Article review

How to develop and sustain innovation in medical education technology: Keys to success
McGee, J.B., Kanter, S.L. (2011) Medical Teacher, 33(4), pp. 279-285

McGee and Kanter provide clear guidelines of how to go about to develop and sustain innovative ways of teaching students.  They describe all the techniques that they used, which has proven successful in the past.  McGee and Kanter describe how they make use of their Laboratory of Educational Technology to help with the establishment of new innovations.  McGee and Kanter indicate that all models have their advantages and disadvantages that relate primarily to flexibility, independence and sustainability.  Early decisions regarding funding and structure are critical to ensure sustainability and success of the education technology initiatives.  Success factors that they describe include how to select the correct projects and what is the technical feasibility of the innovation to the institution.  The authors provide guidelines on how to estimate the costs and benefits and they caution that the true costs be analyzed as the risks and benefits of a project, monetary and otherwise, is key to the selection and prioritization process.  The authors caution that innovations that are chosen should have broad application and that single-purpose educational programs should be avoided.  The authors identify the following key success factors for the design and development phase of any innovation:

• The projects' audience, environment and motivational factors have to be defined from the beginning. Defining the setting, whether it is a classroom, a small group, or for independent learning, greatly affect software design and implementation plans.
• It is critical to examine a programs current design, which includes defining the learning goals, workflow and desired outcomes.  Therefore successful technology development follows good educational design.
• It is good to develop learning tools that can be used with a range of different topics and for learners at different levels of education and training.
• Commercial software, when carefully selected, can be the best solution especially if it can be customized to local needs, and are less expensive and shorten the time to implementation of the innovation.

For the implementation and assessment phases, it is important to use fast, stable, and scalable IT infrastructure.  Faculty development in paramount to the success and sustainability of any educational technology. The stakeholders must be embedded in the program assessment.  Assessment in the program should be thought of from the beginning of the development, not at the end when the product is almost complete. 
The authors feel that relying on of-the-shelf commercial software is not enough to meet the needs of current learners and faculty. Furthermore, education technology fosters a culture of educational innovation where new ideas and initiatives are acted on and sustained (McGee and Kanter, 2011).

I think the whole idea of the article relates to any setting as it provides useful information on how to go about when a new innovation are being planned.  It provides all the necessary questions that should be asked if a new innovation are being developed.  For my setting at the SMU I don't think it is really applicable as we do not have an IT team that can help with the design, development, implementation and assessment of new educational technology.   Our system is to slow and the IT support can improve.