Turkish Lore and Sir Francis Bacon Suggest a New Approach to Workshops and Bootcamps

It’s been a conundrum, now solved.

It’s been a wish, now solved.

It’s been a challenge, which has now been solved, and solved with a solution that will continue to grow the profession of advocacy (hopefully) far into the future!

Announcing…

APHA Academy – the solution to advocacy learning that has, in 2020, been limited by the pandemic – travel bans, social distancing, and problems with in-person workshop teaching …

And has now moved online!

So what does APHA Academy have to do with Turkish lore and Sir Francis Bacon?

The lore is a story you are familiar with, as told by Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s…

If the Mountain won’t go to Mohammed,
then Mohammed must come to the Mountain.

If student advocates and care managers couldn’t go to APHA workshops and PracticeUP! bootcamps, then instead, we brought them to students – online!

If I sound excited, it’s because I am!

Online teaching and learning is a great solution for pandemic times and beyond because it can truly expand our reach. And of course, the more well-schooled advocates and care managers available, the more patients can be helped – the real point to all this! We have put all our coursework online, in a comprehensive, cohesive program, which takes place over a period of time, and is now offered to anyone who wishes to take it, offered frequently throughout any given year.

Now – true – we can’t replicate 100 percent the experience of in-person learning online. The online experience restricts social time and networking – two very important aspects of a gathering such as a bootcamp or workshop.

But – going online does have many advantages! Here are some examples based on the first course we plan to offer:

100 Days to Launch Your Practice

The curriculum is broadly expanded beyond our in-person workshops. The coverage of topics, and the amount of time devoted to them is three times broader.
Time: Workshops and Bootcamps lasted 16 to 20 hours over three days. APHA Academy’s 100 Days course will last 14 weeks / 25 lessons / 2-3 hours per week.
Time Commitment: Even though there are more hours for instruction and homework, it’s stretched out and can be worked into one’s schedule; not mashed into a few days where there is little extra time for anything else.
Locations: In person opportunities in the past were offered in 2-3-4 cities across the US annually. Online means we can meet the learning needs of anyone anywhere – with no travel (and no travel expense!) This includes American students, Canadian students — students from anywhere in the world.
Resources: In-person workshops required resources to be tapped afterwards, after everyone went home. With online learning, students can tap into the right resources in the right locations on an as-needed basis – and they will know specifically where to find them. This includes guest instructors and other experts with the knowledge to share with student-advocates and care managers.
… and more.

APHA Academy is a collaboration between two advocacy-focused activities: The Alliance of Professional Health Advocates, and PracticeUP! Online. It leverages the best of both of these sister sites by creating a soup-to-nuts, specific learning path for those who truly understand that their success will be based on their abilities to run a business which, as we have discussed before, is tantamount to the ability to do good advocacy work at least in the first few years of practice.