by Mia Garchitorena
Shane Stenner, MD, MS, and Chase Webber, DO, and a collaborative team of experts at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center were recently named to receive the American Medical Association’s (AMA) ChangeMedEd Innovation grant.
The title of their grant is “From logging to learning: A precision education learner engagement tool to enhance master adaptive learning by clerkship students.”
Funding will be used for the development of a Learning Engagement Tool in VUSM’s custom digital learning system to complete a precision education controlled vocabulary (an electronic thesaurus that allows users to look up concepts relates to precision medicine), expand the required clinical experiences logging tool called Vital Experiences, and to develop and deploy training materials and support evaluation of the precision education intervention.
“We are excited to highlight the foundational work that has been ongoing toward realizing a vision for precision education at VUSM and to establish Vanderbilt as a leading institution in this fledgling domain,” said Stenner, assistant professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) and Medicine, associate dean for Education Design and Informatics at VUSM, and primary investigator (PI) on the grant.
The team will collaborate with experts from VUSM, DBMI, the Department of Medicine and HealthIT. Co-authors and key investigators include Tara Mele, MBA, Travis Crook, MD, Cody Chastain, MD, Kendra Parekh, MD, MHPE, Lourdes Estrada, PhD, and Bill Cutrer, MD, MEd.
The Learning Engagement software tool will deliver precision education opportunities to clerkship students at VUSM and aims to empower learners with real-time data and educational choices. The team aims to create a meaningful and learner-driven connection between what students learn and experience in the clinical environment and the concepts they must master before graduation.
“While many institutions still aim to define precision education, through this grant, VUSM has an opportunity to help make personalized, creative learning a focus for each clerkship student, here and now,” said Webber, assistant professor of Clinical Medicine and Biomedical Informatics. “We couldn’t be more excited to build upon the rich history of bringing together education and informatics that sets Vanderbilt apart.”
The AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Initiative, now known as the ChangeMedEd Initiative, was established in 2013 to address issues in medical education. The program focuses on precision education, competency-based medical education, and equity, diversity and belonging.
As PI on the grant, Stenner will continue to develop a novel precision education-controlled vocabulary with DBMI and lead the VUSM Education Design and Informatics team to develop and implement the software. Webber will lead the evaluation and dissemination of the team’s work. Tara Mele, business process and analytics manager in the VUSM Office of Education Design and Informatics, will oversee project management for software development and for the project as a whole.
“We are thankful that the AMA selected our proposal for a Precision Education Innovation grant,” they said. “We have already begun building the architecture and technology to empower learners to help them move from curiosity to competence. We strongly believe that Vanderbilt students and faculty will play an important part in advancing this important idea.”
Learn more about the AMA’s ChangeMedEd Initiative here. Learn more about VSTAR here.