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Workshop Submission Guidelines

CCC 2025 is a unique opportunity for updating and maintaining scientific knowledge through accredited education opportunities, while also providing an ideal forum for networking and research advancement. The Canadian Cardiovascular Society’s (CCS) Scientific Program Committee (SPC) is currently seeking submissions for Workshops for the CCS scientific and educational program with interactive and innovative approaches to learning.

Technical Support:

If you have any questions concerning the online submission program or have any difficulties submitting your workshop, please contact: congress@ccs.ca

Fee:

There is no fee for submitting a workshop for the CCS SPC scientific and educational program.

Submission Deadline:

Workshop submissions must be received electronically through the online submission system by: April 8, 12 noon (EDT). Emailed submissions will not be accepted.

The online submission system will identify your workshop as complete or incomplete. If incomplete, the system will flag the one or more tasks that require attention and completion. Incomplete submissions will not be accepted. The submitter has until the deadline to complete the workshop submission without exception.

Designing Your Workshop:

All sessions will be 60 min in length, including Q & A.
In the online submission system, please identify the presenters, up to two chairs/co-chairs, and members of the planning committee. Each individual should have only one designated role—if a Chair is also on the Planning Committee, select “Chair” as their sole role. The person submitting the workshop does not need to be listed as the Chair or a Co-chair. When developing your workshop, please ensure the content is targeted at a broad cardiovascular audience, in alignment with the Scientific Program Committee’s (SPC) goal of providing multidisciplinary, inclusive sessions. Submission of a workshop constitutes a commitment by the workshop faculty to present at CCC 2025.

The review criteria aim to support and showcase multidisciplinary practices. Planning committee members are encouraged to follow the "3G" principles (prioritizing diversity in Gender, Generation, and Geography) and to implement Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) best practices. When preparing a workshop, the Workshop Review Committee will consider the following:

• Planning Committee Composition: Members should include a community-based colleague, if relevant, and an individual early in their career (within the first seven years of practice). There is no limit to the number of planning committee members.

• Presenter Panel Size: The number of presenters should suit the session's format and length, as having too many can make achieving program objectives challenging;

• Gender Representation: Balanced gender representation among presenters and planning committee members is required and will be monitored, with the aim of achieving a 50/50 balance. If this target is not met, an explanation will be needed.

• Workshops that include occupational diversity and individuals from education partner groups including CCCN and CSCT, as well as ACQ, may be graded more favourably if appropriate. A full list of CCS partnerships is available here;

• Occupational and Partnership Diversity: Workshops that incorporate occupational diversity and involve representatives from partner groups, such as CCCN, CSCT, and ACQ, may receive higher consideration when appropriate. A full list of CCS partnerships is available here.

• Target Audience Needs: Addressing the educational needs of the intended audience is essential.

• Learning Objectives: Objectives should be observable, measurable, and aimed at enhancing learners’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes by the end of the program.

Click here for a list of the approved workshops from last year.

Click here for a list of the types of submissions.

Interactivity and Engagement:

Outline your strategies for engaging workshop participants and promoting interaction throughout the session. At least 25% of the session time must be dedicated to interactive learning activities, spread across the session. Participant engagement will also be evaluated in the post-workshop feedback.

Design your workshop format to best support the content. For instance, consider a debate for controversial topics or a simulation or performance assessment for skills development.

Interactive learning and engagement are essential for approved educational activities, whether in person or asynchronous, and may involve technologies like an Audience Response System (ARS).

Live event interactive strategies can include:

• Q&A Periods
• Live Polling: Using ARS in the event app for real-time interaction between presenters and the audience.
• Panel Discussions
• Small Breakout Groups
• Think, Pair, Share: Opportunities for reflection and discussion with colleagues.
• Debate

Social Media Promotion:

The CCS SPC committee encourages workshop organizers and participants to leverage social media to expand reach, boost engagement, and attract attendees. Please nominate a social media ambassador for your workshop during the submission process.

If accepted, your social media ambassador can actively promote your workshop both before and during the session. To support this, consider drafting a tweet that highlights the key message of your workshop. Be sure to include a relevant hashtag, the #CCCongress, and tag us at @SCC_CCS.

Learning Objectives:

Learning objectives are derived from the needs assessment data collected by the Overall Conference Evaluation. They allow participants to decide whether a specific session meets their learning needs. Provide three learning objectives that are clear, measurable, and achievable.

