This year at the ACEHP 2015 Annual Conference hear Natalie Lavelle and Andy Hicken present on the topic of connecting data and education. The session will be held on Friday Jan 15th at 9:45-10:45am. Register Here. 
This session will provide the opportunity to learn new ways to design performance improvement so that practitioners can more easily connect data about their practice to educational interventions. This session will also offer ways to help practitioners put the education they experience from performance improvement activities into practice, and the best practices for working with technologists. The end result will be a way to efficiently develop the technology needed to meet requirements for performance improvement.
Below is a description of the research and findings that the session will unveil.
Session Description: Recent publications suggest that a major obstacle to successful implementation of performance improvement activities is the difficulty practitioners have in completing these activities practitioners find PI activities time-consuming, confusing and difficult to document. The data entry for the “chart pulls” required in a typical PI activity is a major pain point. Further, practitioners have difficulty connecting the analysis of data from the chart pull to discrete activities in their action plans. Finally, in the absence of clear instructions on learning plans, practitioners worry that the learning plan documentation they produce will not meet certification requirements. In short, practitioners struggle with one of the fundamental missions of performance improvement: connecting data about their practice to appropriate education.
This case study, drawn from osteopathic performance improvement, shares design innovations that address these concerns about the usability of performance improvement activities. The primary presenter participated in the development of a set of online, on-demand performance improvement activities, received feedback from participants that was in line with the critiques listed above, and then participated in a redesign of the PI modules inspired by this feedback. The redesign of the PI modules included the implementation of a new technology platform.
The redesigned performance improvement modules make use of a system for creating intelligent learning recommendations based on the data entered by participants. These recommendations suggest specific learning interventions that are clearly tied to the data, and are based in recognized best practices and current research. These recommendations are then displayed to participants in a graphical “infographic” that helps participants to connect the recommended learning to their own performance. This infographic makes it easy for participants to create individual learning plans that are research-based and compliant with certification requirements.
A key aspect of the redesigned performance improvement was the development of the technical capability for instructional designers/CE specialists to specify the content of intelligent recommendations. This capability reduces barriers to keeping the PI activity continuously updated with recognized best practices and the latest research. This case study will include discussion of the technology required to implement this intelligent recommendation system that is usable for non-programmers, and consideration of how education specialists can work with technologists to most efficiently implement new learning technology platforms.
Finally, other ways to increase the value of performance improvement activities to practitioners will be discussed. These include offering resources that practitioners can use to put learning into practice, such as downloadable quick guides (job aids) and videos to share with staff, and designing activities so that they satisfy multiple continuous professional development requirements (e.g., CME, MOC/OCC, MOL) simultaneously.
Register Here.