From the beginning Elentra’s curriculum mapping capabilities pushed the envelope. The platform takes an enormous amount of data and maps it, capturing practically everything connected to curriculum a student or faculty member could need to know. When Anthony Roggeveen, Elentra’s Director of Product Development, (whose extensive experience includes delivering digital collaboration platforms and HR and finance systems across medical education, property management and other industries) began using Elentra some seven years ago, he immediately saw its potential.
“Elentra has really good bones to be able to do just about anything with curriculum mapping,” says Anthony. “And it’s a forward-thinking approach. It can stretch the boundaries and has the abilities to move medical education in a new direction.”
Curriculum mapping has become universal across the health science education fields, from podiatrists to veterinarians, and is commonly part of the accreditation process. It’s also essential when it comes to making sure subject matter has been thoroughly covered.
“Curriculum mapping arose from the fear that you could have a medical doctor graduate as, for example, a cardiac surgeon without ever having seen a heart attack,” says Anthony. “It was a real risk in the past that students could graduate without certain experiences. Curriculum mapping was born out of the need to make sure a student was getting exposed to the many topics they are required to cover.”
Today, curriculum mapping has evolved so that it can reveal gaps in understanding as well as student strengths — on a granular level. Curriculum taxonomies can be extremely complicated, with thousands of “tags” cross-referencing all points of teaching, testing and assessment. Plus, a curriculum map is a living organism, changing as health science programs continuously improve and evolve. Elentra’s platform has multiple tools and can tag just about anything, making it possible for an organization to map overlapping issues to truly reveal a big picture view. That, in combination with its speedy search and reporting capacities, makes it remarkably powerful.
“It’s the most comprehensive curriculum mapping tool I’ve seen,” says Anthony.
All that, and more to come. Anthony says Elentra has the potential to incorporate AI, making it possible for learners to have customized recommendations for their own studies based on the patterns and performances of other, similar students. Any mentorship program would benefit from this capacity as well. Ultimately, it’s all geared towards enriching the educational experience, an essential component of competency-based education.