Hello, and welcome to our webinar on assessments. We're here to discuss ways that you can engage with your learners in the classroom and beyond. So just a little housekeeping rules, just like with everything else, by participating in this recorded webinar series, you have agreed that ASCP may use the recording of your image and the statements on the ASCP website. Make sure throughout our webinar that you're not sharing any protected healthcare information or personal identifier information about any of the patients we typically work with. And then also CME and CLME credit is available for this event. So instructions for claiming credit will be shared at the end of this presentation and will also be sent to your email address that you provided at the time of registration. So if you're in Florida, make sure you log that in so you can get your license. And there will be time for a Q&A at the end of the session, but don't be shy about going ahead and as you're thinking of questions, put them in the Q&A. So I'm Aaron Odegaard, I'm a laboratory coordinator and an educator. So my role at the hospital and the health system I'm at as a laboratory educator is kind of multifaceted. So I'm educating team members in the actual laboratory, nursing and different healthcare providers. But I'm also a adjunct assistant professor at the University of Arkansas and at Santa Fe College in microbiology courses. So working with students as well. So I get to do all sorts of fun assessment. And I'm Dr. Kristin Pazivento. I am mainly in education full time now. So I am an assistant professor in medical laboratory science, as well as my other hat is I'm the director of academic assessment for the entire school my program is housed in. I also work at the university level, dealing with how other programs use assessment to guide their future strategies and monitor the progress of their offerings. In this webinar, we hope to address several things. First, we're going to allow you to identify and understand the purpose of assessment. And we're also going to give you some novel approaches to kind of gauge your learners knowledge and comprehension. Finally, we're going to talk about ways that we've developed and used interactive educational assessments to both engage learners and give us understanding of what's going on in the educational process by using multimedia tools. So as you can see, it's a picture of the two of us, but we post this is kind of the idea of the fact that with assessment education, it's a collaborative process, you're not working in a silo. So it doesn't have to be where you're just collaborating and working on assessment in your classroom or just in your hospital. But Kristin's in Chicago, I'm in Jacksonville, Florida. So you're not confined to just even your town, your school, your location, or your country, but you have the ability to educate and collaborate with people across the country. And I think that's a really powerful tool, because we all may have slightly different experiences. And that's what this webinar is about, how we can work to collaborate, share ideas to just provide a better process for all of us. Kicking off in our Google form, we wanted to find out a little bit about what assessment means to you. And we did have some responses. Here's a word cloud that talks about one of the most common words associated with the thought of assessment. Aaron, is there any that sticks out to you and your personal experience? Yeah, with the word cloud, assessment is a huge thing. And for me, I'd probably add like continuous learning, mission accomplished. But yeah, the big things that stand out are knowledge assessment. And even I see great in there. What about you? I think that overall, this word cloud is a good representation. Assessment is not just testing. It's not just for grades. And so there are many other ways that we are going to use assessment. And this word cloud represents that. Benchmarking, providing a measure of what's going on, knowledge, evidence, and all of these should be used with our data to guide future assessments and progress of the educational process. So when we talk about assessments, there are some myths and realities. Myths. So the first myth is kind of, it needs to be difficult. Like the assessment has to be this wild and crazy thing. In reality, the goal of assessment is not to trick people. It's not to formulate things that you expect everyone but the very best to get wrong or be incorrect. It's meeting people where they are. So no gotcha moments? Okay. Myth number two, it must be formal. That is not the case. It should be something that's constantly evolving and changing. So those one-on-one teachable moments help you to guide future decisions as to how maybe to reframe a subject or content. And it really is some of those informal moments that provide the most impact. So it doesn't have to be like our fun example video. Exactly. And then, you know, myth number three, same as testing. So just give them a test. It's fine. And there actually are different types of assessments. So formative assessments are assessments that are used throughout the learning process and help us to identify potentially gaps in that knowledge process. They tend to be more low stakes and have either very low or no great impact. So you can have people do assessments and just give credit for being able to complete that assessment, not necessarily being punitive. We also have formative assessments, which are what many people think of those big exams, final exams, comprehensive, our board of registry or board of certification. And then the whole evaluator versus evaluate, that there's this, in a sense, this kind of power dynamic. There's the professor who's running the course, who's giving the assessment and the assessee. In actuality, assessments should be collaborative. We know that it's a two-way street. We cannot necessarily influence how someone else will learn, understand, and do the work. We cannot necessarily influence how someone else