Students' Next Experiential Rotations are Just an Interactive Map Click Away

by Michael Dhar

With UIC Pharmacy’s experiential education offerings, students get the chance to put classroom knowledge into practice at more than 900 sites in Illinois and beyond. In 2021, students gained access to a unique new tool to make finding their ideal rotations as easy as clicking an information-rich digital map.

The project, an “experiential education geographic areas map” useable at both campuses, arose from the initiative of Megan Magnuson, senior class coordinator at Rockford. Magnuson realized the need for the map directly from student comments.

“I would oftentimes sit in the back of the classroom, and I would listen to students say they wish they could know about this specific thing, about this specific preceptor, or they want to know what they’re going to be learning at this specific rotation,” Magnuson said. Drawing on those informal observations to conduct a survey, Magnuson learned that students wanted to know about a site’s objectives, how to be successful at a site, and what a typical day at a rotation looked like. Students also wanted background information on site preceptors’ education, training, experience, and publications.

As for how to best present that information, Magnuson drew inspiration from a piece of old-school technology in the office of Dr. Allison Schriever, director of experiential education at Rockford. “She has this giant map of Illinois with a bunch of pins of different sites,” Magnuson said. “I thought it would be super neat to have something electronic, something all of us could access and refer to . . . and something that’s helpful for the students.”

To digitize that wall hanging, Magnuson worked with Marissa King, senior associate director for budget and finance for UIC Pharmacy, who has a knack for building dashboards. In completing the massive project, Magnuson combed through reports from UIC’s administration program, eValue, gleaning information about groupings of site locations by region and matching sites to preceptors and other information. She refined that information by using Google Maps to group sites within an hour distance of one another, making it easier for students to find workable spots.

The resulting map presents a compendium of information on UIC introductory and advanced pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs and APPEs). Users can search rotations by Illinois region, as well as nationally and internationally. They can also filter by IPPE or APPE or specific rotation or pharmacy practice week, or they can hover over a site to reveal more information. The map was first made available to students in January 2021.

“It really sets us apart because it gives our students the unique experience of being able to see all of our sites, all our preceptors, all this information at once,” Magnuson said. The project additionally gives concrete evidence of the value UIC places on student suggestions, said Schriever. “It illustrates to our student body that we’re listening and when they give us feedback, we really do take it to heart.”

Overall, the map shows off the wealth of experiential offerings at UIC, said Dr. Sheila Allen, director of experiential education at Chicago. “This has been a great add-in to our program . . . [providing] the opportunity for students to be able to see the depth and variety of sites throughout our state, throughout the country, and internationally.”

Magnuson, Schriever, and King’s work may eventually influence how other colleges present their offerings, too, when they present their work at the annual user conference of eValue parent company MedHub.

“I think it was wonderful that they were able to present what they created,” said Allen. “You never know: this might be something that another college might benefit from adapting.”