Education Director's Report

Hello MDRAO Members,

This year has been an eventful year; as a board, we have been successful in hosting the 50th Anniversary Conference for the MDRAO. Conference planning was a good learning experience, creating agendas, becoming an overnight graphic designer for the posters and flyers and even hosting my own promotional activity on Linkedin to bring in some international vendor interest! At first, with the resignation of previous board members, I was a little set back; I began to think it was too much to take on. However, the team we have is incredible, we get things done, keep moving forward no matter what the setback, and most importantly hold ourselves accountable for our actions. We educate one another on the Federal Canadian Not For Profit Act and our Organization Bylaws to ensure, we are taking the organization in the right direction towards a law-abiding truth and transparent future.

We had a lot of members come to me during the show telling me how much they enjoyed it and how they learned new things. There was a lot of education on various topics and demonstrations of upcoming technologies; lots of continuing education credits were handed out. We wanted to make the conference a little different from the other conferences we had and really wanted people thinking about things they may never have thought about during their day-to-day reprocessing. We invited speakers from various backgrounds to discuss some of the science behind reprocessing of medical devices.

Online Course Changes and Improvements
Throughout the year, we have been working on making some tweaks to our online course and refresher course. We held an in-person training session for our online course facilitators on how to use the website to keep track of student progress, generate student reports and manage student quizzes. We listened to what our facilitators were experiencing and implemented some corrective actions. To ease the burden on facilitators, the online course was changed to a bi-monthly start date program, starting on the 1st and 16th of each month, instead of daily. Facilitators are now assigned a group of students and notified twice per month, a day before each start date, as opposed to new students starting every day and hundreds of emails going out each day. In addition, facilitators no longer have to fill out and submit student contact forms to show they have contacted students or how many times they have contacted students; we felt what was more relevant was that the facilitators were available when students needed them to guide them through any challenges.

Previously, we had a lot of day-to-day email inquiries from students asking the office who their facilitator was and when their course start date or exam deadline was. We have now automated this process so all online course students are notified via email blast of their assigned facilitator's name and contact information, and course start date and exam deadline.

Previously, all facilitators were using their own personal email addresses to contact students. As a professional organization in a technological world, cyber security threats are becoming real. We decided it was a little more professional to provide facilitators with an MDRAO email. All facilitators were assigned an mdrao.ca email address for interaction with their students. Students now do not question the authenticity of an MDRAO Facilitator when contacted by email. Furthermore, facilitators were burdened with emails every day from students who failed and passed their online quizzes. This cluttered their inbox and sometimes reduced the visibility of important emails. To reduce the amount of email, facilitators are now only notified when students fail a quiz, not when they pass a quiz.

Healthcare facilities contribute to a lot of landfill. In an ever-changing environment, we feel it is important to go green wherever we can. We look after this planet so the next generations to come can enjoy it, like we do. We decided to go paperless with a lot of our organizational activity. One activity was the mailing out of MDRAO Certificates to graduates. We designed a digital certificate and implemented in the system, allowing students who pass their final exam to automatically receive their certificate by email. Printed and mailed certificates have been discontinued. This will allow students to always have an electronic copy on hand and print whenever required. In the future state we hope to make further improvements so this certificate can be tracked online by employers.

Corrections and updates were made to course content, quizzes and the quiz sheet for facilitators for the online course. We continue to collect all feedback in a spreadsheet so we can make further updates to the online course at the end of the education year.

Another change we made this year was in the sales department of online products. We found that there are many prospective refresher students that already have the manual and workbook, the Refresher Course can now be purchased without the books at a lower price for those who want to reuse an existing textbook. The No Books option was added for a sale price of $265.

We also increased the price of the Online and Refresher Course. The Online Course was $661.90; now it is $749. The Refresher Course was $355; now it is $425.