will learn, understand, or really make meaning of what it is we might be presenting to them. And by getting that feedback, by working together, you can provide guidance and really make the most differentiated and individualized assessments that help people rather than harm them. Myths busted. As we continue on, we will continue to bust these myths. Plus, I just wanted to say that. Thank you, Kristen. In order to truly address assessment, you need to learn a little bit about the process of learning, and there are pedagogical differences in learners. Most of the time when people think about education, they refer back to pedagogy, but this is actually referring to the education of young learners. In the laboratory and in academia, we mainly focus on educating adults, which is andragogy. And andragogy is slightly different than pedagogy because our learners have different backgrounds. They're more mature. And so andragogy really emphasizes the process of learning and making sense of the knowledge. And they both have fun challenges with each group. Exactly. You really should be involving your students or your learners in that process. And that's what's great about how assessment ties in. So it not only changes the way we might deliver the information, but also those point-by-point evaluations. In working with adult learners, we know that these learners tend to be more self-directed and driven by internal motivation. So it might not necessarily be getting a 100% on an exam that is going to motivate someone to make meaning of the material that you're presenting. So I can't bribe them with a graham cracker? No, unfortunately not. When we are providing education, you want to make sure that you are varying your approach to hit that level of meaning for all of your students or co-workers, people you're educating. There are differences in passive versus active learning. So passive learning is what we may have experienced when we were younger in school. Someone is just talking to you. A lot of times you're just receiving the information. You're not making meaning of it. Active learning is what we hope to do today. So have a little more engagement, show you how doing and observing and reflecting really involves your learners in the educational process, and it makes it better for them. Kind of spicing up and make our assessment exciting. Exactly. We also know that traditional lecturing actually has the lowest retention volume of knowledge. Another reason to vary your assessments. As we go through and talk about the process of learning, we know that it is that continuous improvement cycle. So you're going to see where you feel you are in your presentation of material and where the people you're interacting with are. And if there's any gaps in that, there's no shame in making tweaks or adjustments as you go along. And then you always want to finish that continuous improvement cycle, just like we do in the laboratory, and see, did the changes you make work? So why do we need assessment? Aaron, what do you think? Kind of make sure we're actually learning from our learning objectives that what we set out to do, we're actually achieving. So all those goals that you kind of hope to achieve, see how we're doing it. Exactly. That's great. So it allows you to think about what you want people to get out of a topic, a unit, a presentation, learning about a new piece of equipment. It gives you that roadmap and the objectives of the things you are trying to reach with your education process. I was going to say it allows you to adjust and adapt your learning experience as you go kind of on the fly. So you're able to assess as you go and then meet your learner where they are. And I think that is one hallmark of a truly understanding educator is because we know no two presentations, no two students are going to be exactly the same. So that's great. It allows you to have that changing, but also assessment is needed because it can do different things. Many times, traditionally, people view simply that big exam assessment to give you a grade, but there actually are different approaches. And so we can do assessment for learning versus assessment of learning and audited assessment is the assessment where we determine, do they know what we wanted them to know? Have they learned correctly? Did they get it? Primarily, again, it's used for those overarching grades. However, educative assessment is allowing us to evaluate students and help them through the learning process. So how can we use what they're saying to guide their approach to the material? There are some best practices when it comes to assessment, and we've been very open that the very first thing you should do is figure out your end goal. So you want to have those objectives in place first. What is your point of this unit? What is your point of this assessment? And how can we ensure that those things are met? Another best practice is to vary the approach. There are people who love to sit and write down what it is they see. Other people want to get involved. They want to do things. By having multiple ways of assessing someone's understanding and knowledge of a particular topic, you really help to meet the students where they are and give you more data that could be used to determine if you have met those goals. Best practices also are having multiple opportunities to have that recalibration and level check as you go through. You want to be mindful of, again, those kind of gotcha moments. That's not what we're necessarily about. No. And assessment should be both qualitative and quantitative. So yes, sometimes we need to have that specific number outcome to give a grade if you're looking from an academic perspective. But also, how are the students feeling about it? What growth have they learned during your course of exploration of a topic? And here, you can see some examples I've used in my personal teaching. We have been able to vary that, not just sit down and have tests to assess someone's knowledge. One of these