Musings on Continuing Education in Quality

A common theme that comes up in this blog is Adult Education.  As a central thought I have read and observed that adults are not sponges, open to learning about everything.  Adults will learn what they want to learn provided that it is packaged in a way that they perceive suits their purpose and self-image.  Adult learners, despite their motivation are   very selfish.

There are so many choices these days; you can read a book or journal or go through an instruction manual or watch a video or attend a course or conference.  And of course there is the hunt-and-peck or trial-and-error approach of trying to figure it out through the process of self-exploration.  

I used to think that there were some natural divides that influenced how we try to learn.  Stereotypically men would might think would tend more towards solitary learning and women would tend more towards group learning, but what study there is on the subject does not bear that out.   Men and women use both forms of study, each for their own purposes, and each with their own degree of success.   

There are many types of information that can be picked up by reading a manual or journals, but in my experience the opportunities for failure are much greater than success.  If the writing is ambiguous or tedious, or if the conditions for reading are not perfect, or if you are distracted by multi-tasking or time urgency, the greatest probability is that the learning will be a struggle.

That is why I spend so much time on developing group opportunities for Continuing Education in Quality.

At the moment we are coming to the end of the first week in our on-line virtual classroom certificate course in Laboratory Quality Management, and it looks like this will be a successful year.  There is a lot of dialogue and discussion going on. 

Not everything is perfect; we are really struggling with a new on-line education platform that is not particularly intuitive or helpful.  I understand the pressures on companies to demonstrate their commitment to innovation, but I am not impressed when “New and Improved” turns out to be “just New”. Grumble …grumble.

As I have mentioned before I am also working on a number of on-site Quality Education opportunities to supplement the course.    

In April we will be hosting our 20th annual half-day Quality Seminar with the Canadian Association for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (CACMID) and the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada (AMMI Canada) in Quebec City and in October we will host our POLQM Quality Conference in Vancouver (see below).   Both these programs are coming along very well with strong subject content and high quality speakers.  

There are some obvious differences between on-line and on-site learning for adults.  On-line education, even in a group situation like our course, provides certain luxuries.  You can enjoy the group discussion and group learning but at the same time you can participate when you want to; for me after midnight works well.  You can have music or not, or sit in your underwear (provided that you don’t use Skype or You Tube!).  You can get up and walk away and come back an hour later and nobody knows.   You can even smoke.

On the other hand on-site learning provides a level of access and intimacy and connection that can never be truly paralleled by computer learning.  You can ask questions directly and make new contacts and create new opportunities.  As they say the real value of meetings is that you actually meet.   

As a education developer, my personal experience is that putting on a course of a conference or a seminar by-and-large all consume the same amount of time and energy and effort and money.  It is all in the preparation and detail.  The process of lining up topics and speakers and developing content is always more than you expect.  Regardless of format, each hour of content transfer takes about 10-12 hours of preparation time. If you think that you can do a credible job on less, you are probably wrong.  And more importantly if you thing you can do it all by yourself, you are definitely wrong; Education is absolutely a team sport.

For the bottom line is that we get engaged in continuing education activities because we see it as interesting and worthwhile and a lot of work and a lot of fun.  Making it all about Quality delivery makes it better.  

It is a noble endeavor.

The Seven Cs of Conferences

We live in interesting and in many respects a complex era.  For the last 20 years we have seen a tightening of financial resources reaching crisis levels over especially over the last 4-5 years.  Businesses have gone through considerable financial compression with tragic impact on persons and families.  Governments have gone through a huge drop in revenues which as lead to cut-backs in funding of many programs and job loss.   Healthcare has experienced all sorts of conflicting and compounding challenges; more expectation for services for groups with increasing need with particular reference to the very ill and increasing elder care.  

It is fair to say that healthcare is in the throes of huge and immediate financial pressure.  

That being said, Quality Management requires that medical laboratories maintain Continual Improvement though in part Continual Education.  Thus despite the pain and challenges associated with the financial crunch, there is an obligation to education.

We can do that in many ways, including journals, courses, local seminars, on-line education, webinars.  And all of these work well.  One can meet many, perhaps most of continual education needs locally and virtually.

But I would argue that the in-face on-site conference still provides opportunities for education that cannot be met by the local or solitary experience.  By my count, I can think of at least 7 which by chance (?) all begin with "C".

Community

Conferences bring together a group of like-interested people and put them in one room.  They hear common message.  They engage in common question, and they create common discussion.

Concentration and Focus

Adults have their own way of learning, but similar to children, adults learn better when they are isolated from distraction.  Indeed the ultimate weakness of webinars and local meetings is distraction. 

Sitting in your office can be a private place to participate in a teleconference of an hour or two, but sooner rather than later, the phone will ring or there will be someone at the door.  You may not get called away, but your focus gets pulled away.  And it happens over and over.  Imagine trying to participate in a teleconference for 12 hours.  Not ever going to happen.

Conversation

The value of meetings is that people meet and discuss.   Sometimes the discussion discovers polar opposite points of view; other times there is considerable cohesion and consensus.  In many ways, the outcome is important and valuable, but never as valuable as the holding of the conversation.

Current

Many years, when I was a student, I was told: “Read a textbook to learn information from 3 years ago.  Read a journal and learn information from 18 months ago.  Attend a meeting and learn what is new information now.”  Over the years my experience is that those values have by-and-large not really changed.  

Credibility

There are all sorts of learning vehicles in a variety of formats, including blogs, and websites, and books, but few of them provide the same level of credibility of a in-face on-site presentation.  Frankly anyone can write a block or develop a website or offer an opinion in a published book.  Most of it is probably useful; some of it is not. 

But conference organizers tend to pick meeting sponsors because they see them as knowledgeable and good speakers.  They may be biased and locked into a singular point-of-view, but with respect to their own information, they know what they are talking about.

Others who are presenting papers and abstracts may be less reliable, but they are right there and you can ask direct questions.  Either way, when you leave the meeting you will have more information than you had before.

Collaboration

When like-minded folks convene, it is common that views for cooperation and collaboration on projects, present and future develop.  Meetings often become the nidus of opportunities not yet explored.

Collegiality

Continuing discussion and education often can spawn from meeting face-to-face and lead to all sorts of shared experience.  It is so much easier to invite a person to talk to your staff at an education event it you actually know the person and what they are likely to say.  You know who are the strong story-telling communicators and who are the thoughtful provokers.  You find who have the folks with whom it would be enjoyable to interact and collaborate.  

So here we are.  Meetings may take you out of the comfort of your office and may to one level or another be costly.  There are always other choices, but no matter how you slice it, selectively chosen, there continues to be strong value in attending and participating in in-face on-site meetings.