Tips to Start Your CME Writing Career: Use Learning Science Concepts for Great CME Content
How the principles of learning science can help you become a better CME writer
Technical writing skills will make you an accurate CME (continuing medical education) writer, but to create engaging content that resonates with an audience of healthcare professionals, you’ll need to use learning science principles. It’s easy to think of learning as merely sharing information. However, how the information is shared can greatly impact whether (and how much!) the learner understands, retains, and applies their new knowledge.
That’s where learning science comes in.
Learning science contains many useful ideas and concepts that can help CME/CEHP writers produce more effective content for healthcare learners. Let’s explore a few of them. But first, we’ll start with a brief definition.
Special thanks to Brian McGowan PhD, FACEP, Chief Learning Officer and Co-Founder of ArcheMedX, Inc., for sharing his insights on how to apply learning science concepts to CME/CEHP on this podcast episode, which contributed to this article. Learn more about his framework for improving the flow of medical information in his book, #SocialQI: Simple Solutions for Improving Your Healthcare.
What Is Learning Science?
Psychology, neuroscience, instructional design, linguistics, computer science, and more come into play in learning science. Simply put, learning science explores the process of how we acquire and apply knowledge and focuses on the different elements that contribute to better outcomes for learners.
Learning science also explores how the learner's actions, instructional methods of the educator, and even learning environments determine which interventions result in better learning and behavioral outcomes.
We cannot control how learners use the content we create in the CME field. However, we can be more intentional and mindful of incorporating learning science strategies into CME and CEHP content, promoting positive learning outcomes.
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Learning as a Behavior in the Context of CME Medical Writing
In 1885, a psychologist called Hermann Ebbinghaus demonstrated that the time it takes for people to forget things they have learned is much shorter (hours and days vs. months and years) than we believe it is. The results of these experiments have been replicated in other studies. Given the important role that memory and recall play in learning, we can see that the forgetting curve has a significant impact on how we approach learning in CME.
If we think about learning as a behavior, we can start applying learning science to help healthcare professionals retain information better. There are many behaviors people exhibit in the process of learning such as note-taking or active listening. However, these may not translate into retaining the information in the long run.
Thinking about Thinking, Thinking about Learning: How Medical Communications Can Help People Learn Efficiently
There is a disconnect between how we think we think and how we actually think. Similarly, there is a difference in how we think we learn versus how we actually learn. As such, some of our learning habits or the activities we perform in our learning process may not be useful or helpful in learning.
Maybe we write notes in a notebook when learning new information, but after the learning event is over, we don’t review those notes or assimilate them into our long-term memory. It is likely that after that learning event, the actions we took didn’t help us “learn” or retain that information, nor did we apply it to new scenarios. This learning behavior disconnect happens for many health professionals going through CME/CEHP content too.
As CME writers, we can ask ourselves: How can we help people think and learn more efficiently?
A somewhat dated example of how the concept of learning as behavior translates into practical application is the capability Microsoft offers when printing out slides. The format of printing out slides with three black lines next to each slide prompts the learner to write down thoughts connected to the slide's content.
By offering this opportunity to connect the learner’s thoughts and the content presented, we help the learner solidify the information in their memory. More recent note-taking tools and apps take this connection between reading, listening, and note-taking further. They not only help you organize your notes but also help you link ideas and easily retrieve information.
With a better understanding of learning science, we can encourage effective learning behaviors when creating CME content. For example, building-in prompts or triggers that help learners absorb information or using strategies to foster retention, recall, and action.
Here are some good practices to keep in mind.
Stay on track: Ensure that written content addresses the learning objectives
Edit ruthlessly: Reduce distractions and eliminate extraneous information
Outline key points: Highlight essential points for the learner
Build iteratively: Sequence the presentation of ideas from simple to more complex
Parse it out: Chunk complex ideas into bite-sized portions of text
Pair image with text: Embed images, graphics, audio, or video clips to break up text where appropriate
Offer opportunities for retrieval practice: Include questions to encourage long-term memory retrieval and help learners connect new information with prior knowledge
Promote active discovery: Include exercises or activities such as matching, polling, or multiple-choice questions to help learners identify gaps between what they thought they knew and what they ought to know
Scaffolding Behavioral Change to Meet Continuing Medical Education Learning Objectives
We need to understand their behavioral and attention limitations to create a learning experience that helps professionals fulfill CME objectives. Once we have an understanding of these, we can build or apply instructional design models that offer the necessary behavioral scaffolding.
Cells that fire together, wire together. We need these neural networks to fire together several times to retain information in our memory. While waiting for that to happen, we can use behavioral scaffolding to prop up and support learners in retaining the relevant information.
This is not the same as content scaffolding or building new knowledge on existing or prior knowledge (e.g. teaching addition before multiplication). Rather, the aim is to use tools and prompts that provide a behavioral nudge and trigger desired actions in the learner. For example, case-based learning involves presenting learners with realistic patient scenarios and guiding them through the process of making clinical decisions based on available evidence and best practices.
Faculty or integrated tools, if cases are online, provide support and feedback throughout the learning process, presenting the best available clinical knowledge in an intelligently filtered format. Over time, as a case unfolds, the level of guidance to learners is reduced as they become more proficient in applying their knowledge and skills to real-world situations. This scaffolding process helps learners develop the confidence and competence to apply what they have learned in their clinical practice.
Scaffolding behavioral change can occur on many fronts. Emotions help to trigger memory, so storytelling in CME content can aid retention. Movement has also been shown to aid the cognitive process, and social and cultural frameworks can guide learning in CME. By harnessing these different tools and applying them to creating CME activities, writers can help health professionals obtain their learning objectives.
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