From Distance to Dialogue: Using Small-Group Learning to Sustain Human Connection in Future-Ready CPD
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 4, 2026

Involving Individuals with Developmental Language Disorder and Their Parents/Carers in Research Priority Setting
Published on: June 6, 2020
Dean Beals1, Stan Pogroszewski1, Lesley Simon1
1DKBmed LLC, Brooklyn, NY, USA.
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic changed continuing professional development/continuing medical education by rapidly increasing deployment of digital education platforms. Today, digital delivery technologies have enabled broader reach than ever before. Yet these same technologies are often blamed for weakening the human connection essential for effective learning. This brief report describes how the small-group, live-virtual formats ECHO and Gather-ed use video conference technology (eg, Zoom) not merely as a distribution channel but as a deliberate architecture for interactivity, peer exchange, and sustained mentorship between learners and subject matter experts. Drawing on Project ECHO's hub-and-spoke, case-based "all teach, all learn" philosophy and Gather-Ed's facilitated peer-based social learning model, our experience, as illustrated in the report, demonstrates that structured small-group virtual learning reconciles the scalability demanded by modern continuing professional development with the relational engagement that participants and patients ultimately need.
Related Concept Videos
Purposive Learning
Levels of Communication I: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Small Group
We can participate in these relationships through verbal, nonverbal, and mediated communication. We engage in verbal communication when we use words during our interaction to convey specific meanings. On the other hand, nonverbal communication refers to various factors that can impact how we understand each other—for example, facial expressions.
We interact with others using mediated technologies like the...
Techniques of Therapeutic Communication II: Focusing, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The...
Levels of Communication II: Organizational, Public, and Group Dynamics
Therapeutic Communication
Verbal communication depends on language or a prescribed way of using words so that people can share information effectively. The critical aspects of verbal...
Social-Contextual Approach