A Template for Curriculum Mapping Success in Osteopathic Medical Education

Mapping your curriculum for accreditation in osteopathic medical education can be a burden on faculty and staff, costing time, effort and sometimes even some sanity. But what if curriculum mapping could have a positive impact on your healthcare education program beyond accreditation? And what if, by mapping your curriculum for accreditation, you could also improve your program at the same time? Fortunately, with Leo, you can. Here’s how:

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“See” the Curriculum

Mapping your curriculum in Leo can help you improve your program right now. Why wait for student course evaluations or a post-semester review when you can see your curriculum in real time? Whether you want to make sure you’re teaching the appropriate content or you need to eliminate content gaps in your curriculum, Leo’s mapping structure can make it happen. 

With Leo, you’re always in-the-know with your curriculum: 

• Find content gaps in each course BEFORE they’re taught.
• Create smooth content transitions for students from course to course and even year to year.
• Make sure you’re accreditation-ready, always, by running the reports that can give you the needed 30,000- foot view of your curriculum.

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Transparency with Faculty and Students

Curriculum mapping shouldn’t be a hidden process. To truly have a positive influence on your curriculum, mapping needs to be visible to faculty and students. This empowers all users to make action plans based on your mapping:

• Students: Put your learning objectives and curriculum mapping in action by making them easily accessible by students! 

With Leo, students can view the curriculum mapping associated with every single class session, helping them to be well-prepared for each event. Having your learning objectives easily accessible in the same location where students access course content gives them the chance to easily review the objectives as they’re creating their study plans. Knowing what content to study can be a common issue for students, but with Leo you can ease this burden by providing the information students need when they need it.

Sharing your curriculum mapping with students, especially when it is mapped to board-relevant competencies, can also increase student engagement with the curriculum. Student attitude has an undeniable effect on student performance. Telling students why they should learn something will increase their engagement and effort...and therefore their performance outcomes.

• Faculty: The basic premise of education is to build on students’ prior knowledge while preparing them for future learning. Being able to see the curriculum mapping throughout your program gives faculty a way to see what students have already been taught, and what they still need to learn. This is especially beneficial for new faculty or when you have updated curricula. With so many moving parts of onboarding new faculty or adjusting to large changes in the curriculum, all faculty will benefit from the foundation created by accessible mapping. Everyone wins when you empower faculty to make actionable decisions that can positively influence student learning - all based on easy access to mapping.

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The Info You Need When You Need It

Having your curriculum mapping available in reports and each course meeting page is really convenient, but what about those times when you need something now? That’s when you turn to Leo’s robust search feature. A quick search in Leo can show you all associated information with each learning objective - when and where it appeared in the curriculum, which competencies and/or goals it is mapped to, and more. Don’t waste your time trying to find the specific information you need, when Leo can do the looking for you.

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Structured...with Flexibility

Designed at a leading medical school and built for the needs of osteopathic medicine programs, Leo was created with the structure needed to keep your curriculum mapping organized, accessible and relevant. Whether you need that high-level overview of the didactic and clinical mapping together or it’s time to make actionable decisions based on mapping reports, Leo has you covered. 

Of course, every healthcare education program is unique and presents a particular set of hurdles to overcome. The flexibility built into Leo’s curriculum mapping can empower you to meet your program needs. Leo offers the structure for rich curriculum mapping, but each program can make their own mapping for anything from adding a unique naming convention to the actual items to which you map.

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Save Time

Mapping shouldn’t be an afterthought, nor should it be a big event that is done only in preparation for a site visit. Unfortunately, this is a reality for so many healthcare education programs because they don't have the time or the right tools in place to make mapping work for them. Leo helps you overcome these obstacles and puts you in a position to get the mapping results you need to positively influence your program from a single platform. How? Well, Leo serves as a combination of your learning management system and mapping platform. That’s right - the same platform that houses all of your content for students is also where you map AND run actionable reports to prove your site visit readiness and improve your curriculum. Why have this information in multiple locations when you can run your healthcare education program from one platform for faculty, staff, and didactic/clinical students? Leo’s unique combination of healthcare specific features and support allows you to work smart, while Leo works hard to help ensure your program reaches its goals.