If you've ever completed an IHI Open School course -- as of February 1, there are 94,300 of you -- you know there's a survey at the end. We ask you questions about the learning objectives, the videos, and the discussion boards. And we always ask you how you would make the courses better.

Why?

Why do we ask for your feedback? Why are we requesting more of your time? And, as one student pointed out in a recent survey, "Is anyone even reading these comments?"

The answer is yes -- your feedback is incredibly valuable to us.

To help keep our IHI Open School courses relevant and engaging, we review feedback in two ways:

• On the first Friday of every month, we review all the course comments from the previous month. We look for trends, fix the occasional broken link, and make sure everything is working properly.
• Once a month, we rigorously review one course as a team to make improvements. We look at thousands of bits of feedback to help us integrate new learning technologies and models, update old references, clarify confusing sections, and improve our assessment questions.

Without your feedback, none of that would be possible.

You may be wondering what we've done so far to improve the courses from their original state. What pieces of your feedback have we implemented?

• We now have transcripts for every video in the courses, making sure that even those of you who can't access the media at your hospital (or in your country) can benefit from the learning.
• We now have summary documents at the end of every course, giving you something tangible you can reference whenever you want.
• We'll soon be launching a new (shorter!) survey with more optional questions. (After all, there's nothing more important than your time.)

There are many more improvements on the horizon, but we wanted to take a moment to let you know how much we value your input. We can never THANK YOU enough for your feedback and participation, and hope you accept this letter as a start. We look forward to learning with you in the years to come.

If you ever have any questions, ideas, or suggestions, we're here to hear them.