Equipped for Accreditation: Preparing an Osteopathic College to Train Physicians for Underserved Regions

When the College began seeking an education software platform, their first class had not yet graduated, and the school was going through their COCA accreditation process. At the time, the College had no solution for curriculum mapping. Previously, they had been using Canvas as their learning management system. The faculty who had been using Canvas for some time loved it, so initially the dean in charge of the process had a challenging time convincing key stakeholders that they needed a new system with more capabilities specific to medical education. However, once Leo was introduced as their new software solution, users began to rely on the fact that it is calendar-driven and built specifically for medical education. DaVinci Education’s customer support team also played a major role in winning users over to Leo.

The Assistant Dean (“the AD”) for Assessment and Evaluation began working at the school just after Leo had been selected. In fact, she was hired by the College as a learning specialist due to her extensive experience with learning management system (LMS) transitions. The AD highlights DaVinci Education’s customer support team as a primary reason she is now such an advocate for Leo: “They were very supportive when we were rolling it out. They remain very supportive. They feel like my friends ... very responsive and helpful and patient. Their ticketing system works well, and their initial rollout plan was a really good one.”

The AD also appreciated that the DaVinci team was intent on solving the College’s educational needs, beyond just getting the new system up and running. She notes that the implementation specialist assigned to the College was very knowledgeable and showed them how to “attack” the curriculum mapping process and integrate it into the actual practice of education. Overall, the AD reflects that Leo has become much more than a software tool.

Integrating curriculum mapping capabilities was a game changer for the College. “We would never go back to Canvas because of the way [their] curriculum mapping works,” the Assistant Dean admits, adding that mapping was really easy to use in Leo once it was set up. Since curriculum mapping is built into Leo alongside other key features, there was no need to find a separate tool to use alongside their LMS (as they had to do with Canvas). Students are now able to easily find the courses they are enrolled in, review the courses they have already completed, and access any other curriculum information they need.

The team at the College  also uses Leo’s Insights Dashboard to consolidate relevant mapping data from primary courses into a single table for a quick overview of their mapping quality.

The AD notes how Leo “talks the language of a medical school. They know the unique structure of how things work in medical education.” Leo’s central calendar also helps users “keep track of so many things in one look.” The calendar benefits faculty, staff, and students—all of whom need to juggle numerous tasks at once.

The AD summarizes the experience with Leo by saying that she recommends DaVinci Education all the time: “It just fits our needs, and they are really great to work with, so that’s a bonus!” The team at the College is eager to see how Leo's influence will continue to support the success of their students as they move through the program.