Helen Munne, Learning Manager of Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists presents on: Adapting to changes in curriculum/programme requirements; Case study on moving from a commercial to a non-commercial product; Advantages and pitfalls of bespoke technical solutions; Adapting e-learning content for blended projects and for m-learning.
StratOG has been going since 2007 (distance learning since 2000) so we have had to adapt to change on multiple occasions.
Technology
User expectations
Also react to change imposed on us by external bodies, e.g. changes to regulations
Share some of our experiences with you
hope relevant regardless of whether you are at the point where introducing eLearning is ‘the change’, or
if you want to improve what you are currently doing
Talk about some of the challenges we have faces –
Content (external demands)
Business
Technical
Moving forward / new opportunities
Degree of inertia / resistance to change
Contains:
Traditional eLearning tutorials – focus on delivering theoretical knowledge (text, multimedia, assessments, interactive tasks)
Reflective based learning
Video based scenarios
Blended learning (eLearning + simulation / eLearning + f-2-f course)
**Depends on audience and educational objectives
In-house team of 3 people; large clinical team (200+ authors, peer reviewers, Editorial Board)
Comparison with RCOG corporate site
How to react if the goalposts change
Need to make sure that your eLearning course integrates into a training/professional development programme
i.e. meets a clearly defined educational need
Know your audience – what they want, when, why
Need to keep up with what people are doing, e.g. if your eLearning programme supports an exam, and the exam format changes, then you need to adapt and update ASAP
Our Core Training resource supports a curriculum that culminates in an exam
As soon as new format publicised, there was a user demand for these questions
Links back to issue of user expectations
Same effect seen for new guidelines
That’s why we have a dedicated Editorial Board (lesson learnt from DIALOG)
External changes – should be infrequent but can have high impact
Same for changes to the business case
So, you have all your business case and content aligned with educational need
What happens if your organisation’s strategic priorities change?
Decision was made for educational/altruistic reasons – equity of education, enticement for new members
Needed approval from multiple committees/groups
Communication strategy for stakeholders
Changes to our website’s infrastructure to cope with increased demand
Now run at a loss
Working on bringing it into the RCOG’s brand
Retain the heritage value of current name and links to O&G
Incorporate the eLearning strapline into the logo
Blue is a particularly good ‘fit’ with RCOG main brand
i.e. we make the technology fit the content/required mode of delivery, not the other way round
This decision wasn’t made lightly and hasn’t been without consequence
Have twice tried to use open source platform but it wasn’t successful
Better solution for us and our learners
Functionality we want – front and back end
Custom features
Integration with corporate site and membership database (and our CPD ePortfolio)
Essential that the developer understands you, your business and your audience
You need to trust each other
If the relationship breaks down, you can be in trouble
One focus of redevelopment will be mobile accessibility
Mobile = tablet and phone
Mobile learning is the biggest change in user behaviour that we have had to deal with
We don’t cope very well!
A quote from our website redevelopment tender document
Redevelopment will address technical issues, but what about the content?
Smartphones have the high number of user interactions but the lowest average time spent per interaction
mLearning = looking for a brief answer to a specific question / quick bursts of activity
Does this fit with our content?
8000+ pages / session time 30 mins
Length of the content
Bandwidth required
Format (e.g. Flash vs. html5)
Don’t look to make everything available for the phone
We are in the process of converting our Flash-based content to html5
Online presentations – done
Animations – working on a solution
App would contain different content (a ‘mobile version’ of the content-heavy tutorials
Wait to see if this strategy is successful
Last thing I am going to cover is adapting your eLearning content