Making the decision to move your hospital, therapy clinic, or organization from traditional classroom-style education to education delivered online can be daunting – How will we deliver it? Who will teach the courses? Will we need fancy systems and equipment? Will we handle continuing and professional education or just company training programs? All of these and many more relevant questions will come up. The questions can be overwhelming and the possible answers even more confounding. So, we’ve put together this quick checklist of what to expect when making the switch, and what to look for in your online continuing/professional education solution.
Delivery Mechanisms and Learning Styles
These days, there are many delivery mechanisms for online courses – text based, slideshow based, webinar style, video conferencing solutions, and video based. Each of these methodologies has different benefits for different learning styles. Text based courses provide for those who learn best by visual self-study, while webinars allow for the social or auditory learners, and video courses provide for those who want the engagement of a webinar, but need a more flexible option. Most of the available course styles heavily focus on one or two of the different learning types, rarely does an online course meet the needs of the three or four major learning styles – visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and social. Knowing each of the learning styles among your team can be impossible, so how do you choose one to fit the needs of your entire staff?
Speakers, Presenters, Educators & Accreditation – Oh My!
The process of hiring a training staff, or booking outside educators for your team learning opportunities presents many challenges, and can be very expensive. When hiring a training staff for your hospital or therapy clinic you will need educators with many different backgrounds, from Physical Therapists, to Speech-Language Pathologists, you’ll need several trainers and educators to provide rich and fulfilling education to all departments. You can book outside educators, but timing becomes key for your therapy staff to be able to participate.
One of the greatest challenges to in-house educational content though is course accreditation. Each profession and in some cases each individual state carry their own rules and regulations for continuing education. Obtaining continuing education approval is a necessary part of providing such courses, but the time and energy involved is extensive, and hard to measure.
What about Course Administration?
Many teams choose to use a Learning Management System (LMS) to administer and manage education. An LMS will house your education, allow you to administer tests, and even report on system activity. LMS’ come in a variety of options including, cloud based, pay by the user, pay by features, and even free, open source. When it comes to finding what is right for your team consider the staff you currently have to administer the tool, whether IT will need to be involved during implementation and most importantly what types of content you have on hand to stock it. You’ll also need to verify that your course format and delivery method is accepted by the LMS you choose.
Putting It All Together
In the end you’ll need content (and lots of it), a tool to administer and mesure the understanding of your course content, and plenty of speakers and educators to deliver new and engaging content. The CEU360 solution addresses all of these needs for therapy and rehab teams, all within one easy to access, always on, system.
The CEU360.com Content Cinema allows course participants to see and hear the instructor, see slides and visual aids on screen, interact with the instructor, watch demonstrative videos, and pause for hands-on-learning opportunities. Meeting all four of the learning styles mentioned above the Content Cinema provides the most engaging style of online presentation available. With over 400 hours of available video based education, your team is sure to find something that interests them. In addition to the available content we offer, we enable your team to create the additional content you’ll need such as, orientation programs, ongoing team training, compliance education, professional development, and even company culture or townhall content.
Our accreditation specialists work to ensure each of our courses are approved for the appropriate professions, and our team of professional content reviewers ensures each of the courses we offer will meet the learning needs of therapists. We offer courses for Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Massage Therapy and Athletic Training professionals across the US.
Our Learning Management System comes equipped all the tools you need to ensure success within your team, including course comprehension management, accreditation management, reporting and more. So if you’re looking for more than just a shell-tool, then the CEU360.com complete educational solution is for you!
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