Are you using the most current practices for your CME creation and delivery, or do you find yourself falling behind? Is your LMS providing you with the means to reach more learners, or are they leaving to go to other CME providers because you can’t give them a great learning experience? The answers to these questions will lead you into a new world of modern CME delivery. Areas to look at include embracing new and meaningful learning practices and understanding your learners’ goals and needs and how they learn. It’s also crucial to recognize if your technology is outdated and prevents better learning.
The goal of this blog post is to highlight factors involving new practices and technologies that show why outdated practices in CME creation and delivery can work against you.
Embrace New and Meaningful Learning Practices for Your Learners
It is crucial to devise modern CME program delivery that is highly accessible to practicing physicians and other healthcare professionals and that will have an immediate and significant effect on their behavior. Simply put, effective CME programs need to be designed in a way that makes them highly engaging and interactive. After all, learners learn better when they’re enjoying the content and having fun. You must move away from antiquated lectures and slide shows and offer new and meaningful learning practices.
Let’s look at how physicians and other healthcare professionals are now learning.
Understand Modern Learners’ Goals and Needs and How They Learn
In order to realize modern CME delivery, you need to recognize your learners’ goals and needs and ways that they learn. Common problems include:
- Not identifying or focusing on important learning needs of the learner audience
- Not effectively engaging physicians and other healthcare professionals in the learning process
- Not reinforcing new learning in a way that leads to its application in clinical practice
To understand learner requirements, you should provide content that incorporates their diverse learning styles. This is critical for deeper learning experiences. Be sure to follow the six principles that are critical to adult learners’ goals, needs, and learning ability:
- Adult learners are results oriented.
- They want to have control over the techniques and goals in their learning.
- Adult learners want to connect their life experiences and knowledge with the content that they have learned.
- They are relevancy oriented.
- Adult learners are generally practical, learning in a real-life context.
- They are highly motivated to learn.
As you work toward modern CME delivery, determine if your LMS is working to its full potential or if there’s something missing. One factor that can weaken CME effectiveness is the “one size fits all” method of instruction. This flawed technique assumes that all learners absorb information in the same way. Your CME curriculum should adapt to suit the individual needs of each learner.
Today’s learners also have limited time for ongoing professional development. As a result, many are choosing to receive their CME through self-study and/or self-directed learning using programs delivered through the internet in the form of videos, audio, and web-based enduring materials. Dynamic formats address varied learning styles for learners who do better with those formats than traditional learning methods, such as lectures.
Update Your LMS
If you are unsure if your CME is up to snuff with modern CME technology, see if these issues are present in your current setup:
- Complicated interfaces
- Absence of functionality
- Lack of integration with learner tools
- Multiple systems required to complete different tasks, resulting in too many things for learners to have to do
- Failure to offer pre- and post-test assessments
- Limited or no data-gathering capabilities
- Fragmented overall experiences
If this appears to be your LMS, you should move toward new technology. A web-based LMS platform such as EthosCE can help your modern CME delivery by providing ways to address your learners’ specific needs through the use of interactive formats, such as videos, audio, and enduring materials. It offers:
- Third-party video integration from websites such as YouTube
- Self-hosted video in assessments and activities
- Audio directives and podcasts
- Live-streaming from offline events, such as seminars and annual meetings
- Access to interactive webinars
- Access to easily produced web-based enduring materials
- Downloadable materials within activities
- Instant feedback before, during, and after learner assessments so you can evaluate learning outcomes
If learners are frustrated with their inability to receive their education easily, your LMS may not be doing its job, and they could go to another provider.
EthosCE Help You Effectively Reach Your Learners with New Technology and Practices
When you’re looking to improve your modem CME delivery, you need to take into account your learners’ needs, goals, and learning styles. They need to be able to receive their CME education in ways that are easy to use and have strong interactive elements that are engaging. By using EthosCE, you can provide your learners with the CME that they’re seeking.
At EthosCE, we understand the challenges of staying up to date and compliant with ACCME changes. We know how critical it is to get things done right the first time when it comes to team-based education and success.
To learn how EthosCE can enhance the continuing education of your healthcare teams, schedule a free 1-on-1 demo with one of our specialists today!