images is someone that actually made interactive maps to describe what happens in the process of coagulation. It covered the same information as a formalized written assessment, but in a way that made it fun for not only the student, but everyone else. So now we'll move on to new approaches for assessments. For assessments. Again, assessment, not just those hard exams. In our teaser video, we had the example of a student in a silo. You give them a paper exam, and that is it. It's the end-all, be-all, and that's how we're going to assess their learning. That's not always the best practice, and that's not the case. We know that our students have changed, and people are not absorbing information. They're not having to conform or confine themselves to strictly that type of educational process anymore. So because our students have changed, their values, their interests have changed over time, we should also update our assessments a little bit. A great way to do this that we are going to discuss going forward is how we can change our assessments and use real-life tools, applications, and things that the students like and use in their everyday life. This allows them to make better meaning and connect with the information in a way that might be more impactful than, again, simply a worksheet where they fill in answers. Okay, so now it's kind of time to mix it up a little bit. There's the first dad joke. They're coming. So this is actually an example from a student of mine who created a nice meme, which we'll kind of talk about a little bit further. But social media is a great assessment tool that you can use. The great thing is that you can create short content. You can create longer content like videos. With the different types of posts, you can create reels, stories, video content, and even different shorts that kind of engage the learner a little bit more. The other amazing thing about our social media is the fact that you can use hashtags and polls and surveys. So they give you those engagement tools already. So with social media, the amazing thing is that this amazing platform that's already created. So as educators, you've got a platform at your disposal where you can assess learners using short video content, posts, which we're going to kind of look at, and the benefit as far as assessment, the fact that your learners are already familiar with these assessment tools and some of them don't quite realize that these are assessment tools. With assessment tools, you want to make sure your learners are familiar with the platform so you can actually really engage them and assess them. So social media is a great way to kind of do that. So with social media, I've got three examples here that are pretty pertinent that I kind of like the real concept where you're filming short, educational little videos that can last anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. We've all been kind of down that road where you get on social media, you go on Instagram or Facebook, and you click on the first reel. And before you know it, you've been doing this for an hour. But this is, yeah, I'm sure you had that happen to you. Yeah. You're like, oh my gosh, how? But this is a great way to actually engage them and assess them with some micro learning as well. So it gives them brief bursts of content, and you're actually able to kind of assess them as well. So that's one amazing tool you can use. You can also use posts. So in this one case that's to the left is a case study from X where I've kind of summarized real kind of quickly what Legionella pneumophilia is, the water supply where you can actually contract it, the sources, the auger plates, and then where you'd see growth with some key biochemicals. So learners are able to see the images below quickly. And then based off of the images I provided, you can actually put underneath polls where you're having them engage with the content. You can kind of see where they are at that point. You're actually able to repost content and actually bring in experts as well that are on these platforms that will also engage with your students and help with the assessment part. And then after you've presented, you can go back to that post and actually add a little bit more and add a little more engagement and content. So those are two really good examples of short content you can for microlearning and assessment. The third example is the phlebotomy order of the draw. So this is an example from a pretty good friend of ours, but you can see there's 650,000 views for this. So videos allow you to create this content that students can go back to. You can actually, all three of these things, you can have your learners actually create them where they're having to take that basic objective or that basic knowledge and they're having to apply it and then even condense it even further into something to such a small amount of content. And what I think is really great is because it transcends time. I mean, we all know if something goes on the internet, there is the possibility that it's housed there forever. And so it not only helps the individual student as they are designing it, but then their cohort and future students, you can refer back to it as that view on the phlebotomy order of draw easily tells you these are things that people want to go back and view. This has been up for over six years and it still is getting people to interact with it on a daily basis years later. And your learners do have a sense of pride too. Like when they find out that the content they've created is still educating and still assessing, it's still being useful. Or if it goes viral, that's another thing. It's a big badge of honor. That's true. This all leads into using visual tools and it doesn't necessarily have to be a video. You can have students create visuals that are a one-off and it could either be just looking at images or a more informational approach. So you can use a number of free programs. You can use it on the computer or you can have students draw things by hand and get those creative processes flowing to make more meaning of what it is that they're learning. I've had students design a meme and make selfies. And so here it's the stylized selfie. Think about what the different cells do. I often talk about the cells that are like the garbage trucks in our body. You know what I'm talking about. They go through, they identify all the bacteria, all the pathogens, they gobble them all up. So here's an image on the bottom that I created with AI because there are a lot of tools that can make your visuals impactful. And I think even when talking to non-scientific audiences, this makes that information more approachable and more memorable. You also have to think about being able to vary your approach with things. So our students, while for the most part when they're designing something or turning in an assessment, they're doing it for you, for whoever the educator is, whoever they think is going to be the one that is giving the final grade. But really that's not the case. Sometimes you want them to be able to communicate information to people that don't have a scientific background. Explain this in layman's terms. And this is a great way to do that. Whether through individual images or infographics that discuss a more complex scientific topic, it allows things to be broken down into simpler terms. And I really think that that is a great use of assessment because if you can explain, in this case, a melt curve analysis for oncology testing to your grandmother or to another person in the scientific community, it really means that you understand what it is you're trying to talk about. I do love that you mentioned the fact that, I mean, it's a great skill that will transcend when you get into the profession or if you're already in the profession. Being able to explain what you do on a daily basis to fellow health care providers, to nursing, to different teams, and have them understand at a level where they can speak to what you do. It's an important skill. It is an important skill. And kind of a side note that many of these tools are free for use. So you can find them online. You can adapt them. We mentioned some of them throughout our presentation, but know that this doesn't have to be a big commitment on the student's end still to create these visual tools. Gamification is great. That's my favorite. It is so much fun. And again, it makes meaning. So I designed a hungry, hungry cell game where I painted different images of cells on there and then they're trying to digest pathogens. So bacteria. Students loved it. But while they were doing this and playing the game, they had to tell me information about those cells. What do they look like on a right stain? What is it that they're primarily responding to? How does this implicate a disease state if there's too many of them or too little of them? And so it really helped to tie that knowledge together in kind of a more physical, interactive way. Jeopardy. Who doesn't love Jeopardy? Every semester. Yep. Every semester. This is not only a great way to reinforce knowledge, but to provide a review. I don't assess this in terms of giving them a score, but I think that as part of the process, it gets that competitive juice flowing and lets them think back. It also gives them a hint of what they might see on a more formalized assessment down the line. Yeah. And actually just like these visual level timer kind of things. And the students have points. They'll be like clicking them. They're like, my timer didn't work. My timer didn't work. Yeah. It happened. It has a great time. You can do crossword puzzles. You can do scavenger hunts. We have one game that we use where students have to separate blood components, which are these beads using forceps. And then they have to package them for the correct patient. So if your patient is a type A patient, what type of red blood cells can you give them? What type of FFPE would you give them? And so we move it just from the actual game to application of knowledge. Yeah. I'm going to use that one. Date the disease. I love this title. And so our dating site is The Dish. And for this, it's using that natural kind of students now might be very familiar with online dating profiles or dating sites. And so this allows them to create online profiles for different pathogens or disorders. And in order to do that, they really have to be able to synthesize the information that they're able to synthesize all of the information about this pathogen to make very short blurbs about what's going on. You got to grab them quick. So yeah, meet the homophilus. And if you know anything about me, I love puns. And so this was what I created. It's a good partnership. Yes. Yes. And it is. It's homophilus. We had that vaccine for homophilus influenzae B. We give it to children because we know that homophilus can cause a lot of issues, including meningitis and otitis in children, and that it's got that special X and V factor. Yeah. Nice and punny. But this is just an example. So they need to understand so many different facets of an organism to truly put this out there and come up with this one little short that's funny. It's interactive. And then not only does it help them to learn, but there was others around them learn as well. Is this mic on? So getting back to some of our learning objectives about just that, like that passive active learning. So a fun way that you can actually touch kind of on both is passively. I mean, my way to work and on your way to the classroom and everywhere else, there's opportunities to listen to podcasts and threads, and you can actually use some of these podcasts and these threads as an assessment tool. So the kind of the example I'm giving is a shameless microbiology podcast plug, but the podcast that I have with a couple of coworkers and a couple of friends beyond the Petri dish. And there's many others, but you're able to involve the other sense of listening. You can observe and kind of hear, but in this