Strange title for this posting….when I read an email joke this week saying that students starting college this year were born in 1992 never took a swim and thought about Jaws.
I digress already.
So my LMS blues continue. I really thought things were going “swimmingly”, pardon the pun. I had launched our LMS earlier in the year and users seem to like it to register for classroom courses. Educators seem to love the idea of adding electronic curriculum to the catalogue. Learners were told to begin their mandatory education (6 courses – WHMIS, ER codes, Accessibility, etc.) in June and have until Oct. 1 to finish. All seemed to be going according to plan with little hiccups here and there along with cries of discontentment due to CHANGE. “What?!? We aren’t doing this on paper any more?” and “I don’t know how to turn on a computer.”
So all the ranting and raving seemed to subside. I sent out a report at the beginning of the week that over 1000 people had started the training. That’s a third of our general staff. Of that 1000, over 700 had completed the training. Not bad for our normal track record. Yes I did say this was mandatory…and that’s another story.
So, yesterday the management team had a development day where the speaker talked to them about things that were mandatory in health care and things that were not. Then asked them if they were leading by example and had they completed the material. Well luckily he didn’t have them raise their hands since only 18 out of 150 have.
Today the questions are flying. Why are we doing this online? (my reader most likely can answer this themselves, but at the simplest level – it takes me 9 months to mark the paper ones, but it isn’t just about me) Can’t we go back to paper? (so we can cheat off of one another – no) We don’t have access to computers. (actually you do, there are several dedicated for this purpose in the library) One particular area we reluctantly made an exception too. We let the staff read the material and sign a declaration that they did so and laid the responsibility back to the manager. This has gotten to others and now they don’t want to do the normal version they just want to read it.
This brings us to the issue….do we, as an organization, care if our staff knows this material. The Ministry says we have to and frankly we want our staff and patients to be safe and know what to do in an emergency; so yes we care. If we care then we need them to read it. So if that is all we care about – give them a brochure. However, the reality is that is not all we care about. We want to KNOW that they read it and understand the material. Hence the reasoning for not only the material but the test as well. We also want to know that EVERYONE has read it and not one person in a group of 20 that has read it and “shared” the quiz answer with everyone else. Hence the reasoning for it being online. In this format, each person is now more accountable for reading and learning the material. Each person has the questions delivered in a random format. (It’s not perfect and we – the readers of this blog – know that, but it is a method to more closely coming to the goal required here.)
And so the lovely journey or fight (depending on how you look at it) continues to haunt my daily existence as a proponent and champion for elearning.
(I think I need a super cape)
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| “Up Up and Away” – Super Smiley (see yesterday’s blog for more Captain Smiley Costumes) |