Name: From Research to Empathy and Back Again: Reconstructing an Assignment to Improve Student Outcomes
Start: 2026-10-08T09:00:00-0400
End: 2026-10-08T09:30:00-0400

From Research to Empathy and Back Again: Reconstructing an Assignment to Improve Student Outcomes

Thursday October 8, 2026 9:00am - 9:30am EDT

Circular Church

This presentation reports on the third year of collaboration between an art librarian and a health sciences librarian for an acting for medical simulation course module that prompts students to empathize with patients facing bias while considering how images convey complex meanings. Two changes were made to the assignment: the professors limited the patient’s medical issue to pain and the final product was changed from a visual bibliography to a collage.
As in previous iterations, students rewrote a standardized case template to empathetically reflect on the biases encountered by patients with less power in the healthcare system based on their intersectionality. To increase the focus on the patient’s intersectionality, this time, the medical issue was limited to pain.
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), an evidence-based method that promotes slow looking, improves diagnostic reasoning, and fosters practitioners’ empathy by enabling learners to surface and challenge assumptions was again incorporated into the lesson. However, visual annotated bibliographies were replaced by collages. This not only clarified expectations, it allowed students to creatively explore visual language through a familiar and unintimidating medium. Images were selected and arranged to communicate the social and cultural identity and pain experience of their fictional patients and reflected on how formal visual elements convey meaning.
This presentation will cover the rationale for the revisions made to the assignment, three-part lesson plan, learning outcomes, and practical best practices. Student examples will demonstrate how combining collage-based visual literacy with empathetic case rewrites focused on pain produces a richer understanding of patient experience. Attendees will learn how an interdisciplinary team of librarians and faculty have collaboratively designed and iteratively refined an assignment in enough detail that they could adapt it to their own cross-disciplinary work.

Speakers

Stefanie Hilles

Arts and Humanities Librarian, Miami University

Stefanie Hilles is the Arts and Humanities Librarian at Wertz Art and Architecture Library at Miami University where she liaises to the art, architecture and interior design, and theatre departments. Her instruction practice aims to embed information literacy into the creative processes... Read More →

Megan Jaskowiak

Health and Social Sciences Librarian, Miami University

Megan Jaskowiak Health and Social Sciences Librarian. She liaises with Criminology, Gerontology, Psychology, Sociology, Speech Pathology and Audiology, Family Science and Social Work, and the Physician Associate Studies program. She has a Masters of Library and Information Science... Read More →

Thursday October 8, 2026 9:00am - 9:30am EDT
Circular Church

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IVLA 2026 Charleston

Stefanie Hilles

Megan Jaskowiak

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IVLA 2026 Charleston

Stefanie Hilles

Megan Jaskowiak

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