workshop, we're here to have fun. You're going to be an active assessor. So if you really want to get your learners involved in a more active way, you can actually have them create some content at the bottom section are some of my fellow podcasters, their program directors and industry partners and people. When we get together and we discuss all sorts of issues and what you can actually do is I'm planning to do this this semester, have some of my students actually come up with their own podcasts where we do an organism where they have to know the basics of the organism, the clinical presentation, and then be able to take that information and apply it and engage with others and kind of exchange that knowledge. And you're kind of testing them to assessing them as you're going to see how they're doing. And they're kind of self-assessing themselves at the same time. So some other fun thing is you can actually write and perform a song. So I have a fellow lab director and I had some students a couple of years ago that both played guitar. So I had a assignment where they had to put together kind of like an assessment where they both wrote a song and play guitar. I tried to find the photo, but I could not find it. But yeah, Rupert and Brianna did a great job playing the song, but it got those senses going. It was a tactile, it was listening. Having to put lyrics to music kind of helps them learn and helps you kind of assess the situation. And then that you could even have them make a music video. So one of the top right is for lab roles. So it's taking a more song off the radio from Duleepa about new roles, but it's talking about lab roles about one, you got to put your lab coat on too, got to put the hair back, but it has them go through the actual lab roles in a fun way where they're moving around, they're singing, the lyrics are kind of sticking. So involving those senses is a fun way that instead of just sitting them down to take a test, they can turn that mic on, turn that camera on and be the star of their own education. Love it. And this is another way to allow them to tailor their message to audiences that might not necessarily be laboratorians. So we've done it as well, again, stylizing popular songs off the radio and making it our own. That's not only catchy for us, it helps them maybe remember certain things about those scientific processes, but it exposes other people to it, especially if then you tie this into dissemination on social media. Yep. And that video actually went viral. So I would like to see one of your music videos. Maybe later. Okay. So we've talked about different fun novel tools, different ways to kind of think about assessment, but you can go even further by, you want to develop interactive ways to provide educational assessment. So just to kind of some fun examples, this is the Cellavision app. So it's a nice, already built, free, see, free and affordable. From the Cellavision, you've got these cell quizzes where students have to identify 30 hematology cells in 60 seconds or less. So a good friend took this beyond her classroom and the two of us actually created this amazing game with ACP and MedLab Lady Gill, where we were able to take a tool that students were using that they had on their phone. We met them where they were and go kind of beyond the classroom with that assessment and make it fun and interactive. So with the cell bowl, what they were doing is you form a team and then you compete against lab MLT and MLS programs from across the country. So you'd be competing against fellow students and fellow programs, about 88 of them this last time around. But throughout the thing, it's kind of like a fantasy football thing. You're learning, not only learning your hematology cells, you're learning teamwork and communication by engaging with your fellow teammates. And then you're also building your network and engaging with teams from kind of across the country. So Sunday, we do like a summary show, like it'd be like a football halftime show where we'd walk through where the team's ranked and send in their selfies. So selfies, see? Well, they're fun. There's a little selfie guy. We had so many selfies from our students of them working together and some great examples of just to kind of point out are the fact that it's not just your seniors. It's not just your two-year or your four-year medical laboratory science professionals. You can kind of see that there's seniors there. There's the freshman class. So they're having to interact with each other and in a fun, dynamic way. And then at the end of our competition, one of our teams is crowned the cell bowl champion. So they even get the whole bragging rights. And at the same time, we're assessing them on how their cells are. So we take how they've done and what their weak cell line is, and we take it back to the locker room. So we even make it engaging and fun by like pulling it back to football or a sport going, okay, we're going to go back to the game tape. We're going to review. Oh, okay. People didn't do well with their monocytes. Let's go through the lineage. Let's go through the different concepts. And I have to say, as a non-hematology type of person, this was even addictive to me. Not only were students able to interact and do this, but this put it on my personal radar and I made it my goal. I was like, I will get that perfect score. I did. Once I did that, I was like, I can stop now. But it really helped me review the information and learn it when I hadn't been in a hematology lab in probably 10 years. Exactly. We're both microbiologists by heart and training. So yeah, it did force me to kind of get back to my hematology cells. So we were assessing our learners, but our learners were also helping assess us a little bit and had points where I'd be on the phone with friends going, oh, gosh, I can't get this score. Okay. I'm like, yes, I finally got it. Exactly. And then how do we identify them? So it really did give this interactive assessment that people could