The ProctorU proctoring fee to MDRAO was eliminated. Students now pay the for exam proctoring directly to ProctorU when they schedule the exam. Previously, MDRD was paying for the ProctorU Fee for all students, which amounted to a substantial annual cost of approx. 25K.

Updates to the welcome video, welcome email, and reminder emails that students automatically receive were made.

We are in the process of separating out the education section of the website into its own website (mdraoeducation.ca) dedicated to education. This will allow for a more simple and smooth experience for Online Course students. In addition, MDRAO membership will no longer be a pre-requisite to take the Refresher Course. We want to offer the refresher course to anyone and do not wish to force membership on those wanting to recertify.

It has been a good year for Education. With all these changes taking effect this year, the enrollment numbers from June 1st to October 10th 2019 are as follows:

 Refresher Course:
41 people purchased the Refresher Course
8 people purchased the Refresher Course - No Books
2 people purchased the Refresher Rewrite (for failure or for missed deadline)

Online Course:
247 people purchased the Online Course
3 people purchased the Online Course Rewrite (for failure or for missed deadline)

For the Online Course, the price changes have generated an additional sales revenue of $21,513.

Future Projects:
We are working on further automating the online course and bringing more enhancements, some things we are exploring are projects such as collaboration with other associations, provinces, translation of the online course into French, strategies to see our books being used on a global scale, automated reminders for expired students to renew their certification, updating the text book and workbook and perhaps even revamping the cover of the text book and introductory pages and much more. Stay tuned as 2020 will be an exciting year for MDRAO.

Website Improvements:

Alongside Education, we also got a chance to make a few low-cost improvements to our website during the conference planning process.

Online management of the 2019 conference was improved in the following ways:

• Corporate sponsorship registration was set up online and no more paper mailed sponsorship forms. Online E-Transfer and Credit Card payments can be taken for corporate sponsorship. Some of the perks in being a corporate sponsorship include discounted pricing on booths and passes. In the past, this was tracked manually, but we were able to set up Sponsors so that they can register online and receive coupon codes to book their discounted or complimentary booths after registration and have it all tracked in the system.
  A coupon code system was added to delegate registration. These coupons are used in instances, for example, when someone wins a complimentary delegate registration we can send them a coupon code so they can still register online and it is tracked in the system instead of having to keep manual spreadsheets or mail in forms.
  Awards nominations were set up online, making it easier to submit nominations. In the past, this was all done through mail-in forms.
  Drop-down menus on the website were improved and typos corrected, pricing was aligned and language standardized. For example: Awards Banquet vs Awards Dinner or Banquet Tickets. New members found this very confusing.
  Exhibitor registration forms were updated to allow exhibitors to have the option of purchasing three booths (previous maximum was two booths). Exhibitors can also pay for additional booth representatives. There was always a fee for Booth Representatives but no way of paying for them on the website.
  The 2019 Conference page was enhanced with easy access to downloads for delegates and exhibitors. Exhibitors were able to access pertinent info such as floor plans, pricing guides, MDRAO Conference Poster, Flyer and more.

Membership Log in:

Education is our mission, and we want to share the education and foster collaboration. Have you ever wondered why it feels we are sometimes working in silo as individual chapters? Well not anymore. You spoke and we listened. Chapters can now share what they are doing, and other chapters can view the minutes and statements from the other MDRAO chapters so they can learn from one another and implement anything they learn from how other chapters are functioning. Members can now view all MDRAO chapters pages. We are a transparent organization and transparency starts within, and on that note it has been a fantastic year working with my partner in crime, Director of Education, Nathalie Legault, we truly work together as a team. Every inquiry we receive, we handle it together and process it together. We don’t override one another and discuss and agree to a solution we both feel comfortable with; we understand the importance of Education and teamwork to achieve the end result. We provide one answer so there is no mixed messaging. I wish everyone a happy MDRD Week and seasons greetings. Speak to you in the New Year!

Garry Bassi
Nathalie Legault
Education Directors,
MDRAO