Taking one more step towards enabling the ESID community to stay on top of the latest innovations in the field, giving all members one more tool towards improving the awareness, diagnosis, treatment, education and understanding of immunodeficiency diseases.
European Society for Immunodeficiencies
Europe
Success achieved
Taking one more step towards enabling the ESID community to stay on top of the latest innovations in the field, giving all members one more tool towards improving the awareness, diagnosis, treatment, education and understanding of immunodeficiency diseases.
Dr Eleonora Gambineri, ESID Education Committee Chair & Chairperson ESID Working Party Education
Susanne Wollaert, Senior Association Executive, ESID (Kenes employee)
Tools & Systems
Moodle LMS - Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS). A LMS is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of online educational modules or training programmes. The focus of a LMS is to deliver online courses or training to learners, while managing learners and keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities.
Articulate Storyline – Articulate Storyline is an authoring system, which is a programme that has pre-programmed elements for the development of interactive multimedia software titles. Authoring systems can be defined as software that allows its user to create multimedia applications for manipulating multimedia objects.
Introduction
Members of ESID, like other medical professionals, need to maintain the knowledge, skills, attitudes and abilities required in their working lives, while also learning about the latest developments and how they apply to the care they provide. They also need to maintain their professional standards and are looking to the society, ESID, to assist them.
ESID recognised this need and in order to give members access to high valuable content throughout the year and to extend the learning impact of the congress and summer school, the solution ESID wanted to implement was setting up an ESID Educational Portal.
Studies show that a majority of healthcare professionals are increasingly looking to online education to help satisfy their education and credit needs. Online medical education is not replacing attendance at live medical meetings, but is rather another educational opportunity available to learners.
Following a needs assessment, the Education team provided a proposal to ESID - an online learning portal with innovative and interactive case-studies. The ESID Education Portal was launched during the 2016 meeting in Barcelona, 21-24 September, and the 5 case studies have been launched in December 2016. Now the aim is to expand the ESID Education Portal with extra educational materials, interactive and innovative modules, and sharing practical experiences.
Discovery
Not all members of ESID are able to attend the ESID congress and/or attend all interesting sessions. Together with the Education team, ESID recognised this, and identified a need for offering continuous education that supports lifelong learning to their members.
The ESID Board and ESID Educational Committee assessed congress feedback, literature, experience, and member feedback to identify the needs of their members with the ultimate goal of improving patient care and outcomes in the field of immunodeficiencies. From this research the following aim for the ESID Education Portal was established:
Enabling members to gain knowledge, skills, and understanding in the area of immunodeficiencies as well as the organisation of care in immunodeficiencies, and thereby contribute to their personal and professional development. Learners will develop their clinical skills, including their capacity to interact appropriately with affected individuals.
Objectives
ESID believes that every child, adolescent and adult born with a defective immune system has the right to benefit from both clinical and scientific knowledge. Therefore, ESID’s mission is to enable patients with primary immunodeficiency diseases to live their lives to its full potential by improving awareness, diagnosis, treatment, education and understanding of these diseases.
The main goal of the ESID Education Portal is to increase the knowledge of the target audience related to primary immunodeficiency diseases by offering continuous education that supports lifelong learning. This broad goal has been broken down into SMART learning objectives. In order to improve the care in immunodeficiencies, different cases have been created using different objectives. This gives learners the opportunity to tailor their learning to their specific learning needs.
The objectives have been separated into the following cognitive levels: K (Knowledge), C (Competency) and P (Performance/Behaviours).
Objectives separated into cognitive levels
Activities
Following a needs assessment, the third-party Kenes, and their education team provided a solution for ESID - an online learning portal with innovative and interactive case-studies.
Starting with the development of the ESID Education Portal, the planning phase was the first important element to ensuring effective continuous education for ESID members. ESID and the Education team has closely collaborated to outline the following, which has guided the educational portal design, and creation:
Educational Needs (What do members of the ESID need to learn to improve their performance?)
Educational Objectives (What are the expected outcomes of participation?)
Target Audience (Who should participate in order to achieve the desired outcomes?)
Format and Content Delivery
The timeline describes the process of creating the ESID eSchool and development of the first 5 CME accredited case-studies and the responsible working groups, where as ESID Educational Committee is ESID, and Kenes Education is KE.
Timeline of activities
The ESID Education Portal was launched during the 2016 meeting in Barcelona, and 5 case studies have been launched in December 2016.
With this tool, ESID also supports all members who attend the ESID congress but could not attend
all sessions of interest, as well as those that could not attend this or some of the other ESID events throughout the year, further maximising the benefits to members with more relevant content available on demand.
