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Rarely have so many people been so directly impacted by a collected health-focused leap of progress as in this last year. So now seems like the perfect time to celebrate the altruism, expertise and dedication of Health and Aged Care workers that run like arteries through the sector.
We salute all our clients, but in this article we’re shining a light upon our fellow learning friends across Aged Care, by examining best practice in the industry.
What’s special and different for our Aged Care clients?
To find out more about the unique challenges of learning design for Aged Care organisations, who better to ask than one of our resident learning design experts? We asked Jonathon Klynsmith, the Lead Learning Designer for Kineo Courses. He says:
“The new Aged Care Quality Standards have motivated every care provider to start thinking of their customers as unique, requiring contextual care for their specific needs. Combined with COVID lockdowns and the ongoing vaccination rollout, learning designers have been challenged to find flexible, effective ways of providing contextualised learning to a vital – and tremendously busy - workforce..”
So, when leaders need their people to keep up with fast-moving change, learning needs more than ever need to be relevant, personalised, and meaningful - and to translate into practical action and behavioural change.
What does this mean for learning design?
Like any industry, organisations may need both specialist and non-specialist training. Non-specialist training subjects might include leadership and management, Cyber Security, and so on. Specialist training subjects are where learning designers need to pause and reflect before plunging in. Traditionally a lot of our learning designers come from a writing, teaching or humanities background, so how can they get to grips with designing Aged Care specific content? Daniel Potter, Head of Kineo Courses said:
"We know that the modern Aged Care industry is complex. Australians are living longer and caring is catered to the individual. Supporting Aged Care employees and residents, our course library has been built to meet growing demands in this space to tackle training needs now. Kineo Courses set out to tackle priority learning needs that align to the Aged Care Quality Standards with specialist courses containing practical learning content from Aged Care subject matter experts."
How to bring creativity and make it add value?
Non-specialist content can benefit from a creative treatment using storylines, analogies, drama – any of the tools in the learning designer’s toolbox – and can be particularly welcome in an industry that focuses on person-centred care.
Top tips
What top tips do we have for our Aged Care clients preparing to create digital learning?
Dan says:
“Get your different stakeholders and SMEs involved together early. A field of expertise can be broad and varied, so different SMEs might have their expertise in different specialisms within Aged Care. It makes sense to bring that diversity together early on and get SMEs to collaborate on creating the material together, rather than have one person create it and another person review it later on”.
Learning and compliance are fundamental to your organisational success. We’ll support you to train, induct and develop your most important asset – your people. If you'd like to talk to us about any aspect of digital learning, get in touch - we're here to help.
