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VMAE | ThinkWORKS 2019

VMAE | ThinkWORKS 2019 held recently in San Francisco received rave reviews from participants whose comments ranged from “Home run!” to “The focus on education is critical to the missions of all our associations – the program was relevant, entertaining and useful.” If you weren’t able to attend (or did attend and want a refresher) VMAE is pleased to provide a sampling of observations from Elliott Masie, along with this video to an unedited, home-spun, embarrassingly authentic recording of the one-hour wrap-up session with Elliott.

Here’s a compilation of Elliott’s Saturday morning comments, on everything from the use of technology in learning to the value of informal learning and from prototyping to competency assessment, that struck me as significant and insightful:

  • “If you envision what is possible then there’s a high probability it can happen – but you have to envision it, to ask ‘what if I could …’”
  • “Patient care is now a 360-degree experience that includes the communications surrounding care. How do you help someone communicate a health state to someone not in the room?”
  • “You can’t be a good facilitator or teacher if you’re not a learner because that’s when you understand the impact of what you’re talking about.”
  • “The level of care about being significantly better [in providing learning opportunities to veterinarians] is enormous in this room.”
  • “You’re just beginning to weave together in some ways what a different mode of learning as a veterinarian could be about … You’re beginning to understand that – as good as your learning offerings are, in courses and conferences and certifications – the majority of learning of veterinarians is done informally, with resources you haven’t necessarily produced, with moments you’re not registering, and with people you may not know. And that’s natural!”
  • “Organic learning, or informal learning, seems beyond our control. But we’re now creating the archaeology of informal learning … like after every keynote providing a room for people to jam about that keynote … or supporting reverse mentoring.”
  • “Like the Legos model, you’ve got to create content that is discoverable, shareable, reusable, revisable, and discard-able.”
  • “In our workshop yesterday you were prototyping, imagining something that had never been built. Whatever you build as the next generation of learning for veterinarians must be tagged back to real veterinarians … of different ages, of different backgrounds … and then get creative about what it might do.”
  • “You actually don’t have to go out and build a lot … You have to become curious, thirsty and hungry for new stuff because there are other folks who might build it. You might be the deployer, the recommender, the writer, the advocate, the critic.”
  • “In many ways, our learners are already ahead of where we are … more technological, more agile, more connected, more adaptable.”
  • “In this future, what happens with competencies? How will they be measured?”
  • “You have to be a learner if you’re a learning and education person … but don’t do it in the area that you’re in. Pick something that has nothing to do with your area and go learn something.  As people in the learning field, we have to be learning how the world is changing.  Always be learning something!”