LBCC Surgical Technology Program Instructional DesignProject Summary
This project involved a massive overhaul of the 13 courses that comprise the Surgical Technology Program. This page details some of the project highlights. In addition to what's noted below, I also developed student and instructor tutorials – the student tutorials are in the orientation course (ST 005) and the instructional guide is available on this website (see Information for Surgical Technology Instructors) and linked in each course.
— Amy Spielmaker, September 30, 2020
1. Visual Design
EXAMPLE Main Course Page
The example below is the main page view for ST 100: Introduction to Surgery. All courses have this same design, though with different banner images.
See how this course page looked before
2. Accessibility
All course pages, documents, and supporting materials are now accessible. This means all documents have correct structure, PDFs are tagged, audio and video have captions or transcripts, and, when possible, students are provided multiple options for learning the material and demonstrating their knowledge.
EXAMPLE Syllabus
The example below is the syllabus for ST 150: Anatomy & Physiology I. It looks good and conforms to LBCC's recommendations for accessible syllabi, including CFAR statements. All courses use the same syllabus format, which I created as a template so it's easy to create and modify.
See how this syllabus looked before
3. Authentic Assessments
One of the biggest criticisms by the ST faculty was the lack of meaningful assessments. Many courses were dominated by "what did you learn?" assignments that, by nature, resulted in perfunctory responses from students.
All assessments have now been updated so they reflect current surgical tech knowledge and practice (per the instructors), directly address the course and AST learning outcomes, and require critical thinking. There's also a healthy variety of assessments, including quizzes, case studies, scenarios, worksheets, infographics, presentations, discussions, flashcards, and videos. This will help keep students engaged and demonstrate credibility on the part of the instructors.
EXAMPLE Wrong-Site, Wrong-Patient Case Studies
The example below (from ST 102: Medical Terminology) is one of my favorite assignments in the program. Medical terminology assessments often come down to flash cards or other memorization. This drill-and-practice is important, but can become tiring for students. This assignment allows students to demonstrate medical terminology knowledge in a more engaging – and authentic – way by having them translate back and forth between clinical language and common English. Students also reflect on how their understanding of medical terminology can have a direct impact on patient safety.
4. Personality
Students want to take classes from humans, not robots. To that end, I updated all the language to make it student-centered ("In this topic, you'll lean about…" or "In this topic, we'll cover at…" vs. "In this topic, students will learn…") and wrote in a conversational and constructive tone.
EXAMPLE Resume & Cover Letter Topic (ST 180: Certification & Job Preparation)
All topics have introduction text like the one below with additional commentary on the learning materials and assignments so students know there's a real person behind the course.
See how this topic looked before
5. Feedback
With the intensity of the program and fast-paced courses, immediate instructor feedback isn’t always feasible. To that end, I've built-in additional scaffolding on assessments that allow for immediate feedback based on student responses.
EXAMPLE Using Content Responsibly
In the activity below (from ST 120: Digital Literacy), students get different feedback based on their responses. This allows students to learn and adapt quickly without requiring instructor intervention.
6. Usability
The changes make it easier to students (and instructors) to find what they need when they need it. The consistency of the courses means students won't have a learning curve each time they start a new course. Most courses were student tested. And those that weren't student tested were at least human tested.
Initial feedback from students highlighted struggles with understanding grades, so I simplified the gradebook and made the quiz review a more scannable process. For instructors, I also made changes like making input fields larger, making 'sticky' or frozen rows and columns so grading is easier to track.
EXAMPLE Gradebook
The image below shows the new gradebook view. Assessments are organized into categories, the visible columns are streamlined, and the shading makes it overall easier to interpret than the original version.
See how the gradebook looked before
EXAMPLE Quiz Review
The image below shows the student view for reviewing a quiz attempt. Before, the checks and x's were not all consistently positioned, making it difficult to quickly scan. Additionally, the correct answer text was in a yellow box, whih made it look like every answer was partially correct. Now it's clean, simple, and much more user-friendly.
See how a quiz review looked before
7. Interaction
Just because the courses are online doesn't mean they can't be interactive. I took advantage of opportunities for peer-to-peer engagement and student-content interaction. I ensured there were multiple ways for students to engage with the content and that all required engagement served a purpose.
EXAMPLE Negligence Analysis Forum (ST 100: Introduction to Surgery)
In the example below, students make an initial post describing a case and then reply to their classmates to address specific parts of the case. There are a couple of these two-part posts in the courses. They're pretty low-risk because, even if students are working at different paces, they can still do the assignment (for example, they can do the reply before the initial post). And while they're replying to peers, it's not the "comment on two peers' posts" requirement that often yields very little in the way of interesting conversation.
8. Clear Expectations
All assessments include clear instructions, grading criteria, and, when possible, examples of what successful work looks like. In such a compressed program, it's important that students are able to move ahead and focus on the task vs. decoding instructions. Likewise, instructors need to be able to focus on providing feedback rather than clarifying instructions.
EXAMPLE Disorder Report Example for Anatomy & Physiology Courses
The example below shows an infographic about pulmonary embolism. This is an example of what students create in their "disorder reports" in the A&P classes.
9. Relevant Learning Materials
I added, modified, removed, and created learning materials as needed to minimize duplication of content and to ensure everything is current and relevant to the topic assessments or overall course outcomes. I also tried to include information about why each learning material was in that topic. This way, students are clear on why the material they are reading or watching is important and how it's meant to be used.
EXAMPLE Created content
This is a page on behavioral and situation interviewing in ST 180: Certification and Job Preparation. The external resources on this topic were varied and not specific to healthcare professions. So to make sure students got the main points, I synthesized the information and created what you see below.
10. No Stone Unturned
In addition to the 13 courses in the program, I also updated the formatting on all the lab documents, policies and procedures, and clinical documentation, creating a consistent high-quality user experience – for students, instructors, and for external stakeholders.
EXAMPLE Clinical Case Log
The example below shows the clinical case log students use during their final term to keep track of – yep, you guessed it – the type and number of cases they've scrubbed in on. Before, it was in a document (not a sheet) and unintuitive for new users. Now it's easy for students to log their hours and see how close they are to meeting the graduation requirements.
See how the clinical case log looked before