take with them in their pocket, literally anywhere, any time of day. Yep. And it's free. And it's free. Okay. So this is another great example. And if you are making your way up to Chicago, you can be a part of this. Our ASCP amazing lab rate. So our interactive assessments have real life implications just to kind of bring home the fact that there's ways that you can interact with your students with assessment in the classroom, but it goes beyond that. I mean, we alluded to the fact that you're doing competency assessments, every hospital you work at, you're being assessed at points to see whether you're competent and you're able to give your patient the care that they need. So this is a great example of an interactive assessment with real world implications. So just to give a little background, ASCP has developed a negotiation advocacy toolkit for our lab directors and lab leaders so that they have a data-driven approach to actually advocate for the needs of the lab and the value of the lab. So in the bottom right panel, it's talking about the different pillars that we've kind of created where promoting visibility, people and culture, the quality, like what metrics and what data we need to tell our stories to make those points and then even service and growth and call to action. So created tools for people to actually use in the real world. So we needed to kind of assess whether those tools are useful. Do they add value? Because these are things that are going to potentially help someone advocate for new equipment or new personnel. So we want to make sure that the things we built that we're assessing actually are helpful. So what we ended up doing was creating an interactive, if you've seen the Amazing Race game, we've actually created an interactive game where they have to actually solve these puzzles. So on the next slide, it kind of gives some great examples. So you want to involve, take a multi-sensory strategy and approach. So you can kind of see how we had it broken down to where we had our teams that are running to the first task. They're solving a visual puzzle. And you can see in the top left corner in the next panel over, they're having to solve a puzzle related to budgeting. And then the bottom right, they're having to come up with skits where they're having to promote value with a different service line. So these are actually happening all in recorded. So our participants in the room are actually learning about the tools. They're seeing others use them. And then we're taking the time to even assess how our teams did. So you're having your learners assess the images going forward and then giving them the application or the tool and having them work through a problem as well. And it's a ton of fun. Kind of you're like, oh, gosh, this must be so expensive. How are we going to do this? This activity is something that we built out with it. The top image just shows there's some backpacks and copies. And we went on Amazon and purchased envelopes. So these are things that you don't have to have a ton of money to do. The amazing race sign was something that a bulletin board that I kind of put together. So you can make these things kind of fun. This kind of just points to the fact that you can reassess live learning of how you're doing things in the classroom, how you're assessing. Because if you're involving more senses, you're actually getting them out there using something going, oh, gosh, I have to remember what they just taught me a second ago and apply it. Incorporating those multiple senses, helping them apply that knowledge is a lot of fun. And it gets them moving. How did you come up with this idea? I was watching TV. Was it hard to come up with the different scenarios, the budgeting finance visual alone? Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that point. So with a lot of these activities, you can kind of think about, OK, is there a popular show that your students or your learners are involved with that I can integrate my activity or my learning into? And the very cool thing about some of the graphics, not the graphic there, but as an educator, if you have Canvas or different platforms, you can actually use those platforms that are free to make some amazing graphics. And that kind of segues into our next section. So we might be a little bit overwhelmed hearing about this, but there really is no way to get around using AI. And our students use it in their personal and potentially educational lives. So as an educator, I think that it is the responsible thing for you to understand what this is. And AI is not something that's new. We've been using it in the laboratory for years for those cell identification programs. This is just a new way of thinking about it. So there are many opportunities and options that are out there for generation of information assessments, or when it comes down to giving you answers, that we might be familiar with. Most of them are free. So GPT is one that a lot of people discuss, but there also is Google Gemini, Canva. As Erin mentioned, Canva can even design images. Scribe, Microsoft, Copilot, Adobe has one as well. So there are plenty of options out there. And I think understanding and harnessing it for the assessment process can be a really powerful tool. What's important when you do this is that you're specific. And in the laboratory, I feel we say all the time, it's our job to be smarter than the machines. And that is true with AI as well, because it can spit out anything, but does that mean it's right? So this is where you can use this tool to create assessments. We can use it to refine our own questions or objectives. You can use it to assign students to create case studies and then check again, is this a correct case study? Does it give me the correct reference ranges? Is what it's saying making sense, or is this erroneous? And if so, why? You can use this to then have the students dig deeper and look into the citations for where it's getting this information and judge them for