Where I live (Quebec province, Canada), our vet order accepts training that isn’t RACE registered. They are not particularly picky when it concerns webinars yet, but as these become more common, I suppose a certificate could be useful to confirm attendance.
Alternatively, if you think it is too much trouble for something free, perhaps we could suggest a small donation when people sign up for the free webinar? Just something like:
Although this training is not RACE-registered, a participation certificate will be provided at the end of this webinar. Any donation is appreciated to maintain our weekly webinars.
With a clickable button (that would lead to a page to pay):
Donation: 5$ 10$ other:___
Just my two cents (but I realize that I am not the one filling those certificates).
Marie-Odile Benoit-Biancamano
DVM, PhD, DACVP, DECVP
Good morning,
Not sure if there is an official discussion board, but I think this is a great idea and I vote yes!
Now that we hvae an automated process in place (which works for most of us), I wanted to bring a possible course of action to the group for a vote.
To this point, we have been producing certificates only for the Tuesday seminars that provide RACE credits. However, I get quite a few requests from people (especially our international attendees) for certificates for our Free Friday Seminars as well.
I know that in this country they are little more than a piece of paper (especially when you take the RACE stuff out of it), but I think they carry a lot more weight in vet schools in developing countries.
At any rate, now that we can churn them out at little cost and fairly quickly, I think they would be very appreciated and would look very good for the organization as well.
This is how it would work - we would just have one person sign up for each seminar, and following the seminar's end, I would send them a copy of the names (everyone for paid seminars, just the attendees for the free ones), much like I did this week. Then the person "on duty" runs them through Autocrat (or can hand jam them in case of a small turnout (I think we will be less than 100 for Small Ruminants on Tuesday). I'm going to do POLA next week (we are currently at 140) and will give me a chance to further polish my Autocrat skills.
I would like to put this to a vote on the committee, as it you will be affected by it. I think overall it will lessen the workload..but it is on your backs....
This idea has already been put to the Ad Hoc Meetings Committee (a group of the Board who has meetings oversight, and although not all the votes are in, we already have enough votes and no dissenting votes, so I will put it to all of you.
I would like to finish discussion and voting (and you can just vote if you want) NLT next Thursday, so we can start out August's FFS with a certificate (it's John Cullen on Chronic Hepatitis and one you should all be at! I've seen it about 5 times and its a great lecture.
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Sheryl Coutermarsh-Ott, DVM, PhD, DACVP
Assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology
Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine