Online learning: Go out and create

A. It can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. Here are some basic first steps to get you moving in the right direction.

To start building clinical online learning, you'll need a learning management system. An LMS is an application that houses and delivers courses to your learners, as well as reports and tracks their learning. There are many LMS applications to choose from. The LMS that's right for your organization depends on many factors, including what kind of tracking and reporting you want to do, and what kind of learning you want to house and deliver.

You'll also need to create the course content. Who are the people that will design, create and review your online content? At Pediatric Home Service we have a project manager, eLearning developer, clinical subject matter experts (SMEs), clinical reviewers, and multimedia specialists.

Courses can be as interactive or as simple as you want them to be. It could be a video, PDF or activity. We like to create interactive online courses using an eLearning authoring tool. Using this tool, we create courses that contain videos, photos, voiceover, closed captions, animations, and interactions where the learner can click on objects and drag them around their screen. Our goal is to keep learners engaged! We are able to track how learners interact with the courses and if they fail or pass knowledge checks.

My advice is to go out there and start creating. Don't wait for everything to be perfect. Create a course, and improve on it with each new course you create. While it's a lot of work, the finished product is worth the effort.

Brie Cohen Vlach iseducation supervisor at Pediatric Home Service.