validity. So it really is a tool that we could use in many ways in a type of assessment or outside of the classroom. When you're using AI, one of the biggest things you can do is be specific about what you want it to give you. Again, it doesn't think for itself. Yes, it takes algorithms and it will get used to the way that you format things over time, but it still needs that guidance to give you exactly what you want. An example I've used here was, I used a common AI generative tool, and I said, in the voice of a laboratory scientist, design a case study and three questions about a patient with hypothyroidism. Include laboratory values and clinical presentation information. It spit out three pages of data. It gives you a background story about the patient, presentation, then it gives you the physical examination and all of that data and the laboratory results. So full disclosure, I did not go in and check to make sure the reference ranges were correct on this one. I just had it kind of spit it out. And so you can see the laboratory results that gave us our TSH, our free T4, total cholesterol, LDL, hemoglobin, glucose, so on and so forth. I asked for three questions from the case study about hypothyroidism. You'll notice I only included two. And that's because the third question, it kind of went off the rails. It went more towards the exact treatment and level or prescription strength I'd be giving a patient. And that didn't relate to our laboratory values because I didn't go back and say like, if you gave this and then their TSH was still this, what would you do? So it needed a little bit of tweaking, but here you can see what it does. It's told you what is the pathophysiology of primary hypothyroidism? And how does it relate to the symptoms that she has? All things we generally try to assess and teach people when we're talking about this topic. And then having them correlate the patient's laboratory results to what's happening in the body. So this is a great example of a way that I could have students put this in and create their own case study and then justify it and critique it. And that even though they're getting that, you know, kind of spit out results from the generative AI tool, it still requires them to make meaning of it and think through these answers themselves. Aaron, have you used virtual reality? I have a couple of times playing fun games, but. Exactly. So why can't we use that for educational purposes? A great way to incorporate VR in your laboratory is to use tools that are already existent or out there. And virtual reality allows you to repeat tasks, experiments over and over again in a low risk environment. Meaning if you're practicing say phlebotomy, you don't have to go and stick a person multiple times to work through that process. This is the beauty of simulation. And it's the reason why every area of healthcare professions has incorporated simulation into their professional practice and educational systems. One of the great things about VR is that it removes time constraints. So it allows learners to work on their own schedule. You can put it in a time situation, but it doesn't necessarily have to be within the confines of a one hour class period that this gets completed. I actually did studies and I found that feedback from students said they actually really appreciate opportunities for virtual reality and virtual learning because it allowed them that opportunity to go back, review it as many times as they felt they needed until they were able to master the material. It also allowed for better accessibility for people who couldn't come in to a classroom. A big drawback is that it does have some technology requirements. So the Oculus is one of the common VR tools that people use. It is not something everyone has, but many systems might have this to be loaned from a library or owned by a simulation center within your hospital or academic center. A great tool that's out there again, OneLab VR. So it's supported by clinical and public health scientists. We have worked to develop trainings and let people get in and experience this using that virtual setting. For more information, you can view the website there and know that this is something that is an ongoing process because we are trying to put information in the hands of people who best need it and can use it. Ah, assessment myths busted. Okay, so the reality is that assessment isn't just a one and done. You're not just gonna take that test. You're not gonna do the one activity. It's gonna continue on. You're gonna see if your learners are still recalling this. They're gonna be building on those concepts that they've learned, those objectives that you've achieved your goals actively now. So kind of rethink assessment using some of the tools that we kind of mentioned. So it's not just that paper and pen that we're working with. And then even with assessment, it's a interactive engagement tool in your learning and in your educational journey. And of course, go ahead. I was gonna say, even though we've approached much of this from the academic educational side, know that assessment is something that happens in your laboratory all the time. And thinking about how you present information about a new piece of equipment or a new test really can play a role in how much someone absorbs that knowledge. And we actually have a, one of our hematologists has a GoPro. So he wanted to kind of demonstrate the maintenance to some of the newer people. So he's actually got his GoPro and he's filming videos showing the maintenance steps. So it's even in your lab. So these tools you can take in, integrate them in, and it'll help you learn and the people around you learn. Lastly, you gotta have fun. Right, Kristen? Yes, don't take everything so serious. Whether an assessment works out the way you expect it to or not, that's part of the process. Have fun with it. Know that there might be something that's a complete flop. And guess what? You can change it for next year or the next time it comes