Getting Continuing Education Credit with Healthcare e-Learning

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healthcare e-learningDoctors, EMTs, nurses, and other healthcare practitioners are constantly evolving from a professional standpoint, as medical procedures become more advanced. The value of continuing education cannot be denied; however, the busy professional lifestyle of individuals in the medical field sometimes makes continuing education classes difficult. To meet the demands of busy healthcare professionals, healthcare e-Learning has risen to the challenge. Healthcare e-Learning has become the most efficient way to provide continuing education to medical staff because online professional development training allows professionals to train in their spare time from the comfort of their own homes, rather than commuting back and forth to campus to adhere to an inflexible class schedule.

Avidity Medical Design designs courses for busy healthcare professionals. Courses include:

  • Medical Coding: Courses in medical coding include ICD-10 coding, CPT coding, and other health information management courses that directly pertain to medical coding.
  • Medical Transcription: Courses in medical transcription include practicum courses that help transcriptionists sharpen their skills in medical language interpretation and voice recognition editing.
  • Medical Claims Processing: Courses in medical claims processing train medical claims examiners to accurately apply Medicare and Medicaid guidelines, as well as guidelines for third-party administrators, to challenging claims processing situations.

Avidity Medical Design offers courses for busy medical professionals in the comfort of their homes and on their own timetable. Instructional and motivational design strategies solidify course content and keep doctors, nurses, EMTs, and other healthcare workers on the intellectual forefront of their fields.  Contact us to see how our unique e-Learning courses can help keep your healthcare professionals on track with continuing education and professional development.

Keeping Learners Engaged is the Secret to Successful e-Learning

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When it comes to e-Learning, the key to success is student engagement. It doesn’t matter how comprehensive a course is. If students aren’t paying attention, they won’t learn and retain the information.

attention to e-learningThe science of “attention” is a hot topic in neuroscience and psychology. Attention refers to the brain’s ability to filter input and focus on what’s most important. Even with strong students, attention is never a steady state. According to a Harvard study, 46.9 percent of the time people are thinking about something other than what they’re doing.

The implications of this for e-Learning are enormous. Knowing that students’ minds wander much of the time, it’s essential to design courses that are highly engaging and reinforce material over and over again. Research indicates that certain factors increase engagement substantially. Here are just a few of the elements that trigger attention:

  • Personalized, relevant content
  • Simple, concise presentation
  • Emotionally evocative information
  • Use of high contrast in graphics
  • Element of surprise, so the presentation doesn’t become predictable

This is exactly the approach Avidity Medical Design takes in designing our healthcare courses. We combine subject matter expertise with a deep understanding of instructional design, so that every course excels in both content and presentation.

Avidity Medical Design ensures that students will be motivated to do the coursework and have a high level of understanding and retention. We design curriculum for all areas of healthcare, including health information management, billing, coding, transcription, electronic medical records, healthcare statistics, healthcare administration, and dentistry.

To find out how Avidity Medical Design can help you engage your students with e-Learning, please contact us.

How to Increase Enrollment for e-Learning

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e-learningDuring the e-Learning enrollment time of year, which happens to be starting around now, you’re probably wondering what the best plan is for making students want to enroll. How do you give them what they want? How to you get what you want? Here are some helpful tips that can effectively increase your enrollments.

Draw attention to your school by recommending it to all the students you know. Encourage them to tell others about your school too. Show what you offer, and explain how great of a deal it is, all without seeming too proud or forceful.

Many students are looking for the school that’s going to benefit them immensely, but aren’t entirely sure where exactly to look. Help out by giving yours as a suggestion. Try putting a link on your social media sites, personal as well as staff supported. Encourage anyone who likes what they see to share the link with all their friends and followers.

When you have students start flowing in, try leaving an option on the enrollment page for the student to post to Facebook or Twitter that the just enrolled in the school. This also will help get them going with showing off your school to their friends.

Try using social media to your advantage and the students advantage. For instance, try offering contests on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Whoever reposts, retweets, or shares your new class list is automatically entered into a drawing to win two free movie tickets. Something as simple as that can help you to gain students. It gives them the option of seeing how in tune your school is with their daily desires.

Another great way to use social media is to award a random prize of $100 when your school reaches so many Facebook likes or shares.

All of this is important, but remember to never give up on cultivating your school. It doesn’t have to ever be perfect, but it would be nice to get close.

For more valuable information, please feel free to contact us. Thank you!!

