e learning age - the magazine for the learning organisation

Moving stories

Incorrect manual handling costs British business over £100m a year making it a key training area.  But at NHS South of Tyne and Wear (SOTW) the challenge was getting people to attend the course.

In partnership with Virtual College it was decided that NHS SOTW should implement an e-learning module containing full narration, sound, graphs, diagrams and case studies.  This accessible and consistent form of learning is widely used in the NHS for mandatory training.

Staff can complete the module at their own pace and do not need releasing to attend a study day.  When logging onto the system the learner is asked: Do you move objects and people? The answer dictates what course they get allocated.

The module contains formative and summative assessment, and has an inbuilt evaluation feature which is audited.  Monthly reports are downloaded to the trainee’s ESR record.  The module has been rolled out to 3,500 staff and been received very positively.  It has also attracted interest from other NHS organisations across the country.

Sole trainer

Jane Sheehan, a UK footreader, wanted to reduce the amount of time she spent touring.  Work with e-learning developer Lisa Emmington, she created an interactive experience where people could learn foot reading theory even when she was not in the country.

After launching the seminar, she attracted students from countries she’d never toured as well as the UK, where she holds regular live workshops.  But even when the live workshop is available, some students prefer e-learning as they are able to revisit the content and work at their own time and pace.  Sheehan has also been able to offer a blind student the e-learning seminar as back-up to the live workshop.

Holistic therapists are not natural technophiles, but some international therapy associations are now embracing distance and e-learning. 

As a sole trader, Sheehan has found the passive income highly beneficial and uses feedback from the seminars to affirm they are working, or to tweak the seminar for future use.

Good counsel

The way UK social care professionals are trained is changing.  In three years, 20% of local authorities have partnered with Me Learning to give tailored online training to their social care workforce.

Compliant with governmental guidelines, Me Learning collaborates with local authorities and courses offer three key benefits: e-learning is proven to improve staff retention which is poor in this sector, it reduces the cost of training and increases the overall effectiveness of a workforce.

Staffordshire Council showed e-learning’s effectiveness in 2008 when it reported a 75% uptake rate across 700 members of staff in three months.  Yielding a more efficient workforce with constant access to training material, the courses’ ease of management was seen as a huge benefit.

In 2009 Trafford Council had similar success in three months with 200 practitioners passing the courses.  The training supplemented the council’s existing scheme, saving a reported 3,750 hours of classroom training alongside recognisable financial gains.