Notes from the 2023 Alliance Annual Conference

The Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp) has shifted its schedule, moving their Annual Conference from mid-January to the first week of February. Nearly 1,000 people who work in various aspects of health care continuing professional development gathered in National Harbor, MD, and more joined through the virtual platform for 3 days of education and networking.

1. No one has completely solved the riddle of convincing outside experts to always meet requested (and sometimes required) due dates, but a useful strategy is to provide a timeline that shows how their actions impact other steps in the planning process
2. It's easy to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but putting DEI into action takes work. A good place to start is by reviewing, updating, and/or creating new policies on how speakers are selected and what the expectations are for the makeup of planning committees
3. Educational activities should be the length that's appropriate to the topic. This may mean a chunk of microlearning modules, or it may mean a day-long conference. There is no rule, but it is also useful to know that most learners expect to spend an hour in an online educational activity when they sit down at their computers
4. YouTube offers lessons in the design of online education. In a live session, we're accustomed to spending time with our introductory slides. How can we move through that required front matter faster to get to the actual content?