Apothecary 2020

Registrar’s Report
Cornelius O’Boyle
Despite its best efforts, the COVID virus has failed to
disrupt the Society’s academic activities during the last
eight months, as we continue to provide an
exceptionally rich offering of lectures, courses and
exams, albeit in new formats.
As one might imagine, our exams have been
especially threatened by the pandemic. But by carefully
redesigning them either as online exams or streamlined
versions of the original we have been able to run a
gratifyingly large number. Through the herculean
efforts of our exams team, eight diets of our various
diplomas have been hosted this year. None of this
would have been possible without the excellent support
from the Hall staff in creating a COVID-secure
environment for us.
Our faculty managers have also done a wonderful
job of producing recorded versions of our lectures and
making them available online. Shifting lectures online
midway through a course is no easy feat, but our staff
became IT experts overnight, mastering a bewildering
array of platforms and applications. Our faculty
managers also put their new IT skills to good use,
helping the Society host many of its splendid
presentations online as both live Zoom broadcasts and
recorded material for our website. With their new IT
self-confidence, our Faculties also collaborated to
produce three exciting new “Explorer Courses” online
over the summer months, drawing satisfyingly large
audiences.
In common with many academic institutions, we are
discovering that the enforced adoption of online
methods of delivery now points the way forward for the
longer-term development of our educational strategy.
Online synchronous and asynchronous learning
blended with traditional face-to-face teaching may be
not only more economically viable but also better suited
to the needs of our busy and remote audiences. Our own
experience is that “attendance” at online lectures has
increased considerably as those who live outside
London now have more opportunity to “join in”
without travelling into the City. Indeed, our future
academic offering will potentially be available to
audiences not only outside London but beyond the
shores of the UK too. Of course, nobody wants to lose
the intimacy of face-to-face lecturing and testing: this
will always be hallmark of excellence in education. But
the world of online learning now opens up exciting
possibilities for the academic work of the Society.
Online learning is only part of our new venture.
Following an extensive review of the academic activities
of the Society, the old Exams Office is about to join our
two Faculties in the creation of a unified Academic
Department dedicated to a single purpose. Our aim is to
provide world-class postgraduate training and
examining in specialist areas of healthcare and its allied
disciplines in the humanities, educating audiences in
the benefits of lifelong learning in the healing arts. We
will be developing seminars and conferences addressing
various aspect of urban healthcare relating to the City of
London. Together with more short online courses and
new diplomas, our academic offering will reach a wider
audience with our enduring commitment to spread the
values and traditions of the Society.
As the new Academic Registrar, I am excited to lead
our Academic Department into this post-COVID world.
20