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Transcript
Heather Ranels, MA, MS, CHCP, FACEHP: Hello, and welcome back to the Alliance Podcast, continuing conversations. I'm Heather Ranels, vice chair of the Almanac editorial board. Outside of my volunteer role with the Alliance, I am the principal consultant with CE Innovator. Joining me today is my fellow colleague on the Almanac editorial board, Kristi King. She has been in the CPD education space for eight years and is currently the senior education manager at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. Prior to this, she worked for the American Orthopedic Association. Kristi also has earned her master's in healthcare administration for Boston College. Today, we're diving into faculty management and development and CPD; why it matters, where it's heading and how we can support the educators behind the education. Kristi, welcome to the Alliance Podcast.
Kristi King, MHA: Thank you for having me! Excited to be here.
HR: Let's start with the basics. What is faculty management and development? And why is it an important part of CPD for healthcare professionals?
KK: Yeah, so faculty development is the development, the coaching and the growth of educators. It's important for those in the CPD space for many, many reasons. It helps improve the effectiveness of teaching, enhances the quality of the education provided, and then it benefits the overall educational output and the learners who are attending.
HR: Great. What are some of the more common gaps or challenges faculty face in delivering high quality CPD?
KK: So I'd say the most common challenge is engagement. Everyone learns differently and so programs need to focus on multiple aspects of adult learning. Unfortunately, you can't please all attendees. In one session setting also, I found that in the healthcare education space a common challenge is balance of content with clinical content. There is usually so much information that needs to be packed into one session, so finding that perfect balance of content examples, time for questions, etc., has really always been a guessing game.
HR: You mentioned ways to engage your audience. Can you expand upon that a little bit?
KK: Yeah. So I think audience response systems and polling is really helpful in this space. Question- answer sessions can be very helpful for audiences, and to engage everyone, and to kind of guide the conversation. Also in different formats of courses, I think things like giving examples having role playing, you know, networking can be helpful as well. Just depends on the overall course format or the information being provided in the session.
HR: That's certainly a lot of engagement in a lot of different ways. How do you prepare your faculty to adopt these strategies as you're developing the CPD programs?
KK: Yeah. So I think a lot of the time it always starts with my program chair, so meeting with them kind of feeling out how they want the session to go what they want the learners to kind of end up being the overall output for the session, so, having the program chair meet with the different speakers, reviewing PowerPoint content trying to figure out how to add different engagement into the sessions. Like I've had program chairs in the past add discussion into sessions, or, you know, talk to speakers and say, ‘I think that it would be really great if we added in some sort of role playing, or some sort of question and answer session.’ So that can be really helpful having that program chair, someone already in the healthcare space ,kind of guide those around them. Also, like I said, just hopping on a meeting or call with these speakers to give them ideas of how they can do something else, I think, has been really helpful. Just kind of putting different engagement ideas into their brain and kind of letting them run with it has worked for us in the past.
HR: Tell me about some other initiatives you have implemented for your faculty.
KK: Yeah. So, starting off at the American Orthopedic Association for me, I've kind of seen both sides of faculty development. So, at the American Orthopedic Association, we were a leadership development organization for program chairs and department chairs. So I started off a large portion of my career at an organization that all we did was really development of faculty in the healthcare space. So all of our programming was focused on effective communication, teaching the next generation, conflict resolution, things like that. But now, being at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and focusing on more scientific and clinical content, we've kind of had to figure out how to work on faculty development in a different way. So some things we have done for like smaller or virtual courses. I've worked on faculty information sessions, like I said, just hopping on a meeting or a call with the faculty to go over overall what we're hoping to get out of the session or the course go over technology that's being used, any questions that they have, etc., has been really helpful for larger meetings and conferences, focusing on just giving as much information as we can and guidelines to the speakers based on roles. So if they're a moderator, if they're just an individual speaker, if they're going to be part of a panel, I think different guidelines of just how the session will go, and little tidbits that they can use for the session has always been helpful, just as much information as we can give the group so that they can kind of take that and run with it.
HR: I think you said it very nicely, that as much information you can provide really creates a foundation of support for your faculty but let's not forget about the other side of the page is the learners of our CPD program. So how do you evaluate the impact of faculty development on teaching quality and learner outcomes?
KK: Yeah, this is something that I'm always looking to try and improve on. Right now, we mainly focus on overall event value evaluations, questions on impact of learning, etc. I think, for CPD professionals, it could be really important to focus on like speaker evaluations, even self evaluations for speakers, for one of the courses we handle. We have the faculty just do an overall faculty evaluation and evaluate other of the other faculty as well. So it's kind of nice to see that that different side of it, we get the learner side and then also the people involved in, like the planning and overall output of education, as well.
HR: Great. What are some other positives or opportunities that engaging professional development for faculty?
KK: Yeah, I think the most positive thing would just be the output of the education provided. I think that it's always important to be training and guiding the next generation of, you know, healthcare professionals. So just teaching those around us to not only focus on getting better themselves but teaching that next generation how to become better teachers, or better to guide those coming through that speaker pipeline or anything like that, can be helpful as well.
HR: Is there a particular area in that pipeline or skill set that you find that you have to spend a little more time with your faculty development? Or you're still working through the best way to inform them of the tools they have?
