GOALS
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Heritage College: Three years ago, OU HCOM began the design of a new $65 million medical education facility in Athens, Ohio. Among the design drivers for the project, technology played a critical role in supporting overall flexibility of learning environments and connectivity to other campuses and the broader community. The new medical education facility provided an opportunity to re-envision technology to meet the future needs of medical education. The Heritage College had expanded its academic campuses to Cleveland and Dublin, which resulted in an active learning curriculum highly dependent on the use of technology to seamlessly connect three campuses for one learning activity. The Heritage College Technology team focused its efforts on creating a multi-campus, multi-site, hybrid learning environment—connecting students across the State of Ohio and enabling team teaching, collaboration, and optimal faculty/student engagement.
CHALLENGES
One of our greatest challenges with this project was implementing leading-edge technology to control our multi-campus environment: T1V’s ThinkHub Education and ThinkHub Multisite. The Heritage College was the first higher education organization to implement this level of functionality for optimal faculty/student engagement across multiple sites. Additionally, engagement of our faculty in training and understanding the technology proved to be a risk. However, with the help of our technology partners, T1V and ROOT Integrated Systems, we were able to successfully launch the new technology in fall 2021 with no major issues and with an over 80 percent training rate of teaching faculty.
USER BENEFITS
There are many benefits to the design of this new learning environment for the Heritage College. First, the team-teaching approach has significantly improved with the use of ThinkHub Multisite. Faculty located across multiple campuses teaching a learning activity can effectively engage with faculty team members and students at far sites with a touch of the screen. Additionally, the faculty have more flexibility in the delivery of content and interaction with students. With the onset of the pandemic, the use of the new technology has further prepared the Heritage College to provide a hybrid learning experience that is equitable for both classroom-based and remote students. Students are also able to see content, collaborate as a team, and engage with their students using touch-enabled student stations and wireless display. Student content can also be shared with the entire classroom, or the entire learning environment, throughout the classrooms in Athens, Cleveland, and Dublin.
THE AV/IT TEAM
The Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine Office of Medical Education Technology (OMET), along with our partners at T1V, Inc. and ROOT Integrated Systems were responsible for the planning, design, and implementation of this project. The Heritage College OMET Team is led by Jodie Penrod, senior director of technology.
The following individuals were also part of this project: Eric Clift, assistant director, technology and telehealth operations; Phil Swatzel, senior technology infrastructure engineer; Frank Carano, senior classroom technology specialist;
Jessica Makosky, classroom connectivity manager;
Joe Scowden, learning technologies specialist; Mark Loudin, learning technologies analyst; Cory Lewis, technology support manager (Athens); Janet Dearth, learning technologies analyst; Josh Jones, learning technologies analyst; Mike Wolanin, technology support manager (Cleveland); Dave Eggler, IT support specialist (Cleveland); Chan Chanthapanya, IT support specialist (Cleveland); Rick Burke, technology support manager (Dublin); Paul Becerra, IT support specialist (Dublin); Evan Amerio, IT support specialist (Dublin)
COMPLETED: August 2021
TECH SNAPSHOT
- T1V’s ThinkHub Education and ThinkHub Multisite
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