Online Masters Degree and Certificate Programs
Final Masters Project

Final Master’s Project

While studying in the Online Master’s Degree Program at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center students must complete a final master’s project. The final master’s project is a culminating educational research activity in which the student should draw upon what he or she has learned in the master’s program and apply it to a real-world project. The final product is a paper that is submitted to the student’s master’s committee and presented and defended via web conference with the committee members. Many students also seek publication for their paper with appropriate journals and / or presentation at national conferences.

Detailed information about the final project can be found in the Final Project Handbook.

The project proposal is begun in the master’s research seminar class. Students are discouraged from entering the program with a final project idea in mind, as many ideas will be formed as the student progresses through the courses and undertakes a number of class projects that could potentially lead into a final project. Ultimately, students are urged to select and develop a project that meets the needs of their institution.

A copy of the final draft of the project proposal should be given to the adviser and the master’s committee. This proposal must be accepted to initiate the master’s project. Download the Project Proposal Acceptance Form here.

Most educational research projects involve human subjects. Students using human subjects in their research must obtain approval from their institution’s designated Institutional Review Board (IRB) and follow all processes and procedures required by their IRB. If a student does not have a designated IRB, the study may be submitted to the University of Cincinnati’s IRB through a graduate faculty member.

Additionally, students must have adequate access to resources necessary to conduct research, including a subject population.

The student’s master’s committee is determined during the CI7001 course and is comprised of a mentor from the student’s home institution and a faculty member from the program.

The project must be an educational-based action research project devised and conducted by the student.  If the student will be developing a curriculum or educational intervention, the project must contain an evaluative component. 

The end product for the project will be a manuscript of publishable quality, whether or not the student ultimately decides to submit the paper for publication.  As a "project" and not a "thesis", the project is not published through the University of Cincinnati thesis publication process.  If the project involved development of educational materials (curriculum, video, etc.), the materials may be submitted with the manuscript.

The student’s faculty adviser is particularly important in helping the candidate to complete a master’s project by providing advice on the project’s requirements, helping to define the topic and develop a research plan, reading drafts of the project to provide advice on revisions, and administering processes for approval of the project.

After completion of the project and manuscript, the student will present his or her project to the committee via web conference.

The following are a sample of projects conducted by program graduates. Project abstracts can be found on our blog.

  • Retention of Surgical Knot-Tying Skills for Second-Year Medical Students: Performance and Timed Assessments of Skill Levels Over Time
  • The Ophthalmic Clinical Evaluation Exercise: Inter-rater Reliability Determination
  • Learning about Learning: Can Instruction of Expert Clinician’s Reasoning Techniques Change Resident Physicians’ Attitudes Toward Inpatient Rounds?
  • Development and Implementation of a Patient Safety Curriculum in a Pediatric Emergency Department
  • The Theory of Reasoned Action to Predict Preschool Vision Testing Behaviors in Primary Care Setting
  • The Reliability and Validity of the Keirsey Temperament Sorter Among Physician Leaders
  • Assessing Clinical Competency of Residents in Reproductive Health Interviewing
  • The Effects of Age and Career Type on Continuing Medical Education in Pediatrics: Motivation, Attitudes, and Learning Strategies
  • Multisource Feedback to Pediatric Residents: The Efficacy of an ACGME Competency-Based Assessment Tool
  • High-fidelity Medical Simulation in the Difficult Environment of a Helicopter: Feasibility, Self-Efficacy and Cost
  • Assessing Self-Directed Learning Readiness in Family Medicine Resident Physicians
  • Can an Educational Video Improve Parental Understanding of Physician Trainee Roles in the Pediatric Emergency Department?
  • Is Patient Feedback A Useful Adjunct to Medical Student Evaluation?
  • Comparison of Team Leader Training in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: A Randomized, Controlled Trial Involving Simulation-Based and Traditional Training Methodologies
  • Development of Preliminary Quality Measures for Juvenile Rheumatoid or Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis - A Project in Progress
  • Effects of Simulation Training on Pediatrician Knowledge and Self-Efficacy in Airway Management
  • Emergency Medicine Mock Oral Board Examination Simulation: Is Peer-Reviewed Simulation More Effective than Individual Simulation?
  • Measuring Knowledge and Attitudes about Asthma in Pediatric Nurses in an Inpatient Setting
  • West African Immigrant Families in Cincinnati: A Cultural Primer on Children’s Health
  • Readiness Assessment of Medical Residents for an Online Residents-as-Teachers Curriculum
  • Use of In Situ Simulations to Identify Barriers to Patient Care for Ad Hoc Multicultural and Multidisciplinary Teams in Developing Countries: A Qualitative Study to Inform the Design of Educational Interventions in Under-Resourced Settings
  • Development of a Quality Improvement Knowledge Assessment Tool
  • Development of a Research Curriculum in Basic Science: A Pilot Study of a Formal Curriculum in Research Training

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