around. It's not the end of the world. Yeah, you tried. You had a good time, so. Yep. Okay, so we've got a few questions to kind of start us off. We have about five minutes. So I get to be the interviewer. You're ready, Kristen? Oh, I'll try. So I'll go with a real easy one. So do you have a go-to assessment that when you're in a quick bind that you wanna assess your learners? Do you have a favorite? I don't have one go-to. I really have been working to try to vary it. So yes, I do have some summative assessments. I have to have exams because I come from that educational background, but I still try to change it up. So a comprehensive exam that might not just be, what do you know in this class, but how does it relate to every area of laboratory medicine? Recently, I did more worksheets to try to make things a little bit more solidified. I was talking about renal physiology and renal function, and I feel that's something that students still struggle with, like what's being reabsorbed and secreted in the different parts of the renal system your proximal convoluting tubule and so on and so forth. So thinking about how that could be different, not just a fill in the blank question and answer one, but can they draw the system and diagram what's happening? So I don't have a necessary go-to. I try to vary it. Yeah, I do like that though, because you can even do something like a magic school bus route. Like you have to route your way through the kidneys. Yes, and what's happening in each stance. That's exactly right. So even right now, we're just kind of thinking about ways you can engage and you can assess. So it can be anything. That's kind of the cool thing. So as an educator, just as a lab professional, how would you say your perception of assessment has evolved over time? Like, do you feel it's the same? I think that it's taken on more meaning as I've gotten more in-depth into this. Again, really shifting from assessment of learning to assessment for learning has become a big emphasis for me. And something that someone just typed in was how do we keep learners engaged? And I think that's the key. So it's not just us talking at them and then giving them something they have to fill out, but involving them in that process, in the active learning process. I tend to repeat some things. So my students know if I've said the same exact sentence or the same kind of concept three times, that's probably something they really, really need to know. But I understand that they're not gonna all wanna sit through that long lecture after lunch in a warm room. So instead, we vary it up. We mix it up. We go outside. We look for representations of what we're talking about in our environment around us. And I think that that really is how my view of assessment has changed. It's not a silo. It's everywhere. I definitely agree with that. For me to keep them engaged, I notice at the halfway point, I see them kind of drifting a little bit. I'd be like, let's take a minute and kind of pause and then kind of assess with what do you think of all the poll question, or I'll kind of engage with them and kind of read the room a little bit for like different assessments. If it's at the hospital setting that I'm at, where they've already completed their competency assessment, if it's someone that's been here for like that year or two, and they're at the point where they can assess others, I'll, when I'm reviewing my competencies or my assessments, I'll bring them in and be like, do you have a better way or a better method? Or even with the GoPro, it was, we needed, we're building out our competency for our new instruments. What's a good way we can get our learners to actually get involved in the process? And our hematologist, he, once he got his GoPro out and he was getting his hands kind of in there and was filming the videos, I've kind of found him engaging a little bit more and bringing others in. When you do start to see them trail off, it can be a little discouraging because you're like, oh, this is so interactive and engaging. Why are you looking at your phone? You can kind of pull them back either with like, with an activity. And usually at some mid points, if I know it's a very long session with the online class I'm teaching right now, it's two hours. I know I'm gonna lose them throughout. So I'll try to put games throughout the presentation or a little stopping points. I think that's great. So like chunking things out even and building that in. Sometimes I incorporate something that I learned from one educational training was having muddy moments or having people do a quick brainstorm and like a brain dump where I say, what's everything you know about Staph aureus? So I stopped my lecture. I say, write down everything you know about Staph aureus right now. And they write it on a piece of paper. It's not given a yes or no correct answer, but it allows them to kind of chunk it out and think about what it is that they might know about that organism. And that makes it a little more engaging. It brings us back to center and then we can go back and transition into our material. Perfect. And so that wraps up our webinar today. Thank you so much. Please stay on to complete the 30 seconds survey that's going to appear once this webinar ends. Your feedback actually will guide future educational offerings. Later today, you'll be receiving an email with instructions for how to claim your continuing education credit, our slides and that awesome workshop badge to put on your LinkedIn profile as you see here. I'm kind of jealous. I really like it. I really am too. Check back in five days for a recording from today's webinar and the detailed notes. Thank you so much for spending time with us. And we hope that you use your assessment to not just give grades, but to help guide the future of your educational processes.

innovative methods

engaging learners

assessments

formative assessments

summative assessments

gamification

virtual reality

student feedback

educational technology