This Lightning Talk will introduce an innovative, data-driven visualization tool developed to assess interprofessional communication in the University of Michigan Longitudinal Interprofessional Family-based Experience (LIFE) course. By analyzing Zoom interview transcripts, the tool generates interactive Gantt plots that map second-by-second speaker activity. Code was created and tested using recorded zoom interviews of student-patient interactions during an early experiential course where students interview patients on their experiences with chronic illnesses and community resources.
The presentation will demonstrate how the tool visualizes communication flow, speaker dominance, engagement gaps, and moments of silence, providing instructors and students with a granular view of team dialogue. The tool also features a merging threshold that smooths over short breaks in speech, improving readability without distorting temporal accuracy. This visual approach allows educators to identify areas where interprofessional collaboration can be strengthened and provides a foundation for individualized visual feedback to learners. Based on the visualization, we can develop reflective prompts linking the visualization tool and their video for students to consider the quality of their interprofessional communications.
Aligned with the Nexus Summit theme of Building the Evidence Base, this project transforms raw transcript data into actionable insights, by processing time stamped dialogue to track and visualize participation across team members. It offers a scalable method for monitoring team-based interaction, using automated techniques to segment, merge, and dynamically display speaking intervals. The resulting Gantt plots provide a clear view of how conversations unfold over time, highlighting speaker balance, engagement patterns, and potential communication gaps. This approach may enhance student learning outcomes by providing a visualization of participation, and coupled with video and peer feedback, it can bridge qualitative learning goals with quantitative feedback.
The session will explore how the visualization tool contributes to better education by enhancing student reflection and feedback, and to better care by training students in balanced, collaborative communication patterns—skills critical for future healthcare teams. Although piloted in an educational setting, the method holds potential for clinical adaptation in team-based care environments.
