I was speaking with a colleague the other day who works for a large educational organization. We were talking about the benefits of implementing some online educational activities and how to construct them. She was lamenting the challenge of having to work with software programs that were several generations old and did not have some of the new and valuable features. Also, in order to make some of the significant changes she was interested in she had to run the entire program past her corporate managers, who were notorious for blocking innovation.

After speaking with her I was reflecting about this situation and how I sometimes take for granted the advantages of being small. I work as a primary member of two small organizations, OMERI and Education and Training Solutions. In each of these organizations we can make decisions quickly without going through some corporate bureaucracy. In this current and fast-changing business climate that has extreme advantages. If we see opportunities or benefits in changing course right away, we simply do it. We don’t have to wade through all the layers of permissions and explanations to others.

It has always been the goal of many businesses to grow bigger. However, in this current climate of fast-changing times it’s wise to remember the concepts presented decades ago by E. F. Schumacher in his wonderful book, Small Is Beautiful.  In addition, it is a much more environmentally responsible way to view our future.

I just returned from the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals 14th annual School Issues Forum. It was a wonderful gathering and a great chance to see some old friends and make new ones as well. One of the great things I like about this meeting is that the entire meeting is held in a discussion forum context, so active participation from everyone is strongly encouraged. The great diversity of views expressed helps us all grow and evolve.

While at the meeting I did a presentation on current trends in online learning. It is exciting to see the growth in this area and many massage education programs are recognizing the wealth of possibilities with online education. Distance education has often suffered from a general bias against it based on some peoples’ experience with poorly-constructed courses. But let’s face it, there are some pretty bad classroom courses as well. What needs to be emphasized are the types of high quality educational practices that can be accomplished with distance education.

I recently joined forces with Jan Schwartz at Education and Training Solutions and our goal is to bring high quality online education to the massage field as well as other disciplines. Click here to see an example of some of the different types of course activities that can be used in quality online education.

I have become fascinated with online education and the superior ways in which we can teach complex clinical reasoning skills in the online environment. Our online orthopedic massage courses are centered around these concepts. We’d love to have you come join us in one of those upcoming courses!

This past summer the U.S. Department of Education released a fascinating research report comparing online education with traditional classroom based education (http://bit.ly/Xqyvc).  They evaluated over 1000 academic studies of online learning and applied rigorous criteria to find those of highest quality. The final meta-analysis yielded over 90 studies with appropriate methodology comparing online learning to traditional classroom instruction. Their findings?  “…students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The Sloan Consortium performs a survey of online education in the U.S. each year  (http://bit.ly/Dws1L). According to their 2008 survey:
• Over 3.9 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2007 term; a 12 percent increase over the number reported the previous year.
• The 12.9 percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.
• Over twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students were taking at least one online course in the fall of 2007.

Business, universities, and K-12 schools throughout the country have recognized what a powerful and effective educational model online learning can be. Yet, in the massage profession we still don’t recognize or acknowledge this. Many states do not allow distance education as part of the entry-level curriculum in massage schools. In those states that do, very few massage programs use online learning at all.

I often hear the argument that online learning is not appropriate for massage because this is a hands-on profession. I would heartily agree that the techniques of massage should be taught in a supervised classroom environment. However, there are many subjects (anatomy, physiology, business, kinesiology, pathology, etc.) that could be taught very effectively using innovating online learning strategies. There are some exceptional new technologies that are highly effective at teaching these types of subjects and we are lagging far behind by not employing them for our students’ benefit. It’s time for us to start forging new ground as educators and explore the opportunities of innovative 21st century learning

There has been a great deal of buzz lately about the recent announcement from the NCBTMB regarding their advanced certification credential (tentatively scheduled for spring 2010). There is still considerable controversy within the profession about an advanced credential and a number of serious issues that must be sorted out. I have written before of the need for an advanced credential focusing on the healthcare/medical applications of massage and I sincerely hope this is the direction the organization chooses to pursue with this credential.

Regardless of the type of advanced certification that the NCBTMB chooses to pursue, they will have to grapple with a sticky issue when it comes to eligibility criteria. The nature of an advanced exam suggests that education above and beyond the entry level will be required to sit for the exam. However, in this profession we don’t have any existing model to evaluate what that advanced education looks like.

The most common method of evaluating additional education would be to simply add up hours of continuing education (CE) courses that an individual has taken. However, there could easily be loads of accumulated CE hours in topics that don’t significantly contribute to an individual’s advanced knowledge for addressing compromised health care conditions. There could also be years of clinical practice in a medical setting where there were no formal educational hours earned, but the environment was a valuable educational experience. How will the NCBTMB grapple with these diverse educational environments when attempting to evaluate advanced education? It remains to be seen how this will be done, but it will certainly be one of the most difficult aspects of developing this new credential.

I recently came across an advertisement for an essay contest in one of my favorite magazines, The New Scientist. The essay contest was asking if science could end the need for animal research. The ad asked: “Can you envisage how advances in technology—perhaps stem cells, tissue engineering or computer modeling—could end the need for animal research?” I thought about this for a bit and found it an interesting question because I frequently come across research studies where animals have been used for the research study.

Unfortunately I missed the deadline on the essay contest, but still felt it was worth thinking and writing about the issue. The question itself is interesting and reminds me of a similar question that we hear debated in much of the popular literature about whether science and technology can save us from global climate change. The answer to both questions, unfortunately, is no.

The reason that science is unlikely to end the process of animal research lies in the very title of the essay contest ad. It suggests that there is a need for animal research. I realize many people will argue with me about this and say animal research is necessary for advances in biomedical engineering, health care, etc. But this isn’t a question about science. It is a question of ethics.

Where do you place yourself in relation to the other creatures that inhabit the planet with us? The idea that science needs animal research is one that is based on the assumption that we as humans have the right to decide how we use other animals without considering if they want to be involved in our research. If we subjected humans to many of the processes that are used in animal research there is no doubt that we would call this torture. Yet, somehow we are able to look the other way and say it is OK because it saves lives. Well, it doesn’t save the lives of the animals that are “sacrificed” in the process.

Eliminating animal research would clearly slow the advancement of many medical procedures and processes. Many people feel that increased human survival offsets any moral obligation we have to the way we treat other sentient beings. I can’t agree with that. It is time to recognize that if we are holding ourselves up to be the most intelligent creatures on the planet, we must also confront the ethical dilemmas of our actions. I would agree with the underlying assumptions of the New Scientist essay contest that science can make significant advances without the need for animal research. But we must go much further than that and recognize that it is really time to end the use of ALL animal research.