An Adaptive, Open Source, Faculty Development Platform for Medical Educators in 2030

Setting and Problem

There is a widening gap between traditionally delivered faculty development resources and programming, and how chronically overloaded medical educators in the year 2030 will access, engage with, and document completion of such materials. One-hour lunch-and-learn sessions are no longer sufficient or sustainable; similarly, traditional topics such as assessment, feedback, and mentorship are increasingly supplemented with lessons on unconscious bias, learner distress, digital literacy, organic learning environments, and a revolving door of education technologies and online tools. Legacy and apprenticeship learning models are being replaced by student-centered and personalized learning systems. The diversity of pedagogical knowledge and methodologies requires an agile, integrated, and innovative approach to faculty development for medical educators.

Intervention

Medicine is in the midst of a radical transformation as it incorporates and leverages artificial intelligence into the health care environment. Academic medicine increasingly utilizes adaptive learning strategies and data visualization to create individualized learning plans and outcome dashboards for learners. These adaptive learning strategies and web-based content delivery platforms will reform the one-size-fits-all faculty development landscape to that of a customized learning experience tailored to the immediate and future needs of each unique educator.

An adaptive learning system platform for faculty development will be designed to prioritize individual needs, harvest engagement data, and employ algorithms to guide faculty to the most relevant content and resources when and where it can be best reviewed and applied. A multi-institution randomized control trial will be implemented to assess digital competence, impact on clinical and learning environments, and outcomes of faculty engaged with the adaptive learning platform, versus those of faculty engaged in traditional methods.

The creation of an international catalog of trusted e-learning faculty development materials and resources delivered through a novel web-based delivery and reporting system will provide faculty immediate access to differentiated experiences and automatic documentation of the completion of high-quality, customized, relevant, and evidence-based faculty development materials. As content is consumed and validation of quality and efficacy is gathered, the programmatic algorithms will ensure the best and most relevant content is disseminated and retrievable through intuitive pathways, digital solutions, and networked communication channels.

Outcomes to Date

Faculty time is the most valuable of commodities. The evolution from in-person, administratively burdensome, and time-consuming faculty development programming to easily accessible, microlearning, multimodal, individualized faculty development resources and career pathways is feasible and may prove to be cost neutral. An open source, adaptive delivery, reporting platform will yield necessary faculty development data for the purpose of accreditation documentation, as well as recognizing and rewarding faculty commitment to education and its effect on the learning environment.

This data-driven faculty development platform will transform how resources are accessed, engaged with, and documented at the micro, meso, and macro levels. The feasibility of this innovative system is high, because the technology currently exists, the demand among medical educators is growing, and high-quality resources are readily available. Barriers to implementation may include initial reluctance to share faculty data across institutions and strict policies for governance and maintenance of validated content.

As a result of implementing an adaptive learning platform for faculty development, learners, institutions, and the public will be reassured that health care providers in the digital era are also well prepared to educate the next generation of physicians and health care providers.