E-Learning Boasts Benefits for the Healthcare Field

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Leonardo da Vinci, master artisan and unparalleled inventor, appreciated the fact that “learning never exhausts the mind.” One of history’s most creative personalities acknowledged the liberty, freedom, and benefit that learning not only grants the learners, but also their communities. Considering his fantastic forethought, it is not unlikely that da Vinci envisioned an educational paradigm as powerful as e-Learning.e-learning, e-learning benefits, e-learning healthcare

Students from the Renaissance to as recently as the 1980s shared a very similar experience. They were forced to travel from near and far to live and study at the universities of their choosing. Such restrictive conditions made it impossible for many potential students, without the luxury of placing their lives’ responsibilities on hold, to follow their dreams.

Fortunately, the inventive human spirit designed a much more encompassing educational model in e-Learning, offering a wealth of benefits to all of today’s motivated students. The advantages of e-Learning over the traditional model are quite encouraging for contemporary learners, especially in the healthcare field:

  • Tuition for e-Learning is very cost effective. Dow Chemical was accustomed to spending up to $95 per learner/per course when paying for the traditional classroom setting. When the corporation switched to the e-Learning standard, however, they discovered that they were only paying $11 per learner/per course. By moving their studies into the virtual world, the company saved $34 million annually. Ernst and Young experienced similar savings when they condensed 2,900 hours of classroom training down to 500 hours with the support of 700 hours of web-based learning and 200 hours of distance learning. While the training costs were cut 35 percent, Ernst and Young discovered that employee consistency and scalability actually increased. Individual learners will not only find a relative savings on a virtual campus, but they too will benefit from the quality instruction received.
  • In addition to being cost effective, e-Learning demonstrates an efficiency in time. e-Learners are better able to work at their own pace, so there is never a need to slow down for lagging students. Social interaction, a common delay in any classroom environment, is not a factor in the web-based classroom. Plus, learners do not have to waste time traveling to and from another venue since the virtual classroom is readily available at their fingertips.
  • The American Psychological Society commissioned a nine-year study of e-Learning to determine its effectiveness. The research concluded that “learners learn more using computer-based instruction than they do with conventional ways of teaching, as measured by higher post -treatment test scores.” The types of learning that have been found to be particularly successful in the virtual classroom are those that focus on information and knowledge, and processes and procedures. Indeed, e-Learning students typically demonstrate increased gains in test/certification scores and in the level of mastery displayed on the job.
  • Lastly, e-Learning is advantageous to the environment. Web-based students do not increase Carbon Dioxide emissions when traveling to and from campuses. The e-Classroom also boasts paper free communications, instead relying on such tools as email, PDF manuals, and synchronous classrooms. While such environmental factors are perhaps not the main rationale that most students use to select their higher educational institutions, it is just another layer of the exceptional efficiency offered by the virtual classroom.

The healthcare field is fortunate to be at the forefront of the e-Learning revolution. Like da Vinci’s innate desire to seek out the deepest level of understanding, Avidity Medical Design possesses an unparalleled enthusiasm to equip future healthcare workers with the extensive knowledge they need to be successful in the field’s highly competitive market. Please contact us today to uncover the power of e-Learning.

Healthcare Education in “the Cloud” Pours Information Into Our Hands

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How does “the cloud” enhance the educational experience of today’s healthcare professional? The cloud gives students unbridled access to the information they need to grow in the profession.

Gone are the days when flashcards were the only way to test a student’s knowledge. Technological innovations such as the smartphone, tablet and apps have transformed the landscape of healthcare education forever. The quest for healthcare knowledge is migrating to apps where information is available 24/7.

healthcare education in the cloudYour Health: There is an App For That

A report released by mobile industry analyst Research2Guidance predicts that by 2017, 3.4 billion people will have accessto tablets and smartphones with access to mobile healthcare apps. Of the 3.4 billion, 1.7 billion people will have downloaded them. To say that healthcare apps are popular is an understatement. That being said, how does the cloud and the mobile movement in general help hospitals train their staff for 21st century healthcare?

Raining Down Information

The cloud allows hospitals to reach physicians and other healthcare practitioners wherever they are. Being “in the cloud” also allows hospitals to train staff year round without the ebb and flow of information that comes from older forms of information sharing such as journals and conferences.The power of the cloud and mobile technology is undeniable. Knowledge is power and technology releases that power for the good of humanity.

Thirst For Knowledge

The availability of healthcare training apps has exploded over the last couples of years. Many nurses and healthcare professionals turn to their smartphones to acquire new information on drugs, diseases and procedures.

A study conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams Wilkins (LLW) of 3,900 nurses indicated in early 2012, 71 percent of nurses were already using smartphones professionally. Medical practitioners should be encouraged to download reputable healthcare applications and use them to increase their fund of knowledge and reduce the likelihood of medical errors. Here is a short list of apps that hospitals can use to improve patient care:

  1. Nursing Central
  2. NurseTabs: Fundamentals by AusQuinn
  3. NCSBN Learning Extension Medication Flashcards
  4. The Merck Manuals For Mobile
  5. Shots By STFM

 

E-Learning Platforms

The power of e-Learning helps hospitals stay current on emerging trends using the right healthcare platforms. Here is a brief overview of the most popular platforms available:

HealthStream Learning Center – The most widely adopted learning management system in the healthcare industry. An estimated 3.4 million healthcare workers actively use their system.

