University of Toronto IPE Management System

Client Intro

The Centre for Interprofessional Education (IPE) at the University of Toronto was founded in 2009 in a partnership between the University of Toronto, the University Health Network (UHN) and the Toronto Rehabilitation Institution. Interprofessional Education is part of a worldwide initiative that aims to improve the standards of patient/client care and health provider satisfaction, leading to high quality collaborative practices.  Each year, the Interprofessional Education (IPE) Curriculum at the University of Toronto welcomes over 1,600 students from 11 of the Health Science professions. In support of the University’s IPE Curriculum, the Centre for Interprofessional Education (IPE) administers a series of educational activities both within the University and at various practice settings that bring together students from many health disciplines.  Attendance to a certain number of these learning activities is often a requirement for graduation, and activities provide students with credits that are tracked by the Centre for IPE outside of regular curriculum.

The Challenge

The University of Toronto’s Centre for IPE witnessed the expansion, advancement, and further integration of IPE curriculum across more diverse health science programs. An increase in the number of  participating students and faculty leaders, as well as an increase in community partners, necessitated the development of a centralized system to maintain IPE program offerings and learning activity opportunities. Since the Centre of IPE’s inception in 2009, learning activities and program registration was managed through the use of multiple applications. The lack of a cohesive management system continued to pose the threat of increased opportunities for human error, while also slowing down the registration process and student tracking capabilities throughout the IPE curriculum. Ultimately, the Centre for IPE required the development of a centralized hub to support the needs of  students, faculty, administrators, and educators within the IPE curriculum. This centralized hub needed to provide system users with the ability to explore the IPE Curriculum at the University of Toronto, as well as supporting the registration process and the tracking of individual student process within the IPE curriculum.

The Solution

Wired Solutions responded to the needs of the Centre for IPE by developing the fully customized IPE Management System. The IPE Management System effectively allows students, faculty, administrators and educators to explore the IPE Curriculum at the University of Toronto.  From our centralized management portal, students and faculty across the University of Toronto’s 11 Health Science professions, as well as administrators and educators in the Centre for Interprofessional Education, now have the ability to to successfully create, manage, and register for IPE courses and events. In addition, the IPE Management System tracks student progress and program completion within IPE courses, allowing administrative users with the appropriate security permissions to generate granular reports in real-time.

To showcase our unique vision for the IPE Management System, Wired Solutions developed interactive prototypes that illustrated the platform’s proposed functionality and workflows. After extensive collaboration with the IPE project team, Wired Solutions incrementally developed four distinct modules, which serve as the core of the IPE system. These modules include:

• Event Management: allows Administrative users to create and manage learning activities, manage attendance for activities, and generate reports for event registration and participation. This module also allows students and IPE program facilitators to search for Learning Activities within the system’s database using highly intuitive search functionality, as well as supporting student registration within Learning Activity events.
• Program Management: allows Lead Administrators to create and manage Professional Programs within the IPE system, as well as supporting the configuration of IPE requirements for each incoming cohort and Professional Program. Lead Administrators may also use this module to manage core competencies, and set exceptions and parameters associated with Letters of Participation and letters of program completion. Similarly, Administrative users utilize this module to view and manage student accounts, add incoming cohorts, review Student Records, and manage student attendance and student progress within the IPE curriculum. Administrators will also use this module to manage Certificate of Distinction (COD) parameters. Faculty Leads may use this module to preview and download Learning Activity attendance, while Facilitators may use the module to review participation records, and registration withdrawals. Finally, this module allows student users to view Program Requirement pages, as well as allowing for the processing and application of CODA programs.
• Content Management: governs the Administrator Interfaces that support the management of announcements, which are reflected across the IPE system.
• Assessment & Evaluation: allows Administrative users to review Reflections submitted by students throughout the IPE system. Similarly, student users may utilize this module to upload and submit Reflections following successful attendance at a particular Learning Activity/Event.

In addition to the custom development and seamless integration of the modules described above, Wired Solutions custom developed a number of robust supporting features, which included the development of system functionality and logic related to system authentication and user account management, such as integration with Shibboleth and authentication directly through the system itself. Additional system features included support for auto-generated announcements (such as weekly emails to Students and Facilitators regarding upcoming Learning Activities), automated confirmation emails for registrations and withdrawals, Did Not Attend warnings, Thank You emails for facilitators, and Letters of Completion/Participation/Certificates, which are available for download for Student users.

Supporting Technologies