Parallel - Scholarship Enhanced at the John A Burns School of Medicine: Process, Outcomes, Analysis Marcel D’Eon (University of Saskatchewan), Damon Sakai (University of Hawaii), Krista Trinder (University of Saskatchewan), Sheri Fong (University of Hawaii), Kalyani Premkumar (University of Saskatchewan)

The John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaii has a high quality medical education program staffed by dedicated and skilled faculty teachers trained in various clinical and basic sciences who, as a part of their educational responsibilities, also engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Nevertheless, administrators and teaching faculty both recognized that for several reasons they needed more and higher quality SoTL. Promotion and tenure decisions were at least partly tied to scholarly productivity and accreditation standards stipulate that faculty be regularly involved in SoTL.

Beginning in January 2010 they engaged the support of an experienced researcher in medical education from another university who decided to take a sabbatical leave at JABSOM to work with faculty members on individual and small group scholarly/research projects and began to involve other experienced colleagues at his home institution.

They compared the scholarly work begun and underway prior to January 1, 2010 to that begun or underway after January 1, 2010 for teaching faculty with the Office of Medical Education, about 12 individuals. For data they recorded the following for each project: (1) the date the research team was established as a marker of the official start of a research project, (2) the date the data collection was completed as a marker of progress on the project, (3) resultant conference presentation(s) as one marker of completion and success, (4) publications as another marker of completion and success, and (5) any further research in the area indicating a productive line of inquiry.

They found that there had been some increase with the use of an experienced researcher to help and that factors that might have led to this included personal motivation and possible promotion as well as practical group inspiration and recognition and accreditation issues.