TidWiT Social Learning Solutions –  A learning platform that offers social healthcare solutions for medical providers. The platform is 100% cloud based.

There are a variety of approaches that hospitals can use to provide continuing education for healthcare professionals, whether they are nurses, physicians, coders, or CEOs. Cloud, apps, and e-Learning solutions are the future. Incorporating these solutions into a comprehensive continuing education program creates durable and long-lasting change for all healthcare professionals. Contact us today to discuss how we can bring your current healthcare training program into the future.

Hiring a Healthcare Course Writer vs. Creating Your Own Content

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A common scenario in healthcare e-Learning goes something like this: A healthcare organization places a strong emphasis on education. For years they avidity medical design healthcare instructorhone their patient education programs, keep staff up to date with certifications, and develop some basic healthcare courses to provide additional training. They watch a live demo, are empowered by what they see, and they begin to move forward with curriculum development. This is where the problems start.

Becoming a healthcare course writer is not an easy task. Oftentimes people know what they want to say but have no idea how to say it. If they do manage to get the words on paper, they get lost in the world of learning management systems and authoring tools. They also discover that they must function as healthcare subject matter experts as well as healthcare course writers to ensure that the course is technically accurate. Before long, months go by and the project is scrapped.

This scenario underscores the importance of hiring an experienced healthcare instructional designer. Ideas for healthcare education often land in the virtual trash can before they ever reach the storyboard stage of development. This happens because the possibility of outsourcing course development was never considered. A talented healthcare course writer can collaborate on ideas and cultivate those that already exist in order to create a comprehensive course that is technically accurate and gets the job done.

Avidity Medical Design expands healthcare training to reach a broader base of clients. Whether you need help preparing staff for the transition to ICD-10 medical coding, or you need to train nurses on the fundamentals of patient assessments, you can have a visually pleasing course created and uploaded to your learning management system.

If you need help developing an in-depth course that accurately meets the learning objectives for your particular healthcare specialty, contact us. We will work with you to achieve your goals for curriculum development.

Apply The ARCS Model of Motivational Design to Healthcare e-Learning

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applying the ARCS model of learning avidity medical designAn effective e-Learning course must not only educate, it must stimulate and motivate. One of the most fundamental methods of motivational design is John Keller’s ARCS Model. John Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivational Design includes four elements that are designed to motivate students to learn: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Innovative educators have long used the ARCS Model to improve learning outcomes by stimulating and maintaining student motivation. The ARCS Model becomes even more critical from the standpoint of healthcare instructional design because a lack of learning motivation can have a detrimental impact on patient care.

Let’s take a look at how the four elements of the ARCS Model, Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction, would be implemented in the context of healthcare instructional design:

1. Attention – Keller uses “inquiry arousal” to gain the learner’s attention. Inquiry arousal means incorporating questions or problems in the curriculum that are designed to be solved by a group of students. Case studies that require active participation, such as those dealing with specific patient scenarios, diseases, or other illnesses can be useful in gaining and sustaining attention.

2. Relevance – The curriculum should include examples that are relevant to connect to the student’s own experience(s). According to this element of the ARCS Model, if students can correlate their prior experience(s) to the new skills that they are learning, they will be more motivated to learn.

3. Confidence – Learners must have confidence in their ability to succeed if they complete the course. They must know that they will learn valuable skills that they can transfer to the real-world environment and immediately apply in their normal workday.

4. Satisfaction – Keller states that learning should be rewarding so that students see the value of what is being taught. This makes them more motivated to learn. One way to increase learner satisfaction is to allow students to practice the new skill being taught or to apply the new knowledge being attained in a live setting. For example, healthcare practitioners could demonstrate methods of gathering vital statistics, comparing test results, and analyzing recorded data in the doctor’s office or triage unit.

Contact us to learn more about the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, and how we can incorporate this model into your healthcare curriculum to motivate your students to learn.

4 Ways to Motivate Healthcare Students to Learn in the Classroom

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applying the ARCS model of learning avidity medical designHealthcare can be a challenging subject to learn, especially since there are so many areas of healthcare that require fundamental knowledge of medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, medical coding, and other areas of allied health. If you are working as an instructional designer, especially if you are developing courses in healthcare, you must develop courses that not only educate, it also stimulate and motivate. One of the most fundamental methods of motivational design is John Keller’s ARCS Model. John Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivational Design includes four elements that are designed to motivate students to learn: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Innovative educators have long used the ARCS Model to improve learning outcomes by stimulating and maintaining student motivation. The ARCS Model becomes even more critical from the standpoint of healthcare instructional design because a lack of learning motivation can have a detrimental impact on patient care.

