Mayo Clinic Educator's Central

Mayo Clinic Educator's Central is an interview podcast from the Learning Solutions Center at Mayo Clinic, and its real subject is what passes between a teacher and a learner. Stacey Kraft, an assistant professor of medical education and senior instructional designer at Mayo Clinic, asks the questions. Her guests come from medical education and from the broader world of learning and development. Several episodes begin with a guest's own words before the welcome, and Kraft often follows by putting a question straight to her audience, as in: what drives you, and how does it show up in the way you care, teach or lead? The register is reflective and warm. The clinic keeps coming back as a mirror for the classroom. One guest argues that patient-centered care is impossible without student-centered education, drawing on Paulo Freire's 'epistemological curiosity' and on the parallel between a teacher's power over a student and a doctor's power over a patient. Another calls theater the most powerful education intervention of their life, because the stage accepts vulnerability comfortably, and describes learners still recalling a scene years later. A third guest, talking about professional identity formation, wants teachers who act as role models and questions the value of written reflection assignments, since students know how to tick the boxes. Learning science gets its own space. Stella Collins, co-founder and chief learning officer at Stellar Labs and author of Neuroscience for Learning and Development, argues that curious people can't help but learn, and imagines a learner asking why a training course would need a hat. Kraft says she uses Collins's acronym often in her own work and asks her to break down its N, for novelty. She also names a familiar trap: blinking screens, clicking for clicking's sake, and high production values that don't necessarily lead to better learning. Then there is AI. A limited series called Co-Occurrence looks at AI and related technologies and their possible, probable and actual effects on education. One installment, with author and educator John Fila, starts from the basics: what generative AI is and what GPT even stands for. Another AI conversation separates tasks that need a factual result from ones meant only to get thinking moving, and it carries a warning worth keeping: the easy route may be 'taking away from your future self.' For a first listen, the Co-Occurrence installment suits someone new to generative AI, while the Freire and theater conversations show the medical-education core most clearly. Episodes close with an invitation to send topic ideas or offers to be a guest by email. That invitation fits the tone, which stays collegial and openly curious.