March 1, 2021

By Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science staff

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The goal was to design learning spaces of the future and utilize education technologies. The challenge was to capture the voices and ideas of Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science staff, educators, and learners. The opportunity to do all of that was the 9th annual Education and Technology Forum.

Typically in-person, this year's annual Education and Technology Forum was transformed into a highly-orchestrated, well-paced, virtual synchronous event. Our Voices, Our Ideas, Our Designs for Learning Spaces of the Future was the theme for the evening. It was an undeniably fitting theme considering how the pandemic, at a moment’s notice, interrupted traditional learning spaces while simultaneously creating the need for new, digital ones.

The 3-hour event, held on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021, was introduced by Richard Zimmerman, M.D., dean for education at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science in Arizona, and hosted by Heather Billings, Ph.D., Academy of Educational Excellence, and Elissa Hall, Ed.D., Office of Applied Scholarship and Education Science (OASES). An interprofessional team of education thought leaders and practitioners leveraged virtual team building technologies and an agile and digital mindset to construct the event as well as build processes and resources for its participants.

Theresa Malin, M.S., and Jeff Poterucha, M.A., both senior education specialists, introduced lean startup methodologies to the more than 350 attendees. The highly interactive presentation guided participants through lean startup design — defining a problem; identifying education stakeholder questions; using rapid idea generation; working through the process of building, measuring, and learning from those ideas; and ultimately advancing toward the best solution.

A well-prepared team of conveners led 40 breakout groups through a progressive series of small group activities. Dedicated note takers captured the discussions and recorded more than 4000 ideas for future analysis.

Having participated in several past events, senior project manager Catherine Bachman, M.B.A., shares, "this one was my favorite! Participant engagement in the activities was the highlight." Bachman continues, "Applying lean startup techniques with a new group may have seemed daunting, awkward, even a bit scary. But being vulnerable, getting our 'wonderful terrible ideas' out there, and laughing at the messiness of it, really did clear the path to collective insight. Our different perspectives generated a variety of creative ideas about the future of learning spaces for Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. My takeaway was to not hesitate to introduce new ways of thinking and working with my team — jump in, stumble, learn, laugh, work through it together, and then get really good at it."

Get an inside look at the Education and Technology Forum by visiting #MayoClinicETF, which accrued more than 3,000 tweets over the course of the evening. Stay tuned for more news sharing the impacts of the Education and Technology Forum on students and more related to the future of education and technology at Mayo Clinic.