The International Association of Contact Lens Educators’ Teach.Learn.Connect (TLC) Initiative to support educators, their students and the contact lens industry during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, has been a major success since it launched three months ago, the Association has said.
TLC is an online education programme and communications campaign that supplements IACLE’s existing educational activities. Since it began, some 4,828 educators and their students have taken part online in global, regional and national TLC webinars.
IACLE members are now registering for its first-ever Virtual Conference – Back to Contact Lenses – taking place on 26 September.
Non-members and students will be able to take part in some conference sessions via the IACLE Facebook page, including an Industry Panel Discussion on the impact of Covid-19 and the future for contact lens education, practice and the industry.
A total of 842 IACLE members have signed up for IACLETOP, its new Learning Management System and, to date, 302 students from nine institutions across the world have taken the new Online Student Trial Exam (STE) to assess their contact lens knowledge.
Since the TLC launch, 35 new members have joined IACLE bringing the total number of members worldwide to 997.
IACLE’s next global webinar series will focus on myopia and its management, starting on 3 November. The topic of the first webinar is ‘What causes myopia and its progression? – current understanding’, presented by Professor Nicola Logan from Aston University, Birmingham.
IACLE president, Dr Shehzad Naroo, commented: ‘The Teach. Learn.Connect.Initiative has brought together many of IACLE’s existing resources, merged them with the new activities that IACLE is undertaking and housed them under one banner making them more user-friendly and accessible. The result has been increased engagement with educators and their students.”