In 2018 I had the privilege to travel to china to visit 5 cities in 5 days and speak in 3 of them on aesthetic implant dentistry on behalf of Geistlich.
In 2020 I returned to China again in the midst of lockdown 1 but this time by prerecorded lectures which had to be signed off at state level to make sure they were not counter-revolutionary and then published.
Any questions that arose from those were presented to me and the answers had to be vetted too, to make sure they were once again safe to be published in China.
The contrast between these two experiences of speaking in China are obviously stark, both for myself and for the people on the receiving end of the stuff that comes out of my mouth.
For me, the cultural experience of visiting China and everything that went with that was a truly extraordinary and life-affirming event (although far from carbon neutral). The production of the lectures during lockdown was a more stale affair but still transmitted the information we were trying to transmit and probably to a bigger group than the trip in 2018.
And so, how do we square this stuff off, the new debate about face-to-face vs digital.
Digital education is fantastic and phenomenal and is a convenient and sustainable way of educating mass groups and as an adjunct to face-to-face contact and education.
I do think that we will not be abandoning face-to-face contact any time soon.
Despite the news from some of the universities, it’s become clear to me that humans crave face-to-face contact more and more when it’s taken away.
It would be so easy for us to produce our year-long courses online and in fact in the next few weeks I’m travelling to Switzerland so that I can be filmed performing a sinus graft on a model for their virtual online Academy, the teaching module for which can be produced time and time again all around the world.
This will not be the same as coming face-to-face on a course, to learn, in your own style, how to perform a sinus grafting procedure.
Digital allows a way in, a way to test whether you like the material and the educators before you invest more time and money and carbon and all the rest in meeting people face-to-face.
Digital allows you to revisit things after the event and to revisit it time and time again and it allows validation of learning.
Face-to-face allows community and camaraderie and vulnerability and sensitivity that does not exist in the digital medium.
We’re developing a whole host of digital offerings in order to help people as much as we can, in busy lives and overcoming geography and the fear of turning up somewhere where you don’t know anyone.
Next up for us is our Online Implant Restorative Course which is a really great way to introduce yourself to implant dentistry and to introduce a new discipline that could take you further into your career in terms of enjoyment and development and financial management.
We have an Online CBCT course in preparation and we already have an online business course and through the next couple of years we’ll be launching an Online Aesthetic course and Sinus course and Immediate Full Arch course.
These will never replicate the face-to-face courses and they’re not designed to do so, they live together, in harmony with each other to give a better educational experience overall which in turn must be better for the patients we treat, mustn’t it?
Blog Post Number - 2894
Leave a comment