March 19, 2019
Government, Our People
Brigetta Craft
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Reingold Senior Director
As the workforce grows more dispersed and travel budgets get tighter, online training can seem like an easy way to update employee skills and instill best practices. But in reality, making sure your program is meaningful and sustainable can be tough.
In my 40-year career in health care, I’ve seen many attempts to create distance-learning programs for busy professionals. The TeamSTEPPS® program by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) stands out for its success in making an e-learning initiative engaging, effective, and efficient — achieving long-term impact.
In 2006, AHRQ (an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) partnered with the Department of Defense to release TeamSTEPPS as the national standard for enhancing teamwork skills in health care. By 2012, TeamSTEPPS had a waitlist of more than 900 people — far exceeding staff capacity to lead the trainings.
AHRQ hired a team including Reingold’s communications, health care, and education specialists to convert the two-day TeamSTEPPS training into an engaging online curriculum: TS 2.0. Five years later, our innovative approach to content development, promotion, and management had attracted more than 15,000 TS 2.0 learners — including 1,900 who became master trainers themselves — while reducing the burden on the AHRQ staff.
Reingold converted TeamSTEPPS materials into engaging, 508-compliant online formats, including voiceover narration and interactive features.
My experience with TS 2.0 points to eight key tactics for designing an effective and manageable online learning program — combining the best parts of in-person education experiences with the continuous improvement and automation made possible by digital tools.
For TS 2.0, Reingold produced videos of in-person team exercises for viewers to see best practices for teaching others in their organization.
Through high-touch support, TS 2.0 garnered a 71 percent completion rate, compared with the 6 percent average rate for similar no-cost online training.
For more information about Reingold’s expertise in supporting e-learning programs, please contact KMiller@reingold.com.