Changes in the Continuing Education Process for Perspectives

You have accessSIG Special TopicsPublisher Note24 Apr 2020Changes in the Continuing Education Process for Perspectives American Speech-Language-Hearing Association American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Rockville, MD Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_PERSP-20-00052 SectionsAboutAbstractPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In For more than 25 years, Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups has served as a key way for Special Interest Group (SIG) affiliates to earn ASHA Continuing Education Units (CEUs). The $5 fee to earn ASHA CEUs has been one of the most consistent values available to SIG affiliates and will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Earlier this year, ASHA Professional Development (APD) started including Perspectives self-studies in its new ASHA Learning Pass, which allows affiliates to earn ASHA CEUs from all 19 SIGs' Perspectives at no additional cost. Along with the introduction of the ASHA Learning Pass, we've been rethinking the process of how SIG affiliates demonstrate their learning to earn ASHA CEUs. The “open book exam” format has served affiliates for years, but we wondered: Is there a way we could better tie in continuing education with the purpose of Perspectives, namely, to bridge research and practice? We believe a new format for earning ASHA CEUs through Perspectives self-studies will help accomplish exactly that. Starting this month, rather than answering a set of multiple-choice questions to earn ASHA CEUs after reading a collection of articles for Perspectives, readers will instead be asked one open-ended question: “How will you apply what you learned in this course in your job or your research?” The assessment also contains instructions for those who are not currently working to consider how they could have applied this to past or future situations. APD has been using this question format for other CE activities for a number of years, and it has proven successful. APD staff report that learners take the question seriously and put a great deal of thought into their responses. Brown et al. (2014) wrote that when people are asked to reflect, they use cognitive activities that lead to strong learning. Unlike multiple-choice questions, which encourage people to search for one “right” answer, reflecting requires people to retrieve prior knowledge from memory, apply that to new experiences, and rehearse what they might change in the future. Requiring readers to reflect on and apply what they have read ensures they connect the learning to experiences, rather than simply ensuring their reading comprehension. APD maintains that both multiple choice questions and open-ended reflections are valid learning assessments, and many well-researched and effective multiple-choice exams exist. However, the wide subject range for Perspectives caters to the needs of readers across various settings and career stages—from students and early-career professionals to international affiliates to retired affiliates. Rather than asking all of these readers to complete the same multiple-choice exam to assess what they have learned, the new assessment format gives them the opportunity to apply their prior knowledge. We hope that the new format will encourage readers to keep earning ASHA CEUs from self-study of Perspectives, and that it might motivate readers who don't already take advantage of this opportunity to start doing so. The evolution of the assessment process for self-studies has been endorsed by the editors-in-chief of this journal: Brenda Beverly, PhD; Angela Ciccia, PhD; Barbara Cone, PhD; and Patrick Finn, PhD. We look forward to rolling out the new Perspectives CE exercise format in the coming months, and hope the readers enjoy it as well! Acknowledgments The input of Jack Coursen, Liz Ehrstein, Tracy Miller, and David Sensenig from ASHA Professional-Development and Frank Wisswell from ASHA Publications was essential for the development of this publisher note. References Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 5Issue 2April 2020Pages: 349-349 HistoryReceived: Feb 28, 2020Accepted: Mar 2, 2020 Published online: Apr 4, 2020 Published in issue: Apr 24, 2020 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library Metrics Topicsasha-topicsasha-article-typesleader-topicsCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 2020 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF downloadLoading ...