Let’s take a look at how the four elements of the ARCS Model, Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction, would be implemented in the context of healthcare instructional design:

1. Attention – Keller uses “inquiry arousal” to gain the learner’s attention. Inquiry arousal means incorporating questions or problems in the curriculum that are designed to be solved by a group of students. Case studies that require active participation, such as those dealing with specific patient scenarios, diseases, or other illnesses can be useful in gaining and sustaining attention.

2. Relevance – The curriculum should include examples that are relevant to connect to the student’s own experience(s). According to this element of the ARCS Model, if students can correlate their prior experience(s) to the new skills that they are learning, they will be more motivated to learn.

3. Confidence – Learners must have confidence in their ability to succeed if they complete the course. They must know that they will learn valuable skills that they can transfer to the real-world environment and immediately apply in their normal workday.

4. Satisfaction – Keller states that learning should be rewarding so that students see the value of what is being taught. This makes them more motivated to learn. One way to increase learner satisfaction is to allow students to practice the new skill being taught or to apply the new knowledge being attained in a live setting. For example, healthcare practitioners could demonstrate methods of gathering vital statistics, comparing test results, and analyzing recorded data in the doctor’s office or triage unit.

Contact us to learn more about the ARCS Model of Motivational Design, and how we can incorporate this model into your healthcare curriculum to motivate your students to learn.

If you are interested in taking an online healthcare course, consider enrolling in the course entitled, “How to Learn in the Healthcare Classroom (and ANY Classroom) (in 10 EASY Steps!)” offered by Avidity Medical Design Academy. Click here to learn more about this course. If you are interested in purchasing scented candles and soaps that promote health and wellness through inspirational messages, visit Avidity Medical Scentations to see our current product offerings. 

Healthcare e-Learning for Rural Healthcare Professionals

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The continuing ascension of e-learning presents increasing access to education and training virtually from anywhere, at anytime, especially in the most rural parts of America, where access to resources are typically few and far between.  The resource with the highest priority for access in rural America is access to healthcare. Although healthcare is typically thought of in terms of patient access, it can also be thought of in terms of continuing education for healthcare professionals.

healthcare curriculum development avidity medical designRural healthcare professionals are as significant as their urban counterparts, especially with respect to the need for ongoing professional development.  Continuing education courses are necessary for maintaining certification and professional licensure.  The ongoing requirements for maintaining a nursing license, for example, are the same for nurses in both rural and urban areas.

E-learning for rural healthcare professionals transcends boundaries for specific healthcare specialties.  Given the increasing centralization and bureaucratization of the healthcare industry (i.e, Obamacare, HMOs, PPOs, and so on), continuing education for healthcare professionals is crucial to ensure high-quality patient care.

Consider a company such as Avidity Medical Design, which develops curriculum for all areas of healthcare.  Sheila D. McCray, MS, CCS, CCS-P, the principal of Avidity Medical Design, offers customized learning solutions for both the educational and corporate sectors.  Customized e-Learning courses help rural and urban healthcare organizations meet state licensing requirements, retain staff, and meet short- and long-term goals for healthcare training and professional development.

Contact us for more information on healthcare curriculum development, review and analysis of your existing healthcare courses, and additional healthcare training opportunities.

Bringing the Online Classroom to Life

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The educational system in the United States is changing at all levels, especially at the secondary and post-secondary levels. Some of the changes are due to budget cuts that have hit the educational system especially hard over the past several years.

The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan stated on April 17, 2013:

Education is more than a set of numbers on the ledger line. Education is not just an expense–it is an investment. In fact, it is one of the most critical investments in the future that we, as a Nation, can make. America cannot win the race for the future without investing in education–it is that simple.

Avidity medical design instructional designerA gifted instructional designer needs to use the right software to develop effective curriculum regardless of budget cuts that may change the shape of the educational landscape. Furthermore, the curriculum must allow students to immediately transfer what they learn in the classroom to the real world environment. Avidity Medical Design uses Adobe Captivate, Lectora, Camtasia, and other e-Learning platforms to develop curriculum that allows learners to immediately use what they learn.

Today’s students have many opportunities for social interaction – opportunities that did not exist 20 or 30 years ago. For these students, online learning is simply an extension of their online social interactions through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media networks. Just as conversations come alive on Facebook, for example, student learning should come alive in the online classroom. Creative instructional design combines elements of various instructional design models to create a vibrant learning experience that engages students on a variety of different levels and in a variety of different subjects.

Contact us to learn more about how we can bring your curriculum to life, stimulate your learners, and motivate them to learn more about the subjects that you are teaching.