Education Committee Initiates Changes for Upcoming Annual Education Forum

Emily WhiteHorse
Chair, Education Committee

Despite the overwhelming success of the 2007 Annual Education Forum in Tucson, the PAEA Education Committee continues to evaluate the forum’s format, structure, schedule, and presentation process. With the support of PAEA leadership, several changes recommended by the committee have been implemented for the meeting in Savannah this fall.

The committee recognizes that the growing number of programs and
faculty — in addition to the increasing emphasis within programs on scholarly activity — have resulted in a significant increase in the number of proposals being submitted for presentation. These developments indicate a need for additional opportunities for our colleagues to present at the level of a national meeting. Over the past five years, the trend at our Education Forums has shown a decrease in the hours allotted for actual peer-reviewed presentations, largely because of scheduling demands for group, committee, and organization meetings and events. While the committee appreciates the importance of these activities, it is also looking at ways to balance these activities with the need and interest demonstrated by faculty for opportunities to present.

To respond to these concerns, the PAEA board recently accepted a recommendation from the Education Committee regarding requests for meetings at the Education Forum. The new policy, which will take effect for this fall, will require any group, committee, or organization, whether internal or external, to formally request time and space at the meeting. These requests will be factored into the scheduling process and granted according to availability. In addition, the goal is for such events not to occur during professional presentation times. Any group, committee, or organization that is interested in reserving time and space, regardless of its past meeting history, must submit a “meeting request form” no later than May 15, 2008. Forms can be found on the PAEA Web page at http://www.paeaonline.org./Meetings/EdForum2008/Meeting Request Form.doc and should be completed and e-mailed to Jennifer Jarmin, director of education and meeting services. Decisions will be made by the Education Committee in conjunction with the board.

Changes are also being implemented in the proposal process. The first, to address the challenges of overlapping sessions due to presentations’ differing time requirements, is that the conference presentations will now be 50 minutes for all formats, except pearls, and will begin and end at the same time.

Second, all peer-reviewed presentation submissions, including papers and posters, will be evaluated by members of the Education Committee. In the past, reviews of papers and posters were conducted by the Research Institute (RI). This change resulted from a restructuring of the RI’s main role and responsibilities toward organizational data development, analysis, and outcomes. While some members of the RI may be enlisted to lend their expertise to the review process, the overall responsibility for review and selection will lie with the Education Committee.

Third, the Education Committee feels that there continues to be significant confusion regarding the difference between a roundtable and a workshop, despite efforts last year to bring more clarity to the formats. Therefore, roundtables have been renamed “focused discussion sessions.” Focused discussion sessions will provide an interactive setting for exploring and brainstorming about an identified issue, problem, or challenge (e.g., cheating, diminishing preceptor sites), with the goal of sharing ideas and identifying possible solutions. The majority of time in this presentation format is to be devoted to large- and small-group discussions about a focused topic to conclude with a summative process that will equip attendees with ideas, strategies, and information to take back to their programs.

Fourth, the committee is putting significant effort into restructuring the overall meeting format to provide for more hours of presentations and anticipates some major changes from what has been the usual sequencing of events.

Finally, the general proposal guidelines for this year have changed considerably and may be accessed in the Call for Proposals at http://www.paeaonline.org/Meetings/EdForum2008/2008CallforProposals.htm.

The members of the Education Committee are excited to be part of these changes, while acknowledging that change can sometimes be hard. As always, we are interested in the membership response and feedback to any of the modifications we continue to make as we move our organization to the next level.