Resources

MEHP Online and the Master of Health Care Innovation see artificial intelligence as an enormous opportunity to enhance student learning and engagement. However, we also believe that it must be approached with due deliberation to ensure that our specific uses of the technology do in fact enhance our courses, and that the benefits that LLMs bring to our students outweigh their costs. As we have begun to ideate and experiment with various uses of LLM chatbots for courses, we have compiled a set of guiding questions to assess how and whether they should be deployed. The questions focus primarily on pedagogy, technology, and resource usage

A working group led by Laura C. Hart, Director of Online Educational Initiatives for Penn MEHP Online, and Barbara Anderson, Director of the Office of Continuing Professional Development at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health crafted, and iterated upon, a “how might we” statement that became a charter for our working group: how might we leverage accredited continuing education to encourage addressing challenges and opportunities collaboratively?

Instructional Designer Karen T. Kappe outlines a strategy for planning and prioritizing accessibility measures in online, hybrid, and in-person courses.

When it comes to online learning, a taste of the unexpected may stimulate curiosity and delight, encourage students to test new ideas, and spark connections that lead them to integrate knowledge. But the line between inventiveness and disorganization is narrow. And deployed indiscriminately, course elements that defy expectations can create extraneous cognitive load that distracts from learning objectives, causes confusion, and diminishes the overall learning experience.

Asynchronous discussion forums—and the “post once, reply twice” format—are frequently maligned by faculty and students. Instructors may perceive them as educationally ineffective and incapable of achieving desired learning outcomes, while students may view them as rote or forced. But the problem is not with the discussion forum itself—rather, it is that discussions often seem tacked on, or not intentionally constructed as integral components of a course.

Online learning can add flexibility for instructors and students by focusing synchronous interactions just on the areas where they have the most impact on learning.

How do I help my students learn online? If they haven't participated in a fully remote course before, your students may need guidance to stay organized and on-task. You can provide tools within your class to support that, as well as tips and resources on effective note-taking methods for online content. And don't forgot to facilitate peer engagement, so students don't lose the social and educational value of interacting with each other.

Recorded lecture videos do not need to be highly produced or beautifully designed to be effective. Attention to 3 areas—setup, video length, and slides—can help you create asynchronous lectures that facilitate student learning, and that can be reused, reducing duplicated effort in future runs of a course.