foundation to build an electronic collaborative solution when everyone is clear about what people do
• We have spent only 75 hours so far in over two months of project duration to build the solution.  The project is dwarfed in terms of cost and time when compared to other investments in electronic approaches.  We anticipate an outstanding ROI
• We are leveraging SharePoint's out of the box functionality to make the electronic field note system available to Physicians through their PDAs.  In particular, this addresses feedback from Physicians during development (or I should say, configuration) that at the time they want to make an observation they are not at a computer but in the hospital or offsite.  However, they always have their PDA/Blackerry with them.  This particular feature is beyond the original project scope but I suspect could prove to be one of the most significant elements of the project's success when all is said and done
• When compared to other existing efforts to take medical processes into an electronic format, the cost and duration of this effort will be insignificant against any other comparable effort that we are aware of
• And most interestingly of all, this approach could be replicated to help answer the riddle of tracking competencies in any field of learning (at least if feedback from third party observers is any indication)

And now we await the coming weeks.  If the initial signs of feedback from the field are any indication the results of this project will be worth examination (no pun intended).