CME Labels Are Covering Too Many Jobs

Key Takeaways

• Watching, polling, generating a reason, and dialogue are different learner jobs. Call an activity interactive only when the file names an observable product.
• Narrative helps when it puts the learner in an unfolding decision role. Do not treat storytelling as decoration or score it as its own outcome.
• Evaluate joint accreditation as an interprofessional planning model. Shared infrastructure can help without a merge; joint providerships need educator-to-educator intake.

Medscape and Kenes learning staff told a Good CME Practice Group audience that “active learning” is too broad to design or defend. Watching, polling, generating a reason, and building on another person’s idea are different learner jobs, and a lecture plus a poll is what usually gets stamped interactive. This is designers talking to designers, not clinician demand. A separate Alliance conversation with one institutional CE director makes a related planning point: joint accreditation is an interprofessional model, not a cheaper self-study cycle.

“Interactive” needs an observable learner action

In a Good CME Practice Group / European CME Forum session, Medscape and Kenes learning staff argued that CME teams use active learning as a catch-all. Their point was not that every activity must become a simulation. Watching, clicking, explaining a choice, and building on another person’s idea are different jobs, and the activity file should not call all of them interactive.

ICAP is useful here as a check, not as a new engagement brand. Watching is passive. A poll or click is active only if it creates an observable response; thinking about an on-screen multiple-choice question does not count. Asking learners to explain a choice or write a next step is constructive. Dialogue, co-creation, or moderated team reasoning is interactive. That is why lecture-plus-polling is so often over-labeled: the poll can prove attendance without producing a practice-change task.

The session’s examples stayed low-tech. A show of hands, sticky notes, chat, or emoji can be enough if the learner does something visible. QR codes were a caution, not a requirement—they send heads into phones. Pair every poll with a reason, a reflection, or a comparison. In hierarchical or multilingual rooms, offer an anonymous option so seniority, gender, or second-language confidence do not suppress the move.

That is a sharper ask from the same European CME Forum designer community we covered when workshop formats were still being named in the abstract. The question now is what the learner has to produce, not whether the hour looks more hands-on.

Storytelling belonged to the same check. An unfolding film that puts the learner in a decision role is a different structure from a static case photograph. Use narrative to reveal information over time and close with a next-day transfer, not to add warmth. Do not score storytelling as its own outcome; compare the same content as an unfolding decision versus a static case.

Audit recent activities for the product the learner generates. If the answer is only attention, attendance, or a click, the session can still orient people. It should not be defended as interactive practice-change education.

Joint accreditation is not an admin shortcut

In an Alliance podcast, Barbara Anderson of UW-Madison IPCE told listeners to start with capacity and learner benefit, not prestige. This is one provider-owned episode with an institutional CE leader, so read it as operational experience rather than consensus.

Joint accreditation can unify siloed CE, put team members already in RSS on one credit cycle, and simplify applications. In her shop, admin got simpler while programming and visibility went up; staff did not go down. If a unit will not plan outside its profession, it is the wrong model. Shared LMS, registration, accounting, or marketing can still help without a full interprofessional merge.

The unfinished work is planning committees that actually seek multi-profession input, not programs that merely award credit to multiple professions. Joint providerships fail when the accredited provider only reaches marketing. Educator-to-educator intake, plus a written policy on accessibility, high-risk content, and AI use, needs to exist before the first activity is scoped. Otherwise the accredited provider inherits transactional work from partners who thought they were buying a channel.

The decision is not whether to add a plaque. It is which units will plan across professions, and which partners will work educator-to-educator.

What CME Teams Should Do Now

• Open three recent activity files and replace interactive or active with the actual learner task: vote, explain, reflect, discuss, decide, or co-create.
• Pair every poll used for practice-change education with a follow-up: a reason, reflection, comparison, or moderated exchange, and keep live polling low-tech.
• Before pursuing joint accreditation, test whether planning units will work across professions; if not, separate shared infrastructure from a model change.
• For joint providerships, require educator-to-educator intake and put accessibility, AI-use, and process expectations in policy before launch.

What to reconsider

Does the label on the activity match the work asked of learners or planners? If learners are supposed to change reasoning, name the reasoning task. If teams are supposed to learn interprofessionally, name who plans together and how. Specificity also has to survive the faculty brief and the room schedule, not only the brochure—a society preview of EANO Education Day made that operational with lecture-level objectives and protected discussion. Stop using labels as compliments, or a well-produced activity will still be hard to defend.