SI 501 is a project-based course that students should work with a business client during the whole semester. My team worked with UM MHPE(Master of Health Professions Education, where doctors, nurses and other health professionals learn how to educate future members of their professions – and address the worldwide shortage of many types of health care providers.

We have conducted 6 contextual inquiries with users and stakeholders in UM MHPE. It includes on/off-campus students, professors, and school administrators. We visited the place where they work or study to acquire most from the interview process. In addition to interview, we could probe out their environment where interaction happens.

Check here to see complete interview protocol

Mentors in UM MHPE are basically researchers, and are also working for external clinic as well. In our contextual inquiry with one of mentors, she identified herself as a researcher. Her office is located in Ann arbor, but she also works in a clinic in Detroit. In addition, she has to guide her two mentees regularly. To sum up, they have three other jobs at the same time. Based on the idea that they have different work place and different influencers, I would like to analyze their job experience by employing cultural model, and identify which influences they receive from and push back to each cultural influencer.

In that sense, I draw two big area of culture: UM MHPE Culture and Clinic Service Culture. Each area represents the field the user belongs to. Thus, Mentee, Program Managers, and Committee are important influencers in UM MHPE Culture area. In Clinic Service area, Patients are the most important influencer. Among several influencers, I grouped them to show relatedness of them if they belong to same group. Two couples of big blue arrows are influence that each Culture area gives to influencers and user. Small arrows represent influence and push back happening between the user and influencers. In the flow model, I illustrated communication flow across the user and the people coordinating with the user. In case of UM MHPE, mentors mainly communicate with mentees and program managers. While interacting with mentee, they receive support from material experts and writing experts. In addition, they receive important information from committee if something happens.

To illustrate the relationship of mentor and mentee, there is no concept of course or class in UM MHPE. Educational professional activities(EPA) is the curriculum that mentees have to accomplish, and it is composed of series of writing assignments about each topic. Mentees are supposed to be able to select a topic and conduct individual research on that. What mentors do for mentees is helping them out to finish these assignments. Much of communication between mentor and mentee is conducted through in person meeting. Otherwise, they use e-mail to schedule meeting, send files, and ask urgent question.

If there is a need for additional help about academic resource or scientific writing, mentors can request material experts or writing experts to help their mentee. They are people who are hired for that specific purpose in the program.

After a mentee finishes the assignment, it will be notified to committee and going to be assessed by them. Result of the assignment will be sent both to mentee and his/her mentor.

In this program, CTools is used as the most important source and archive of information. Unlike usual CTools website consists as units of courses, UM MHPE has only one CTools website for the whole program. Our interviewee mentioned that there are individual sections categorized by each mentor. Every participant also uses CTools as a storage for academic resource or assignment progress file. M+Box is also used for storing big files or creating link to a file which should be accessible to people outside the university.
Click here to see the full report for interaction model.

Based on the contextual inquires and models, we could build up affinity wall deduct more findings.

Our final report includes 5 findings about UM MHPE and addresses long/short term solution to each problem.

Findings

Learners do not know where information about the program and administrative processes are stored

Information does not consistently flow between committees and mentors

Learners have inconsistent access to content experts and committees

Learners rarely interact or share information between themselves

A more comprehensive and organized content management system is needed for MHPE

Click here to check out solutions and the full version of final report.