May 2020
Stacey Pylman, Ph.D. - Editor in Chief
Director's Message
OMERAD Supporting CHM During COVID-19
Oh, what a year 2020 has been so far! In addition to the creative contributions OMERAD faculty and staff make daily to advance knowledge and support the CHM Shared Discovery Curriculum efforts, now OMERAD faculty are actively supporting faculty, staff and students during the pandemic. Here are a few of the ways we are involved: 

  • Stacey Pylman & Amy Ward, former school teachers and current parents who are juggling working at home, created an Online Learning Resource for faculty, staff, and students with children. Stacey and Amy were recently invited to facilitate an online session for the MSU WorkLife Office.
  • Amy Guenther, who is skilled in teaching online from her experience in MSU’s College of Education, created a Zoom User Guide and has worked with various CHM department and community faculty on using Zoom for interactive teaching.
  • Brian Mavis, Binbin Zheng, Amy Guenther and Stacey Pylman are all helping to teach the newly created intersession HM624 Medical Humanities elective. This course was created to provide LCE students with vital content while out of their clinical rotation.
  • Amy Guenther and Brian Mavis helped with admissions with virtual MMI sessions held this spring.
  • Amy Guenther, Amy Ward and Randi Stanulis are working to prepare Rotational Small Group (RSG) faculty for online teaching this summer.
Randi N. Stanulis, Ph.D.
Director
Office of Medical Education Research and Development
Assistant Dean for Professional Development
College of Human Medicine
Residents & Clinicians as Teachers - Online Modules
As partnerships between OMERAD and CHM community campuses grew, Randi Stanulis, Director of OMERAD , realized a need to help residents and clinicians in community campuses develop their teaching skills. Paula Klose, MD , Community Assistant Dean (Midland campus) became an important first collaborator to brainstorm ideas. Thus, began the Residents as Teachers (RATs) and Clinicians as Teachers (CATs) online modules project.
It is normal for residents and clinicians to be more focused on developing their skills as physicians, but in actuality they are also educators who have significant responsibility for teaching. The OMERAD team realized they needed to provide educator development that not only fulfilled LCME and ACGME standards, but also maximized the learning experiences of medical students and residents in clinical settings.

The modules are designed to be completed over time and strategically placed when participants are best ready to learn certain concepts. Amy Guenther , who is leading the project, explains, "We are providing more than just teaching strategies. The modules are building a mindset around how they are approaching their work as teachers and creating a team learning space." An added benefit for clinicians will be CME credits for completing the modules.

Module creation has been a team effort! Amy Guenther and Amy Ward are in charge of primary content and instructional design. Randi Stanulis and Carol Parker are advising on the project. Stacey Pylman is offering support with content. Rob Malinowski offers technical advice particularly as it relates to using JIT as a platform. OMERAD has also partnered with the MSU HUB for Innovation in Learning & Technology in this endeavor. Rashad Muhammad, Ellie Louson, and Jerry Rhead from the HUB have spent time and energy making this project a reality.

Teaching and learning experts in OMERAD are the people for the job . They have the expertise in helping educators learn to teach, and are able to apply theory in practical ways for medical education. Amy Guenther adds, "What we are creating is based on effective, research-based teaching practices."

Currently the project is in the content development and instructional design phase. The first few modules are planned to be:
  • Why Teach?: The Benefits of being a Learner & Teacher
  • Creating a Productive Learning Environment
  • Making My Thinking Visible
  • An Asset-Based Approach to Teaching All learners
Although COVID-19 has slowed project progress, the first two modules are projected to release August 2020.
Over time, you may hear of this program lovingly referred to as RATs & CATs. However, our residents and clinicians are far superior to the four-legged creatures. With our guidance, our residents and clinicians will embrace their role as educators to both medical students and the patients under their care.
Simulation Collaboration
Stacey Pylman has been working closely with Dr. Matt Emery, MD , Medical Director of Simulation, to provide various development experiences for preceptor faculty and students. One such program is the Simulation Preceptor Coaching Program in which Pylman works with 1-2 preceptors at a time co-observing other preceptors teaching in simulation.
Participating preceptors also receive observation, feedback, and coaching on their own teaching. Said a preceptor, "This experience helped me understand that CHM leadership is committed to furthering the student experience by ensuring the instruction is first rate and conforms to the high standards of medical education." This year the Simulation Preceptor Coaching Program was piloted in Grand Rapids, and it will expand to the East Lansing campus fall 2020. Says Dr. Emery, "The sim program greatly benefits from the faculty development work done by OMERAD. Their classroom presentations are consistently among the highest-rated components of the faculty orientations. Equally well-received, and in-demand, are the individual one-on-one sessions where faculty work with OMERAD staff to focus on unique areas of interest while teaching clinical skills in our sim centers. Faculty consistently describe these sessions as beneficial for students, but also effective for improving faculty job satisfaction.”

