How Articulate Studio ’09 Enables Healthcare Training at SickKids

This guest blog post is by Articulate EVP of Sales & Marketing Mark Schwartz.

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As a parent, I’ve experienced anxiety when my children have suffered illness or injuries. Of course, you don’t have to be a parent to be traumatized by observing children who are affected by illness or injury.

That is why I am awed and so appreciate the amazing physicians, nurses and other health professionals who care for sick children.

This is the work of The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, better known as SickKids. Founded in 1875 and affiliated with the University of Toronto, SickKids is recognized as one of the world’s foremost paediatric health-care institutions and is Canada’s leading center dedicated to advancing children’s health through the integration of patient care, research, and education.

 

(The e-learning course sample screenshots included throughout this post, created by SickKids employees using Articulate Studio ’09 software, illustrate the effective and broad-based use of Articulate software.)

As a teaching hospital, SickKids trains healthcare professionals from around the world as they become doctors, nurses, and other important health care workers, such as social workers, physiotherapists, and dietitians. Articulate software plays an important role in this work.

Glen Blair, Program Manager – eLearning Design, SickKids

Glen Blair is the Program Manager for e-Learning Design at SickKids Learning Institute in Toronto, Canada. An advocate of Articulate Studio ’09, Blair has made the software a key component in the suite of learning technologies being used at SickKids in his continuous efforts to enable the organization’s people in supporting a vast array of educational opportunities.

“Articulate Studio ’09 has been quickly and very easily adopted by subject matter experts at SickKids who, for the most part, have little or no formal training in online instructional design and development. In fact, this is the first time many of our users have created e-learning,” says Blair. “The fact that Presenter ’09 is an add-in to PowerPoint, and so tightly integrates with the PowerPoint workflow dramatically reduces the anxiety generally associated with the use of new authoring tools.”

 

Prior to adopting Articulate Studio ’09, SickKids was more dependent on external resources to create custom HTML content pages and Flash-based e-learning objects. Internal staff also developed training modules that lacked interactivity and could not be tracked by a Learning Management System (LMS).

Creating Quality Elearning

As a result of adopting Articulate Studio ’09, Blair has been able to promote the use of a formalized process for creating consistent, high-quality, brand-compliant e-learning in a decentralized content development environment.

 

“This approach included the introduction of a framework that allows our course developers to build their e-learning courses rapidly, not to mention cost effectively,” says Blair.

Using Articulate’s SCORM support, courses are published to SickKids’ enterprise LMS, enabling the tracking and reporting of learning interactions, a much-needed organizational enhancement in terms of education data collection and reporting.

 

Additional benefits include:

• Fostering an empowered team of subject matter experts who can easily create e-learning, reducing the backlog associated with a more traditional centralized training group, Blair’s approach expedites the flow of critical information to SickKids learners
• Providing high quality, immersive e-learning courses that meet the needs of learners of all backgrounds
• Reducing dependence on external content developers allows SickKids to better manage costs and improve learning item speed to market

Blair is extremely proud of the creativity being exhibited by SickKids course developers who have adopted the use of Articulate Studio ’09.

 

“It’s incredible to see the work that is being produced by our relatively young e-learning developer community, especially when you consider the very short period of time they’ve been exposed to using the software,” says Blair. “We can only imagine what great things are still to come as our people become more experienced in using the tool, and I take great pride in watching their affinity for Articulate grow — all doing their part to support the evolution of the e-learning culture at SickKids!”