Creating an "Education Shark Tank" to Encourage and Support Educational Scholarship and Innovation.

Problem: Creating and supporting opportunities for innovation that showcase and reward creativity in medical and biomedical education is critically important for academic institutions, learners, and faculty.

Approach: In 2014, the Institute for Excellence in Education at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine created a small grant program called Education Shark Tank, in which two to five finalist teams present their proposals on innovative initiatives to improve education to four or five senior educator "sharks" at an educational conference, with an audience. The sharks then "grill" the presenters, considering which if any to fund, focusing on the rationale, feasibility, appropriateness of the outcome measures, evaluation and assessment plan, and proposed method of dissemination.