At the beginning of the month, the Learning Technologies Exhibition, the world’s leading conference dedicated to technology-supported learning in the workplace, was held in London with the theme of ‘Authenticity in Learning’.
With over 30 conference sessions, more than 90 speakers and facilitators, and a combination of interactive sessions and networking opportunities, this event created the chance for over 1000 learning and development professionals to come together and share their exciting stories and ideas.
Virtual Shifts
One of the speakers was Newcross Healthcare’s Head of Learning Innovation, Mark Story, who delivered a presentation about how our Virtual Shifts were developed to be an authentic learning experience. Mark spoke about how the main objective in its development was to create something that we were so proud of we wanted to frame it – brought to life with the closing shot showing how he has a framed picture of the characters in his own home.
The main points highlighted in Mark’s presentation were:
Our learning must reflect our people-centred sector
To be authentic, learning must be immersive, relatable, and emotionally engaging rather than a passive, intellectual test of memory
We achieved an authentic learning experience by creating character-led, narrative driven, real life scenarios - where the learner is immersed into a story
Virtual Shifts’ stories and characters were developed through a process of co-creation with our healthcare staff
The learning had to address behavioural as well as clinical decision making
There was a rigorous approach to ensuring the learning was under pinned by sector-specific learning outcomes but, once we had done this, we could have fun in its design
The impact of Virtual Shifts
Mark also spoke about the impact that Virtual Shifts has had, such as:
45,000 Virtual Shifts have been completed - saving the individual 4 hours of watching training DVDs as they would have done previously
There’s been a 10% reduction in complaints since the first Virtual Shift launch in September 2018
Learner feedback often includes words like 'love' and 'fun' to describe their experience
Nagware and nudge reminders (which are sent from the Virtual Shift characters) often see staff responding to the characters
One of the two stand-out moments for Mark were the fact that the presentation was co-hosted by one of the Virtual Shift characters, Major Bingley, whose animated image and voice over introduced some of the other characters. The second is that talking about one of the characters, Fiona, brought him to tears due to the authenticity of her story – showing just how real the experience is for those interacting with the characters.
To find out more about Virtual Shifts and some of the other learning opportunities we offer our healthcare community, take a look at our Newcross World page.
