Enduring Educational Materials Guidelines

Summary: This award will be given to individuals with a strong record of developing high quality, enduring, educational materials.   Evidence should focus on activities of the past 5 years, but one’s entire career will also be considered. (See examples of portfolios at the bottom of this page.) 

Development of Enduring Educational Materials: activities may include: authoring a textbook or textbook chapter; publishing a review article (particularly one intended to aid learners primarily); preparation of teaching cases (such as those used in problem-based learning); writing computer-based instructional programs; producing an educational video; or authoring test questions for national testing organizations. (See a more complete list of types of Enduring Educational Materials.)

To qualify as "enduring," materials must be used repeatedly over an extended period of time by educators other than the author(s) and by learner groups other than the one taught by the author(s).

To qualify as "educational," materials must have been designed explicitly to promote knowledge, skills, or attitudes of specific populations of learners, (as opposed to materials designed specifically to communicate results of research or   patient care activities to other scientists or to other health-care practitioners, respectively). Possible populations of learners that are relevant to a program’s educational mission may include: Allied Health, Graduate, and Medical Students; Residents; Physicians in CME Courses, Patient Groups, and K-12 Students, etc.

Evidence of Quality: activities may include a description of your rationale/goals for dedicating professional time to the development of enduring materials; a description of your preparation/background and ongoing self-improvement which enables you to prepare high-quality materials; letters of support; peer review of completed materials; usage statistics; and learner evaluations.

Evidence of Quantity: output may include: the number of distinct items developed (e.g., number of textbook chapters); the scope or size of each item (e.g., number of pages, number of learning "contact hours"); estimates of the number of learners or distinct populations of learners using each item; and the number of years each item has been in use.

Dimensions of Breadth: (e.g., diversity of output) may include: the number of different formats in the design of the materials (e.g., print, video, computer); the number of distinct populations of learners for which your materials are intended; and the number of distinct content areas addressed in the materials. 

Instructions for Submitting Portfolios: The following examples set the standards for the category of Development of Enduring Educational Materials.  You should accumulate and document as much evidence as possible of your Enduring Educational Materials accomplishments with an emphasis on the past 5 years.

The structured summaries in each of these examples have been prepared using a template which you will need to use in your portfolio.   You may download a copy of the template into a Word document. (See a copy of this template.) 

It is expected that your mini-portfolio will vary in content from the examples above.   The overarching concept is that the evidence you present demonstrates a strong commitment to the development of enduring educational materials in terms of quantity, quality, and breadth.