The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is repurposing its digitized continuing medical education (CME) portfolio to provide such offerings to the global healthcare community in the post-COVID environment. Insights gleaned from the virtual deployment of ACC's Annual Scientific Session and Expo for two consecutive years can inform this strategy. Although sustaining attendees' attention throughout a virtual learning activity is a challenge, ACC's Janice Bain Sibley writes that "digitized CME produced during the COVID pandemic appears to be a simple conversion of content originally designed for in-person presentation." She advises adopting key learning practices, including delivery of virtual learning in smaller amounts; minimizing long static slide presentations with audio narration; and providing more opportunities for attendee engagement or discussions of practical applications. She also notes enabling problem-based learning via patient case scenarios interspersed with didactic content. "During synchronous presentations, the use of patient cases coupled with online polls and chat room interactions can greatly enhance attendee engagement, especially if clinical experts are assigned to monitor and facilitate chats during live streamed sessions," Sibley adds. She says that digitized learning could potentially bring together much larger and more diverse groups of participants than most in-person sessions. "Presenting education online will be less about imparting information and more about facilitating participant efforts to think critically, make sense of and then apply new knowledge," Sibley concludes.

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