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If you’re a CE-Go user, odds are it's because you’re offering continuing education programs for professionals. Professionals look to you as an authoritative source of industry knowledge, and your credentialing boards require that you maintain their high standards.
Credentialing boards ensure compliance in a variety of areas when it comes to CE programming, including meeting requirements for promotional materials, evaluations, certificate distribution and more. But before we can worry about compliance with respect to program administration, the first step is to ensure that the educational content, or what is being taught is CE compliant.
Educational content generally refers to a course or session’s description, learning objectives, references and other learning materials, such as handouts or slide decks. While each credentialing board has their own set of specific rules and regulations, there are some general guidelines across disciplines that can help keep your educational content compliant.
The title of your course is the first thing attendees see when deciding whether or not to attend your event, so it’s natural to want to make it engaging. But be careful of over selling your event. The credentialing board is there to ensure that your content meets certain educational standards, and they aren’t likely to sign off on non-descriptive titles and descriptions about “owning your power” or “manifesting your best self.” Instead focus on keeping titles and descriptions informative. Tell your attendees in a straightforward way what skills they can expect to learn and how those skills will benefit them in their industry. Useful content about contemporary issues that professionals are facing. sells itself. So don’t worry about being too flashy.
A common mistake in writing learning objectives, is that they state what the presenter intends to teach, rather than telling the attendee what skills they can expect to leave with. Instead of “Presenter will discuss therapeutic interventions,” consider trying “Participants will be able to list three therapeutic interventions.”
Make sure to create learning objectives that are measurable and observable. Avoid verbs such as “learn,” and “understand,” since these are hard to measure and observe. Using verbs like “list,” “assess,” and “define,” for example, make the overall learning objective easy to observe and measure.
Lastly, keep learning objectives simple and concise. Trade the lengthy list of 10 complex and confusing objectives with 3 simple and clear objectives that, like we stated above, tell attendees what skills they can expect to leave with.
Good educational content is backed by current evidence-based research.
While books, chapters from edited anthologies, and other references can be useful, make sure you are including current peer-reviewed journal articles as part of your reference list, to demonstrate that your educational content is contemporary and evidence-based. Websites and infographics can also be useful, but are not a replacement for peer-reviewed research.
If you are running the same workshop regularly, make sure to review your references each year and verify they are up to date with the latest research.
By following these helpful tips, you will be well on your way to compliant content! As always, we recommend that you consult with your credentialing board to ensure you are in compliance with their specific requirements for educational content.