Unique benefits of the ESID Educational Portal include accessibility, affordability and content on demand that is scalable to individual objectives and schedules. Also, members can obtain CME credits by successfully completing the interactive case studies.
The case studies are interactive, engaging the learner through answering a set of questions. This learning method requires active participation of learners and stimulates the learning process.
The ESID Education Portal includes an easy and intuitive navigation to the content, which is organised as resource materials and activities. ESID offers the following materials on the portal:
ESID Education Online Portal
Webcasts,
ePosters,
Abstracts,
Videos,
CME Case Studies.
We see that European specialists working in the specialty field of immunodeficiency are showing more interest in becoming a member, as it will give them access to the online learning materials placed on the ESID Educational Portal.
Innovation
The imaginative process put in place came from providing authentic experience and added value to ESID’s offering. This required a clear understanding of the association and its line of work, so to be able to engage and provide value to the members, as well as the association itself in return.
Research showed that online education is most effective and appreciated by learners when it’s offered as another educational format supporting lifelong learning. Thus, ESID together with the Education Team built an interactive online eLearning portal, that’s not only offering online learning videos, but that is actually asking for active participation by presenting cases and using questions and answers. Also, blended learning methods are used, so the best learning outcomes can be reached.
Education offered by ESID for members involves now not only educational activities to enhance medical competence in medical knowledge and skills, but also in management, team building, professionalism, interpersonal communication, technology, teaching, and accountability. The ESID Education Online supports the enhancement of effective lifelong learning for their members, after residency.
Marketing
ESID 2016 Congress in Barcelona – ESID Administration promoting the ESID Education Online Portal at the booth in the exhibition hall
Mail blasts have been sent to ESID members, as follows:
September 2016 marketing mail (sent first day of ESID 2016 congress)
October 2016 marketing mail (post ESID 2016 congress promotion)
Challenges
With technology playing an important role in content delivery nowadays, but also being one of our main stressors when not used right, the challenge we had with this project is arriving at the correct user-friendly solution, while delivering content in the most practical way in order to address the educational needs of the ESID community.
Education offered by ESID for members involves now not only educational activities to enhance medical competence in medical knowledge and skills, but also in management, team building, professionalism, interpersonal communication, technology, teaching, and accountability.
Achievements
User experience
Unique benefits of the ESID Educational Portal include accessibility, affordability and content on demand that is scalable to individual objectives and schedules. Also, members can obtain CME credits by successfully completing the interactive case studies. The case studies are interactive, engaging the learner through answering a set of questions.
The ESID Educational Portal includes navigation elements: menus, search bar, and page theme; allowing users to locate and easily navigate to relevant information.
The content is organised as resource materials and activities. ESID offers the following materials on the portal: Webcasts, ePosters, Abstracts, Videos, and CME Case Studies. All is organised to present the learning materials and to make it easy to use for all members.
Achievement of objectives
Outcomes of the activities on the ESID Education Online are measured using various data sources as indicated in the framework below. The activity outcomes are measuring participation, satisfaction and knowledge/learning. The educational activity is examined based on this data collection and analysis to measure its effectiveness in achieving the desired objectives.
Participant Information
The number of overall registrants and those who appropriately completed the entire e-learning module are tracked for reporting purposes.
Pre/Post Test, if the Educational Activity is CME Accredited
For the case studies a pre- and post-test are designed to measure changes in both knowledge and competence. Attendees must answer at least 70% of the questions correctly to obtain a certificate.
Course Evaluation
Measured is the overall satisfaction with the learning module, the degree to which the objectives were met, intention to change, and any additional comments/feedback. The feedback received has been very positive and for most case studies, users agree that this activity will help them further in their professional practice.
The main impact of this offering is that it enables members to gain knowledge, skills, and understanding in the area of immunodeficiencies as well as the organisation of care in immunodeficiencies. The ESID Educational Portal contributes to the personal and professional development of ESID members.
We see that European specialists working in the specialty field of immunodeficiency are showing more interest in becoming a member, as it will give them access to the online learning materials placed on the ESID Educational Portal.
Financials
The total investment that has been made by ESID were only the costs for the creation and development of the ESID Education Portal, hosting, maintenance, project management etc. This needs figures / financial sums.
The ESID Educational Portal is an added value for its members and at this phase there is no financial return on the investment.
Feedback & Testimonials
"Useful for education for myself and also colleagues/ juniors."
"Relevant for my study and research."
"This activity helps me to improve my skills."
"Relevant to my interest."
"This activity was very educative for this important pathology, for its recognition and management."
