Workshop Submission
Having been a member of the ICS Education Committee for several years I have been heavily involved in the annual meeting educational programme creation. I am therefore in a good position to give you some tips when you are considering submitting your workshop proposal.
Let me therefore explain the process of selection of the Education Committee. Each member of the Education Committee is involved in scoring the applications and normally the highest scored applications are accepted, depending on the number of workshops submitted in each category. All the details of the application are shown to the reviewers so make sure each section is completed fully.
Three criterion are used for the scoring of the workshops:
- Originality/Topicality - A workshop would score an excellent mark for originality if it addresses issues of current importance and fundamental interest to ICS members. It promotes discussion of an understudied but important topic or its unique or interesting approach to a topic. Or it could be an update of a common topic when new information becomes available.
- Educational Value - To receive an excellent in educational value the workshop must ensure that the knowledge of the delegate will be advanced by completion of the workshop. Multinational and multi-disciplinary perspectives offered as appropriate and innovative and interactive teaching strategies such as hands-on opportunities, videos and/or case discussion are used. Also providing engaging speaker(s) who is/are highly qualified or expert in the field.
- Clinical/Scientific Relevance – To gain an excellent scoring in relevance the workshop content should be supported by evidence, focusing on high-quality research findings. The workshop will have significant impact on delegates’ way of thinking and practice and will challenge their minds and give excellent take home messages and actions. Also it will have the potential to encourage new research into the area.
ICS is a multi-disciplinary society, workshops applications from all disciplines are welcome and encouraged!
The multi-disciplinary aspect is very important to the ICS and therefore we strongly recommend, unless clearly not relevant, that you ensure there are different professions represented in the faculty. It is quite often that the committee will score a workshop very high and then have to recommend that the faculty is slightly adjusted, so that it is multi-disciplinary, in order for it to be accepted.
The last message is to make sure you understand what is involved in submitting a workshop application. The chairs and speakers do not receive any financial assistance or complimentary items when speaking at an ICS annual meeting. We really do rely on people doing this voluntarily. The chair is responsible in making sure that all speakers keep in contact with the office and prepare their disclosure forms. The Chair also must gather and prepare the handout by the required deadline. If you have a speaker in mind of a profession who would not normally attend an ICS annual meeting, then a special request can be done to have travel expenses covered for that individual.
But running a workshop is extremely rewarding and it now plays a major role in the ICS annual meeting week.
I hope to see your application completed by 4 January 2017.
Additional Information
ICS 2017
ICS 2017 Workshops
Workshop Application Guidelines