How True Transformed Essential Healthcare Training in Australia
For over 40 years, True Relationships and Reproductive Health has delivered essential training to healthcare professionals, doctors, and nurses in the state of Queensland, Australia. It also provides workplace development for other sectors, including teachers, early childcare workers, youth and social workers, allied health professionals, and support workers in the disability sector.
Funded by the government, and playing a pivotal role in the community, it is essential for True to ensure its education is accessible and inclusive to all areas of Queensland regardless of location or availability—especially rural and remote regions. Historically, True’s focus was on face-to-face courses but it wanted to develop a range of flexible self-paced and eLearning courses to add to its course catalogue in aid of this vision.
However, True’s IT systems and software hadn’t been invested in effectively, and they were lagging behind when it came to digital delivery and capability. The organization needed a robust, fit-for-purpose software stack to deliver its blended vision, a project that was overseen by Learning and Communication Systems Coordinator Audrie Jurgens.
Choosing the Right Learning Software
Audrie manages True’s software solutions to ensure a seamless delivery of training courses and programs to its clients, and she knew the organization needed a new way to deliver its blended learning courses.
After a comprehensive discovery process, True chose Arlo, Learnbook and Zoom as the ultimate software solution to manage and deliver the training courses.
It moved from a content management system with basic SCORM delivery to the Moodle™-based Learnbook.
Audrie says, “We chose Learnbook because, as a small, not-for-profit organization, we needed a hosted LMS and we decided that Moodle™, as an Australian innovation and the most widely used LMS globally, was the best choice.”
After discovering the Arlo training management system on Moodle™’s plugin list and implementing the software in March 2019, True has reported a reduction in manual course administration and management and a 137% increase in registrations.
True uses the Arlo training management system to sell courses and manage its training business. Arlo is its ecommerce platform to sell courses online—with a website, shopping cart, and marketing, as well as scheduling, CRM, and reporting to manage the course administration. With a native integration between Learnbook and Arlo, True has found it easy to deliver blended learning.
A key requirement for True was to be able to provide third-party invoices to customers and offer payment by bank transfer as well as credit card, and Arlo was able to do both right out of the box—no expensive custom development required. True also needed to be able to customize registrations and certificates by course, add custom database fields, sell face-to-face content as well as online content and a blend of both, and needed a CRM to facilitate marketing and communication.
Implementation of the new software was already underway when COVID hit, and with the groundwork done, True was in an advantageous position. It was able to pivot quickly to live online webinar via Zoom—subsequently opening up distance education and counselling opportunities beyond Queensland, to a much wider Australian audience.
True chose Zoom for its affordability and ease of use and native integration with Arlo. With the ability to schedule and run webinars with Arlo and Zoom, True could easily transfer existing face-to-face courses to live online within the platform to continue delivering education during COVID. Audrie also appreciated Zoom’s ability to record webinars, which she could then load into Learnbook as on-demand content as part of a blended learning package.
Designing and Creating Content for Elearning
True brought instructional development in-house by investing in training for subject matter experts and subscribing to Articulate 360 to utilize Rise and Storyline. The wide variety of activities available in Rise inspires True to create more interesting and engaging content, and when it wants something more complex, True develops something in Storyline to meet its needs.
“Articulate360, and Rise360 with its intuitive interface and beautiful, responsive finished product has allowed our educators to take on most of the content development with ease,” Audrie says.
In addition to producing interactive, engaging SCORM packages with Rise, True utilizes many of Learnbook’s offering of activities: quizzes, surveys, forums, assignments, podcasts, and on-demand video.
With new skills in eLearning development, True’s educators have been adapting face-to-face courses to blended learning courses featuring Learnbook online, anytime content, sometimes exclusively and sometimes in combination with face-to-face workshops or live webinars via Zoom.
The Future of Learning
The feedback from True’s course participants is that they appreciate spending less in-classroom time when they can prepare in advance with eLearning resources and attend a webinar session at home on any device. Audrie reports that the blended learning solution is also working well for True’s educators and will be maintained even when the COVID crisis has ended.
Blended learning has been incredibly successful for True, as not only has it increased revenue, but it has made the organization's training courses accessible, affordable, flexible, and within reach of everyone. It has enabled True to offer a richer, more immersive, and engaging training experience without requiring more staff, resources, or funding.
Audrie believes blended learning is the way of the future for the training industry, well beyond COVID. For those just starting out with blended learning, Audrie recommends investing in a robust software stack such as Arlo + Zoom + Learnbook, and then adapting some traditional training materials to eLearning content. She says learner feedback is essential in the initial adoption phase, and recommends sending surveys to course participants post-completion, and then using the feedback to evolve course catalogues and content.