I signed up for my first MOOC this week. While I wasn’t terribly interested in the overall topic – sadly, registration for ‘The Life and Times of Porfi Altamirano’ isn’t currently being offered– I was curious about the way the instructor used various free online tools to structure the class.

(Quick aside for the 99.99% scratching your head and asking, “Who the heck is Porfi Altimarano?” Derek asked me to include a reference to an obscure baseball player in this week’s post. You can Wikipedia Porfi if you want to, but he was only really notable for his unique name)

For those of you who are not familiar with a MOOC, the acronym stands for “Massive Open Online Course.” A number of leading universities have developed these free, online courses. Companies like Khan Academy, edX, and Coursera are among the more notable providers of MOOCs. According to the initial email from my class’ professor, more than 12,000 individuals signed up for her class. Only 7-9% of enrollees typically complete a MOOC, but that is still 1,000 learners for this particular class, assuming previous study demographics hold true. Not bad.

I doubt I will be one of the 1,000, although I worked my way through a few pieces of the first week’s videos (basically, a bunch of 5-10 minute YouTube clips cut up and posted individually) and some of the homework quizzes just to see how it all worked. It was OK — not awful, not great, but OK. I find that I have a hard time sitting through a 10-minute YouTube video of someone talking to me, with or without slides. It’s just not engaging and I quickly lose focus. Kind of the same way I do in a conference room when there is a single speaker who doesn’t interact with his audience. Teach to me, not at me.

The point (and yes, there is one) is that there are some wonderful new educational tools and platforms at our disposal in the educational community, but it requires matching the right type of content to the right platform. I have been in far too many planning sessions where someone got really jazzed about some new learning platform or method, but couldn’t get past the concept that they shouldn’t simply squeeze a Powerpoint presentation into that platform.

Using new learning technologies requires creative ways of thinking about content creation and development. It can’t simply be a matter of selecting something from column A (the type of content) and something else from column B (the delivery platform) and shoehorning them together. They have to match together seamlessly so that the end user – in our case, learners – gets something out of the experience. Trying something new just to try something new is a waste of time (and often money). There have been too many times I have attended an educational session that promised an innovative educational platform, but left frustrated with how poorly they utilized the tools at their disposal.

One of the many things that has me excited about CMEpalooza Fall is that I think we are taking advantage of the Google Hangout On Air (GHOA) platform to bring everyone the right kind of education for our format. GHOA is a great platform for conversations, both among faculty and between faculty and learners. We’re giving anyone who views a session live a number of different ways to ask questions – through the GHOA plug in, through Twitter (#cmepalooza), and even through this website. While viewers of the recorded sessions on YouTube obviously won’t have this same opportunity, our hope is that quality of conversation will be enough to keep folks engaged no matter when they tune in.

Fortunately, we haven’t had to sell any of our panelists on the educational approach for CMEpalooza Fall. They seem to trust that Derek and I know what are doing (suckers). It’s not always easy or comfortable being thrown into new technology, and while the panel-based format of CMEpalooza Fall should be familiar to most of our faculty, we’re taking away PowerPoint crutches and relying on their collective brilliance to carry the day. As Derek has frequently noted in various social media forums, though, we have a great group of panelists on board and seven unique topics to chew over. We hope everyone will find something that resonates.

Today’s interview is with CMEpalooza Fall moderator Karen Roy, Principal of Ardgillan Group LLC. Karen has worked on both the supporter and provider side of CME, so she’ll bring an interesting perspective along with her Irish brogue to Publishing Outcomes Data: Tips and Tricks. This session is being supported by Genentech.

A few of the tastier snippets from her interview:

On what scares her about the future of CME:

Overall, I’m scared that we’ll get in a couple of different ways. The ongoing dialogue in the media and the press defending industry funding around CME is very tiresome. We obviously haven’t done enough to demonstrate the independence around CME that is supported by industry. We need to move the conversation from one around bias and independence to one showing impact and relevance.

On what she feels has been the most important change to CME in the last 5 years:

The emergence of new technology and innovation in educational design. What I have been pleased to see is that the things that we are working are not innovation for novelty’s sake, but are really based on adult learning principles and the ability to collect data.

On her vision for her CMEpalooza Fall session:

The dialogue around publications is really going to focus more on the how. I don’t know if we’re going to spend time on the why… There is a different skill set involved in writing publications for medical literature and manuscript publication than there is for (developing) slide decks or putting educational content together. That’s an important thing to explore.

You can watch the full interview below:

Keep your head up and your eyes forward. Look straight ahead. Keep an even stride. Don’t pause, even for a second.

You hear those voices — “Hi! Let’s talk for a second!” “I have something I want to show you!”?

Ignore them! IGNORE THEM!

If you tilt your head or show interest for even a split second, she’ll know you are interested in her. Don’t show weakness. Focus on your goal. 

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Don’t wave hello! Did you just make eye contact? Great, now you have been sucked into her vortex, and she knows you like her. Fine, go talk to her. Why don’t you just give up loser? WASTE OF MY TIME!

OK, maybe I’m channeling the voices inside my head during my daily walk to English class in 7th grade as I carefully averted my eyes from my secret crush, but I’m actually going for something a little more relevant here as well.

Meet “Exhibit Hall Scott.”

I mean, I get it. Businesses that sell a service need to market themselves somehow, and one way to get in front of potential clients is to purchase booth space at a conference. Nonetheless, I always cringe when I have to make the walk down aisle after aisle while trying to find the bar, er, coffee table to get me through the day. It just feels, I dunno, icky.

(Shameless CMEpalooza Fall plug coming in 5…4…3).

On the flip side, there is nothing icky about the sponsors who have committed to be a part of CMEpalooza Fall. You can either visit them on the Sponsor tab or not (but of course you should). You can either click on their links to find out more about them or not (but of course you should). I mean, no pressure or anything (it’s not like Google is tracking every click of your mouse or anything).

Seriously, though, we’re thrilled that our initial wave of sponsors have recognized the value of CMEpalooza Fall as a non-icky alternative to the exhibit booth at live meetings.

So thank you to our Bronze Sponsors — CMEology, HighMarksCE, Impact Education, LLC, RedMedEd, and Vivacity Consulting, LLC. A big hug to our Silver Sponsor, Imedex. And a wet, sloppy kiss to our Gold Sponsor, Genentech.

Of course, we’re still happy to bring new sponsors into the fold, so for anyone interested in what we think about the value of a sponsorship, well sure, we have that too.

Now to hunt through Facebook for that girl who stopped me on my walk down the hallway. Surely she remembers me, right? Right?