KK: That's a great question. I think it's difficult to answer, because it changes for every speaker, so I think everybody is a bit different in the way one that they learn, and then also that on what things they can improve on. So I think the most difficult piece I found in this space is just making sure to kind of touch all different aspects of things, making sure to always focus on effective communication. I think that's a large one cause it's very different to teaching just in a classroom, or something like that. I could assume I don't know for sure, but then, compared to teaching at a at a large conference with a very limited time. So I think just trying to hit all different pinpoints could be the toughest piece but effective communication is something that that I've always tried to focus on. I don't know if you've seen other aspects in the space being in a similar space.
HR: Well, some of the things I have personally seen is… it remains a common theme across time is just that aspect of faculty interacting with their technology. So once upon a time, it was slide decks, and then we got to computers. And it was PowerPoints and PowerPoints still can be a sticky spot, like you said, like it's a balance of the content. How do you advise them to get the content they need to deliver without overwhelming the slides, or having too many slides or reading to slides? We introduced, you know, ARS, audience response systems to the equation, and that still, for me, is a really hard one to get faculty to effectively use that in a a meaningful learner engagement, and sometimes they just leverage it for their own information purposes. And sometimes it's kind of like, it's just a knowledge type of multiple choice question. You're left with a a pinpoint in your activity. That's not really meaningful. There's no takeaway from that. So those are it technology as a whole. And like, of course, I don't think we have time today to go into it. But certainly the use of AI, how our faculty started to use AI, and that could be from the development of the slides. How do we, as professional Cpd providers. support them? That AI also can be a readily tool for us to to simplify our job and and really get into the nuts and bolts of learner, meaningful learner, learner engagement with our faculty.
KK: Yeah, that's that's a great point, and just kind of learning how we can use AI like you said. But then also teach speakers and educators to use AI as well. So it's going to be a mix for us in that space definitely, something very new.
HR: What are some of the best practices for organizations looking to build and improve faculty development programs?
KK: I think there are a lot of small tactics that organizations can try and start with or test out in the faculty development space. I found. It's a lot of just trial and error, seeing what works for the group and the organization that you're a part of. So as we as we've chatted about, just providing as much beneficial information and guidance as possible. for those looking to get more into faculty development. Just having conversations with others in this space is really important. See what other organizations have done, what's worked for them. just trying to add small tidbits into speaker invitation emails into conversations with chairs, just making sure to to always bring it up. Even in a small way. Just so you can try and get as much information to them as possible. I think, looking forward for those already pretty much like engulfed into faculty development, are already doing a lot of these pieces. I've heard of some organizations doing workshops, mentoring between, you know, different speakers like having a chair talk to a speaker or speaker in a previous course, talk to a new group of speakers. online trainings, things like that. So I always think there's there's a lot of different options for Cpd professionals to to kind of engage in this faculty development space and and just to try out based on what they're hoping for the educational output.
HR: Right. I think you said it really well looking to what others have doing, but I also tie it back to something you said at the very beginning when we were evaluating the outcomes and impact. And I think that's a key point, because what one organization, or even one program or one activity needs may be different from another. And so, tapping into the data, you have to realize that, you know, maybe we have great lectures and education sessions. But maybe it's abstract writing. Maybe it's something that's ancillary. Maybe it's the review committee of the abstracts to boost the science program for like there's all sorts of avenues in there, and I think you certainly could tap into when you work on a leadership program. And you might be doing the technology training within your organization. But are there other components of your education program that can lean into that faculty professional development?
KK: Yeah, definitely, like, really figuring, figuring out your audience learning about the organization itself. And then, yeah, not only focusing on the content, but the smaller pieces within.
HR: So I talked about this before, but what is your perspective on how recent technology advances have impacted faculty development? How has it been, and what are the limitations and opportunities there?
KK: Yeah, I think technology as rapidly as it's growing and expanding can be very helpful in this space right now. I haven't seen too much in this space. I mean, I think audience response systems polling is really important. I think that's been really helpful for programs and that is something that you know all the speakers that I've worked with really enjoyed doing, just being able to have those in the audience ask questions, and kind of guide that conversation. But I think it's difficult, because there are so many different systems out there that do so many like small different things that it can kind of be piecemeal at times, or trying to figure out what's the best system for you, or what exactly you need, like you said, AI, trying to figure out how we're going to add that into courses, or how that's going to, you know, really guide education. Moving forward has been something that is going to be new for a lot of people. But I don't know if you've seen anything else in the space. I think, yeah, for me it's been ARS and polling mainly.
HR: No, I think we continue to lean heavily on it, because I think it's a good and useful tool, especially in that engagement. You know it, it breaks things up into learning chunks. It causes an action of reflection. Reflection in itself can be triggered by a tech moment in technology, but it also can be built into the lectures of just turning and asking your neighbor, you know, talk out this point for the last five min, and we're finally finding that yes, that is a meaningful way of making the learning stick. So I think I think as we look ahead, it's leveraging all tools and knowing what works in one program may not be the same in another program and always looking to improve what we're doing as we go along. So, Kristi, I want to thank you for joining me in today's discussion. But as we wrap up, any final advice for our listeners to think about in their own faculty management and development programs?
KK: I think really just diving in and trying out different techniques as we've talked about today is important. There's no perfect way to provide faculty development programs. As we've mentioned, chatting with others in the space to see what they're doing, what has worked for them, just kind of diving in and trying small pieces and then growing from there. We can all come together to grow in this space, which I think is really important. So, thank you so much for having me today, I've really enjoyed the conversation and even learning a little bit more from you.