Pylman has also led simulation sessions teaching students how to give effective written and oral feedback. Pylman and Binbin Zheng supported simulation program development efforts by designing ECE student focus group interviews about student preparation and preceptor teaching. They analyzed responses and made a program improvement report for the simulation leadership team. The collaboration between OMERAD and simulation will continue to enhance student learning for years to come.
Awards and Recognition
Brian Mavis, PhD receives 2019 Academic Medicine Excellence in Reviewing Award!
Congratulations Brian ! This AAMC distinction honors Mavis' contributions to peer review, an essential element of scholarly publishing. Says award granters, "The quality of every article printed in each issue of the journal depends on the dedication and commitment of our expert reviewers." Brian's extensive scholarship activity and service to journals as a reviewer has not gone unnoticed!
Research Paper of the Year Award!
Congratulations to Julie P. Phillips, MD, MPH; Jacob Prunuske, MD, MSPH; Laurie Fitzpatrick; and Brian Mavis, PhD on receiving the 2020 Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Research Paper of the Year Award for their paper, “ The Family Medicine Attitudes Questionnaire: A Valid Instrument to Assess Student Attitudes Toward Family Medicine. ” This award recognizes a research paper published by an STFM member in a peer-reviewed journal showing excellent quality of the research and impact.
Spotlight
Welcome Emiko Blalock!
Dr. Emiko Blalock will join the College of Human Medicine as assistant professor in August 2020. Before joining OMERAD, she was an assistant professor in the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE) department at Michigan State University and interim program coordinator for the Student Affairs Administration Master’s Degree. 

Dr. Blalock was born and raised in Oregon, and spent most of her adult life living in Seattle, Washington. She has a bachelor of fine arts, and earned a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from Seattle University. While at Seattle University she worked as an instructor, and in the nonprofit sector studying how colleges and universities play a role in developing leadership skills for professionals. Dr. Blalock completed her doctoral degree from HALE in the MSU College of Education last Spring 2019. 

As a qualitative researcher, her research focuses on how race, gender, and social origins shape access to professional and graduate level education and subsequent careers. Dr. Blalock is also deeply interested in how family and community inform teaching practices in postsecondary education. 

Dr. Blalock lives in East Lansing with her husband Kevin and their three-year old daughter. She enjoys birding, family bike rides, camping, making music, and watching home remodeling shows to help dream up the next house project.
Conferences
Accepted but not presented - Spring annual meetings canceled
Because of travel restrictions due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, many spring annual meetings were canceled including Northeast Group on Educational Affairs (NEGEA), Central Group on Educational Affairs (CGEA), and American Educational Research Association (AERA). However, OMERAD was excited to have multiple presentations accepted this year! If you want to know more about these projects, contact the authors.
NEGEA

  • Colón-Berlingeri M, Wang L, Laird-Fick H, Parker C, Drake E, DeMuth R. Does performance on weekly formative assessments (WFAs) predict performance on progress examinations? [Accepted as a poster]

  • Emery M, Mavis B, Keller K, DeMuth R. What preferences do students have about practicing the physical exam with a peer of the same or different gender identity. [Accepted as an oral presentation]

  • Mavis B, Nestler E, Chang B, Wagner D. Why and How We Implemented a New Curriculum… And What We Learned. [Accepted as a small group discussion]

  • Parker C, Wagner D, DeMuth R, Colón-Berlingeri M, Chilman-McComb M, Arvidson C, Borgeld M, Emery M, Laird-Fick H, Sousa A. Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Educational Experiences as Foundational Components of a Competency-based Curriculum. [Accepted as an oral presentation]

  • Parker C, Laird-Fick H, Chang C, Wang L, Malinowski R, Emery M, Solomon DJ. The Generalizability of a Progress Clinical Skills Examination for Assessing the Growth in Clinical Skills. [Accepted as a poster]

  • Pylman S, Guenther A. Challenges of Ambitious Teaching for Clinician-Educators in Academic Settings. [Accepted as a oral presentation]
CGEA
  • Papp K, Mavis B. Try This at Home: Strategies for Supporting Faculty Scholarly Productivity. [Accepted as a small group discussion]
AERA
  • Chang C, Laird-Fick H, Parker C, Wang L, Solomon DJ. What do entrustable professional activities (EPAs) measure? Evidence from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. [Accepted as a roundtable]

  • Chang C, Laird-Fick H, Parker C, Wang L, Solomon DJ. Assessing medical students’ clinical performance progress and the relationship with USMLE Step 1 scores. [Accepted as a poster]

  • Wang L, Laird-Fick H, Chang C, Parker C, Malinowski R, Solomon DJ. Evaluating medical students’ trajectory on progress tests using Markov Chain model. [Accepted as an oral presentation]

  • Zheng B, Zhu M. Medical students’ self-regulated learning using digital technologies. [Accepted as a poster]

  • Zheng B, Chang C, Lin C-H, Zhang Y. Self-efficacy, academic motivation, and self-regulation: How do they predict academic achievement for medical students? [Accepted as an oral presentation]

  • Zhu M, Zheng B. A scoping review of the literature on medical students’ self-directed technology use. [Accepted as an oral presentation]
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