Learning objectives must address the learning needs of your target audience and will be included in promotional material as part of the session description. Be sure to submit content exactly how it should appear in program and marketing materials.

Strong learning objectives should:

• complete the sentence “At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to”;
• clearly outline the focus of the content, and the expected outcomes for all parties involved;
• be linked to the identified needs;
• learner‐centered; and
• describe through action verbs the specific knowledge, behavior, skill, attitude or learning outcomes that participants can anticipate from attending educational events.

Example:
At the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:

• identify atypical forms of aortic stenosis (e.g. low gradient, preserved ejection fraction);

Words to AVOID as they are not easily measured and open to many interpretations:

• understand
• appreciate
• know
• believe
• learn

For more information on how to effectively write objectives click here.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures:

• Conflict of interest forms identifying commercial relationships must be completed online by the planning committee and all other faculty members. The person submitting can complete the disclosure on behalf of all planning committee and faculty members but must be done so in consultation with each individual listed. By disclosing any direct or indirect conflicts of interest, the submitter authorizes the Canadian Cardiovascular Society to disclose the conflict.
• All disclosure information and off-label drug use for accepted workshops will be made available upon request and must also be disclosed on the second slide of the presentations. Conflicts of interest forms and slide templates are available on the CCC 2025 site, on the Presenter Resources page, once the notice of acceptances have been sent.
• Please ensure that all faculty presentations are consistent in their use of either generic names or both generic and trade names during the presentation.

Grading and Selection of Workshops:

Workshop submissions will undergo a blinded review process by the Workshop Review Committee, a sub-committee appointed by the CCS Scientific Program Committee. Each workshop will be reviewed by a minimum of three reviewers and graded on the following criteria:

• The workshop must demonstrate innovation in format and delivery;
• The workshop must be collaborative by demonstrating the following:
  • a focus on participant engagement and interactivity;
  • an effort to include more than one CCS Educational Partner and/or Affiliate (if applicable/appropriate);
  • the inclusion of a trainee and/or an individual early in their career (first seven years of practice); and a community-based professional on the planning committee; and
  • present a multi-disciplinary approach and practices;
• Panel is composed of a no more than 50% + 1 of one gender, unless otherwise justified;
• Panel is composed of members of different career phases, including early career, unless otherwise explained;
• Panel is composed of diversity in occupation, specialty or subspecialty, unless otherwise explained;
• Panel embraces Equality, Diversity and Inclusion best practices, click here for more information;
• The topic and content is timely, relevant, has high scientific merit and is balanced and objective;
• The workshop is free of industry involvement and support;
• The workshop has novel information – new developments in ongoing topics of interest;
• The content is a hot topic that links current news or topics that typically spike media interest; and
• The workshop incorporates news you can use including information that is directly relevant to the public and/or health professionals and/or multi-disciplinary teams that will change surgical or clinical practice, and prevention strategies, etc.

To view the full Workshop Scoring Criteria, please click here.

Workshop Evaluations:

If selected for presentation at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress your workshop will be evaluated by participants using the event app and/or event platform. All workshop chairs are required to allocate five minutes at the end of their workshop to remind and allow participants the opportunity to complete the session evaluation. Following the conference, workshop chairs can request the evaluation summaries to review the success of their workshop. If you have any questions, please contact congress@ccs.ca.

Information for Presenters:

Please review the following documents to ensure that your presentation is complete and meets all of the workshop requirements:

• Handbook for Planning Committees Developing Educational Programs
• Faculty Presentation Checklist
• Roles and Responsibilities of Planning Committee Chairs

All presenters must register for CCC 2025 and are responsible for their own accommodations and travel expenses at CCC 2025. Registration will be open in the summer, and available at www.cardiocongress.org.

Registration is NOT complimentary.

Notice of Status of Workshop:

All submitted workshops must adhere to the aforementioned guidelines to be considered for acceptance. Notification of acceptance or rejection of workshops will be sent by email by July. Please be sure to add congress@ccs.ca to your safe senders list to be sure you receive all notifications. Only the submitter will receive the notification, which should be shared with all other contributing and participating parties.

Submissions on similar topics may be restructured into a collaborative session at the discretion of the SPC.

Workshop submissions must be received electronically through the online submission system by: April 8, 12:00 noon (EDT).