Implementing the New Curriculum Inventory Standard:

Will our current curricular systems meet the needs?

Susan Albright -Tufts UniversityMarc Triola – New York University

Agenda

• Tufts Implementation and Challenges• NYU Implementation and Challenges• Benefits of Implementation

What is TUSK?

• Enterprise educational system which contains the following elements:– Curriculum Management– Course Management– Content Management/Delivery(computer and cell)– Personalized Knowledge Management– Clinical Teaching– 250 + Database Tables– http://opentusk.org

Sequence Blocks

(courses)

Teaching Sites

Content

School-wideCompetencies

SequenceObjectives

TUSK Data Model

Users

Groups

Time Periods

Users

GroupsSequence

Blocks (courses)

Sequence Blocks

(courses)Schedule:Who WhatEventsEvent TypesWhen:TimeFaculty

UMLS Keywords

Learningobjectives

Events:

Umls Keywords Selected by System

Tufts: Clerkship events

Black BoxBlack Box

Where in the world is TUSK?

• Domestically– New York Medical

College– Emory– U. Hawaii– Einstein Medical School– Tufts (Medical, Dental,

Vet, Public Health, Graduate Biological Sci’s)

– Others thinking!!!

International– Makerere – Uganda– Muhas – Tanzania– Karolinska – Sweden– St. Johns – Bangalore– CMC – Vellore – KAU- Saudi Arabia– Planned

• Congo, • Ethiopia,• Thailand• Ghana

Sorting things outor

Where in the Database is everything?

Metadata?What elements do we store?What is missing?

• Sequence Blocks within Sequence Blocks – parent and child courses

• Levels of Courses are implied by the groups associated … what to do with 4th year courses?

• Resources?

TUSK: Curriculum Report Mapping

Competencies stored with content in events – events will have to inherit from content

Academic Level implied from group associated with course

Course table – joined with class meeting table

Class meeting table – events, type, title, duration

Challenges to Cope with• At Tufts

– Decentralized data entry– Multiple data entry points- will it be done comprehensively?– Build tool that links competencies - one to many relationship. Build the tool

so that is human readable an useful for curricular development– Add missing data elements - some of which are implied– Clerkship data – What resources used

• At other institutions– Access to data from multiple systems– Access to data from proprietary systems (another black box)

NYU Curriculum Data

• LMS: Sakai• Evaluation: Vendor system• Various home-grown systems• Education Data Warehouse:

Pentaho/MySQL

NYU Curriculum Data: Mapping to XML

• 2006 Events• 1491 Objectives • 364 Goals• 1024 keywords

NYU Curriculum Data: Data Challenges Compliance overall, especially clerkships Description field is used for a variety of

purposes.Many entries include student names

Very few vocabulary-based key words No quantitative data on Inter-professional

activities

NYU: Academic Event<Event id="482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"> <EventCategory>Class section - Lecture</EventCategory> <Title>Defense against infection/ Ernst</Title> <EventDuration>PT1.0H</EventDuration> <keyword hx:source = "UMLS" hx:id = "None"> <string language = "en">Infections</string> </keyword> <keyword hx:source = "UMLS" hx:id = "None"> <string language = "en">Immune System</string> </keyword> <keyword hx:source = "UMLS" hx:id = "None"> <string language = "en">Flu</string> </keyword> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="g_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="o0_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="o1_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="o2_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="o3_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference> <ComptencyObjectReference>/CurriculumReport/Expectations/CompetencyObject[lom:lom/lom:general/lom:identifier/lom:entry="o4_482cabb1-3a93-454e-b8cb-b84778fb9013"]</ComptencyObjectReference></Event>

NYU: Competency Objects

<CompetencyObject><lom:lom> <lom:general><lom:identifier><lom:catalog>URI</lom:catalog><lom:entry>o2_b32f23a4-47c5-4edd-9c78-7189b52cbd6e</lom:entry></lom:identifier><lom:title><lom:string language="en">Objective</lom:string></lom:title><lom:description><lom:string language="en">Practice communicating empathy through use of both verbal (PEARLS statements) and non-verbal responses to emotions</lom:string></lom:description></lom:general></lom:lom></CompetencyObject>

NYU: The curriculum for the 21st Century

• Overall this draft standard worked well for our curriculum

• Required direct access to our Education Data Warehouse and new programming to extract and transform the data into a linked XML report

• Already being used to drive improved meta-data at our institution

Benefits

• NYU• Tufts