NHS Direct

Organisation Overview

NHS Direct provide expert health advice and information through their telephone and online services, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They employ over 2,800 staff, which includes 1,100 trained nurses. The telephone help line handles around five million calls each year and around seven million patients use the online health and symptom checkers.

The e-Learning Challenges

The learning and development team have been using AT-Learning to host and provide e-learning activities and the Oracle Learning Management (OLM) system is used to record and report on all other learning and development activities.

In the past, the use of e-learning within the organisation was dependent on the availability of national e-learning packages and was sporadic as a result. More recently, NHS Direct have commissioned the development of bespoke e-learning activities and purchased ‘off the shelf’ content. Staff within the organisation have a high level of IT capability and have responded well to e-learning and as a result it is now well embedded.

The organisation purchased Think…Architect in March 2011, to enable the rapid creation of local e-learning content that could be deployed on their existing LMS, or any future SCORM compliant LMS, with a limited ‘up-skilling’ of existing staff.

Learning and Development leads who are situated within each NHS Direct locality, have access to Think…Architect, but to date there are only a small number of leads who have worked with content authors and subject matter experts (SMEs) to produce e-learning content that has actually been deployed to staff. e-Learning created to date includes, Fire Safety Awareness and Safeguarding Children.

Prior to the deployment of any e-learning activities, Subject Matter Experts are asked to evaluate the content and following completion, learners are sent a survey to obtain a ‘level 1’ evaluation. In the future the organisation is looking to develop more sophisticated pre and post activity surveys to gather more detailed feedback on e-learning activities. Content authors are also looking to make e-learning assessments more rigorous, through use of the Think…Architect Learning Object Manager.

Key Benefits

The key benefit of the Think…Architect toolkit to the organisation, is that staff can be up-skilled to use it quickly, some staff have actually ‘self-taught’ from outline guidance notes available. This in turn allows for SCORM compliant e-learning content to be created quickly and then deployed to staff using the organisations LMS. The organisation recognises that it will provide a very effective way of deploying policy updates via e-learning, enabling them to report and evidence that staff have received this information / training.

“Think…Architect is easy to train out and doesn’t require a lot of intervention. It is quick and easy to use and if you put a bit of thought into the content the end result is good. Also it is a reasonably priced tool.” Simon Gosney (National Head of Learning & Development (Non-Clinical).

Key Lessons

Initially content that was produced using Think…Architect wasn’t well thought through or storyboarded and as a result the activities created were criticized for being ‘dull’ and not effective learning interventions. This is now being addressed so the perception of Think…Architect is improving across the organisation and the e-learning outputs are being enhanced.

Although Think…Architect is very easy to learn how to use to create and then deploy e-learning, the organisation has found that staff do benefit from training to ensure that when assessments are created, they can be reported on by the LMS.  Think Associates have provided valuable training support and have also helped to articulate some of the technical issues associated with assessments, with the Hunterstone technical support team.

Next Steps

In the short term, the organisation intends to complete the development of the ‘Safeguarding Adults’ e-learning activity and also deploy policy updates via e-learning using Think…Architect. If these activities are also a success the intention is to continue to use Think…Architect to create local e-learning to support the content available nationally. In addition, the Learning and Development team are evaluating whether Adobe Captivate may be a useful tool when there are more comprehensive testing and assessment requirements.

The organisation are also undergoing an options appraisal with a view to moving to a single Learning Management System (LMS) that will host all learning including e-learning, manage bookings, appraisal and provide information for management reports. A key requirement is to allow for a single sign on for staff to access their own learning and appraisal records, have access to e-learning and the ability to book on other learning activities. Think…Architect will work effectively with any of the short-listed Learning Management Systems.

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