About the Project

The idea for the Meta-Twine Toolkit came about after one of our team members, Chelsea Proulx, used Twine to create assignments for her Measurement in Clinical Research graduate-level course. Encouraged by the fun she had creating them and the positive feedback from her students, the IDEA Lab applied for and received a 2019 Personalized Education Grant awarded by the University of Pittsburgh Office of the Provost with the goal of building a toolkit that would help educators and instructional designers think through the process of creating branching narratives and using Twine in their courses.

The team members who helped bring this toolkit to fruition are all members of the Innovative Design for Education and Assessment (IDEA) Lab located within the Institute for Clinical Research Education (ICRE) at the University of Pittsburgh. To help us evaluate and improve our publicly accessible instructional design resources, please consider responding to our brief feedback form.

Thank you for visiting our toolkit!

Meet the Team

Chelsea Proulx, MPH

Chelsea is a Research & Evaluation Specialist who works with the IDEA Lab team to find and adapt technologies and tools to create interactive online course materials at the ICRE. Using her background in health education and amateur creative writing, she has used “choose-your-own-adventure” narratives developed in Twine to create interactive course assignments that promote decision-making skills in her course on Measurement in Clinical Research for the EXCEL-CRT program offered through the ICRE.

Marie Norman, PhD

Dr. Norman spearheads online and tech-enhanced initiatives at the ICRE and leads the IDEA Lab team. Norman has taught extensively and worked in the scholarship of teaching and learning for over 13 years, focusing in particular on international and online education. She is co-author of the book, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, which distills learning research into practical teaching strategies. She also writes for Synapse and Faculty Focus and speaks regularly at education conferences.

Colleen Mayowski, EdD, MLIS

Dr. Mayowski has been teaching adult learners for decades. At the ICRE, she teaches Medical Writing and Presentation Skills and leads the competency-based education initiative. Colleen calls upon her humanities/social sciences background to guide her approach to assessment challenges. Mayowski is interested in new opportunities for assessment research, and presents regularly at assessment conferences.

Dissemination Activities

Throughout this project, we've been eager to share our experience with Twine and building this toolkit. Check out some of the work we've done below to disseminate this project.

Publications:

  • Norman M, Proulx C, Mayowski CA, and Zuckerman M. Entwined! A Tool-Kit for Creating Branching Narratives. Teaching Professor. Feb 3 2020. (PDF Here)

Posters:

  • Proulx CN, Mayowski CA, Zuckerman M, Norman M. Entwined! Using Branching Stories to Teach Decision-Making Skills. Poster at Association for Clinical and Translational Science Annual Meeting. April 15-16, 2020. (poster accepted; conference cancelled due to COVID-19)

  • Proulx CN, Mayowski CA, Zuckerman M, Norman MK. EnTwined! Using Branching Stories to Teach Decision-Making Skills. Poster at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine 4th Annual Med Ed Day; Sept. 20, 2019; Pittsburgh PA.

Workshops:

  • Proulx CN, Mayowski CA, Zuckerman M. Weaving Interactive Storytelling into Instruction: Using Twine to Create a Personalized Learning Experience. Pittsburgh Regional Faculty Symposium. Mar 27, 2020. (Session accepted, conference cancelled due to COVID-19)

  • Norman MK, Proulx CN, Mayowski CA, Zuckerman M. Weaving Interactive Storytelling into Instruction: Using Twine to Create a Personalized Learning Experience. Express Workshop at Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2019. Nov 20, 2019.