OVERVIEW – QUALITY IMPROVEMENT SHOWCASE POSTERS – Every spring, U of Wisconsin-Madison organizes its Quality Improvement Showcase. There are breakout sessions (similar to a traditional conference), but for me the main attraction is always, without fail, the giant poster exhibit space. This is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the improvement(s) I, my team, and my colleagues have collaborated on implementing, and to learn about exciting new ideas others on campus are generously willing to share. I always appreciate getting in touch with people who stop by, and ask questions, interested in what our team does in terms of innovation. I always look forward to encountering new ideas, and getting in touch with people who put them in practice, and figure out if their improvements can somehow be adapted to our environment. Each year, I deliberately submit a poster – having this annual, self-imposed deadline and opportunity is a good motivator, and a reminder that time flies, and yesterday’s innovation was… last year’s showcase. NOTE: The tri-fold badger-red/white poster design used across all QI posters is the preferred template of QI Showcase organizers.
2022 QI Showcase
POSTER ONE is a new idea that is a logical and practical extension of the Course Kick-Off Checklist presented last year. During the onset of the pandemic I developed online (Canvas) training for faculty, to facilitate transition from mostly face-to-face or blended courses to fully-online, remote delivery, this project called GRiT (modified acronym of Getting Ready for Remote Teaching) has served us very well. However, since my team has used this common location to add as-needed / ad-hoc content to GRiT, it has become too large, and too much info. for most faculty. This year, for the spring semester 2022, I plan to adapt GRiT content so that it works in conjunction with Course Kick-Off Checklist. Because faculty tell us in advance what technology tools they are (or are not) going to use in their SP22 courses, we can customize training for specific faculty members: if someone tells us they are not using exams/quizzes, it makes no sense to ask them to review the module (with a 12 min. screencast) that explains how we can assist them in developing exams, and how to use automated proctoring in Honorlock – they do not need it. Similarly, only the faculty who declared they plan to record videos for their courses need to know about scheduling a studio appointment, or using other options we support (mobile kit, or “rolling studio” we can bring to their office).
POSTER TWO is a re-visiting and a re-start of our previously developing “tradition” that got interrupted by the pressures of the pandemic: the Teaching with Technology Book Club (for faculty). This year, responding to faculty interest, and SoN mission statement, I proposed reading together What Inclusive Instructors Do: Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching, which will also offer me the opportunity to collaborate with other SoN colleagues (Assoc. Dean for Faculty Development and SoN Director of Diversity and Inclusion) in planning and facilitating our meeting sessions.
2021 (Virtual) Showcase Poster
In 2021, despite of, or perhaps even specifically to mitigate the pressures caused by the pandemic and the switch to mostly online mode of teaching with the implementation support of our team, I introduced two small but important process innovations: the first (low-cost mobile video toolkit) was created to address newly emerged need for clinical faculty to quickly record and produce videos for clinical courses (for example, short demos of clinical skills), away from the studio, and often without actually being on campus – see poster 1 (top), below. The second, was a result of a slowly-developing idea that matured over the last couple of years (we started with a paper form and a face-to-face meeting; that approach worked well, but was too consuming for faculty and for us), to eventually become the 95%-automated solution we use now for our courses – see poster 2 (bottom), below.
The second innovation (poster 2, below), roughly inspired by my re-reading of Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto, was the creation of a workflow that encourages faculty to complete an online adaptive Course Kick-Off Checklist that allows our team to determine the needs for the course, and helps us plan our workloads and hourly student employee support needs: from the initial set-up each course requires, to planning our semester workloads depending on faculty’s anticipated needs for media production, captioning/accommodations needs, to assistance with creating complex assessments (for example longer exams that extensively use graphics – such as medication labels, or case-study blocks that span multiple, sequentially arranged questions that must remain in fixed order). Presently, planning for the future (spring semester 2022) the same tool will also let us develop custom tailored training that offers faculty in only these aspects of course prep and course-management that are necessitated by their specific plan communicated by the sheet.
2017 Showcase Poster – Course Template Design (for D2L, before UW move to Canvas)
This poster reflected our collaboration with DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) faculty and DNP Program Director, based on course-preferences feedback collected from over 100 DNP students, on developing a course template that was available, along with course-development support from my team, to interested DNP faculty. The use of the template was optional, but it was widely adopted across most DNP courses, and continued to be used after our transition to Canvas. (PDF)
2016 Showcase Poster – Sixty Small Changes for Big Classroom Impact
This poster shared our functional model (that could easily be implemented and adapted by others) and a case study of a successful, innovative faculty development program. (PDF)
2016 Showcase Poster – Academic Programs New-Student Orientation
This poster reflects a joint effort among several SoN departments, and it is a good example of academic technology team’s collaboration with diverse stakeholders. This project originated as an adaptation of a very successful new-student orientation I had developed at UW-Whitewater (TechQuest) for over 1200 students each year. (PDF)
Read more about TechQuest on Educause Website.
2015 Showcase Poster – Signe Skott Cooper Hall Enables Educational Innovation
This poster is different from other posters on this page, in that I developed it not so much to showcase my / my team’s project, but to share with campus community innovative pedagogical ideas and learning spaces that found reflection in the new building design of its student spaces. It was presented during the same academic year (2014-15) during which the School of Nursing moved to its new, groundbreaking $50 million building (Signe Skott Cooper Hall). (PDF)
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