Fall semester is a time for new starts, new students, and new faculty. As we continue to navigate what we do to help our students learn in a virtual environment, how might you apply some of the same approaches to orient new faculty? Consider incorporating some of these ideas:

We work hard to keep our community connected online, and one of our special initiatives is our annual #HMICommunity Day. This year, we celebrate with sincere gratitude to our worldwide community of healthcare professionals transforming education and healthcare delivery during extremely uncertain times.  

Please join us TODAY, August 11th for #HMICommunity Day - a virtual celebration of our worldwide community of practice! As alumni and friends, join us in showing support for our organization by tagging us in a photo and/or message on one of our three social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn – and letting us know what the Harvard Macy Institute means to you. Please tag all messages with our hashtag #HMICommunity, and the hashtag of courses you have attended - #HMIEducators, #HMIAssessment, #HMILeaders, or #HMIHCE.

Thank you for helping us celebrate our worldwide community!

Did you know that the Harvard Macy Institute has a podcast? Episodes hosted by Victoria Brazil have discussed leadership during COVID-19, systems of assessment, and virtual communities of practice.

How does 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps prepare for an Olympic race, an event so rare it happens only once every 4 years? According to his long-time coach, “He mentally rehearses for two hours a day... He smells the air, tastes the water, hears the sounds, sees the clock.” Can medical trainees do the same? 

With the overall drop in patients, procedures, and hands-on experience in the COVID-19 era, the foundational experiences that comprise the bulk of medical training are becoming rarer. To help remedy this, we need a simple, effective, high-fidelity training tool that can be accessed from the comfort of one’s own socially-isolated home. I suggest we use the highest-fidelity trainer available - the human brain - to train our learners using structured mental practice.

 With significant advancements in asynchronous and synchronous distance education technologies, such as videoconferencing, online discussion forums, and digital whiteboards, there is an opportunity to facilitate and enhance collaborative learning among interdisciplinary health professionals. If utilized appropriately, these technologies can provide a platform for open, equitable and accessible knowledge-sharing among health professionals. Learner motivation to participate in, and continue with, online learning programs is strongly affected by instructional design, and there are several instructional design strategies related to the 6 C’s of Motivation learning theory which should be considered when developing online education for interdisciplinary health professionals: 

 Fifteen ‘mentors’ participated in this world café workshop: Nearly 35 participants attended and rated the format highly. During the process of debriefing and reflecting on what worked well and how the workshop could be improved, the group members decided to continue the working relationship and transform into a community of mentors and collaborators. We have worked together since September 2019, publishing papers on speed mentoring and career development for educational leaders and scholars and working on 2 more. We learn from each other and mentor each other.