Anytime, Anyplace Learning : Exploring the world of eLearning

In the highly competitive Social Care sector, the problem of finding, training and retaining good staff continues to be a major challenge.

Furthermore, care organisations face an increase in the regulatory environment and subsequent compliance training required to meet basic standards. Chris Parr, Head of Products and Markets at ThirdForce, one of the largest providers of Social Care compliance e-learning solutions, explains how e-learning can be applied to tackle this common predicament.

To help support the rapidly growing successful transformation of the care sector, it is essential to adopt fresh approaches to working and learning.  There is now considerable interest in how alternative learning technologies can be fully utilised.  E-learning, for instance, is not a completely new phenomenon, it has existed for many years, and yet recently its popularity appears to be growing at a staggering rate. 

The need to realise the benefits that this method bestows is compelling, particularly given the challenges of sustaining improvements in the sector.  Workforce and organisational re-design are crucial to enable the care industry to respond more effectively to the new customer driven environments where expectations are higher and people seek a more personalised and responsive service.

Despite having a workforce that does not traditionally undertake learning delivered via technology, there are certainly considerable benefits to be exploited.

In with the new, out with the old

Although it is of course incredibly important, the training and development of Social Care staff is beset by difficulties.  Shift patterns make it almost impossible to deliver training through conventional methods and the universal need to provide 24-hour care means that staff often have to fit training around the needs of service users. 

As the workforce becomes more distributed, so professionals in the Social Care sector are recognising the need to develop learning solutions to match this working pattern.

E-learning offers various flexible and creative advantages for teaching and learning, and overcomes many of the limitations of the more traditional forms of training such as in-house training delivered by internal managers. 

At a strategic level it supports streamlining, cost effectiveness and economies of scale.  This is achieved through significant reductions in the delivery costs of training as up-to-date content is easily accessible from one central source.  A reduction in costs such as travel to and from a training centre and overnight accommodation is also achievable, as learners can study from their place of work or from the comfort of their own home. It also has the ability to flex with the workforce allowing compliance to be maintained within rapidly growing or acquisitive organisations.     

E-learning is easy to track as the administrative functions facilitate learner registration, monitoring of learner progress, and testing and record-keeping, without the need to develop additional systems.  A comprehensive audit trail allows the remote tracking and monitoring of learner progress at company, division, area, site and learner level.  Therefore it highlights underperforming areas and provides audit and compliance data for use with regulatory bodies.

Flexible learning

From the learners viewpoint, this innovative medium offers 24/7 access to materials and support.  This means that learners can revisit content for re-enforcement as and when convenient, in short segments if necessary and customised to suit their individual needs. 

Learners can study at their own pace, at a time and place to suit them.  This is an invaluable feature for any learner but particularly so for those working in the care industry who require flexible delivery options to ensure minimum disruption to their daily work schedule.  It also presents a consistent approach as everyone receives the same standardised message from the course. This can lead to compliance training being delivered ’on shift’ in bite sized chunks, delivering a paradigm change in terms of training hours expended and an overall cost saving to the business.

The technologies used give online instructional designers the ability to build in tools that take learners to resources they may never have seen in a traditional classroom. Therefore it enables more encouraging materials to be created for a range of abilities and preferred learning styles.  For instance, multimedia, sound, animation or video, can enliven the presentation of factual information.  Online multimedia scenarios and simulations provide ‘real life’ interactive learning opportunities, and solutions can be discussed through asynchronous communication tools such as video conferencing.

Challenging and rewarding

Interactive and collaborative, e-learning is unquestionably more fun than conventional training and encourages the development of an independent learning culture.  E-learning, by definition, promotes learning in a modular format, enabling people to take knowledge developed from one context and apply it in another. Thus, it enables transferability.

For students it is also considered risk-free in that learners can study in a relatively anonymous and safe environment without the embarrassment of failure and/or any socio-cultural bias from personal contact.
 
There are many courses designed exclusively for the healthcare market from accident prevention, and manual handling, through to fire safety and recording and reporting incidents.  Some courses can even help care organisations meet the National Minimum Standards (NMS).  These courses can be delivered in a variety of ways such as over the internet, via an intranet, on CD or via mobile platforms.

For organisations within the Social Care industry, adopting an e-learning approach presents a highly effective and efficient route to training – it facilitates a modern and forward thinking care industry. 

ThirdForce Corporate Background

With 20 years experience, ThirdForce is one of the largest e-assessment providers in the UK designing innovative e-learning applications. As the first UK based company to offer an e-learning solution, ThirdForce reach over two million learners in education, government, healthcare and commercial organisations worldwide. ThirdForce meets all of the Government’s Common Induction Standards.

For further information, please visit www.thirdforce.com