The New York-based Northwell Health has launched a new mobile app to teaching tips to students, trainees, and faculty.
The app uses the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) model. Northwell’s Office of Academic Affairs explained that this is a pedagogical approach that involves close interaction between instructors and their classrooms. The aim of the app is to better provide timely and relevant teaching tips to trainees and faculty who need to actively engage with their instructors, specifically for those in the patient care setting.
“The Just in Time Teaching Tools app allows for a more robust teaching and learning environment for everyone in the classroom,” said the app’s developer, Alice Fornari, EdD, RDN, the associate dean of educational skills development at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and vice president of faculty development at Northwell. “The use of technology-enhanced learning platforms are feasible and accessible to learners across the continuum of medical education and are especially useful in geographically dispersed academic health systems. This new app makes that model even stronger.”
Before the full launch of the app, Northwell conducted a pilot study that used email to distribute JiTT infographics. Following the pilot, trainees and faculty reported overall satisfaction with the content and technology. Additionally, faculty said that the infographics – which are in the app – were useful reminders to refresh and guide their teaching skills with trainees and students. Northwell further noted that “it can be reported with certainty that the JiTT infographic program can be incorporated into busy diverse teaching and clinical settings.”
In addition to providing foundational teaching principles in areas such as setting expectations, questioning techniques, feedback and coaching, and bedside teaching, the app includes clinically specific teaching techniques for internal and family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery psychiatry, and neurology.
