Category: eLearning

20 Sep 2023
Medical training videos importance
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What do you learn in medical training?

Medical training has been critical for new employees so that they can fit themselves with the policies of the hospital.

However, there can be problems during onboarding itself when the new hires feel secluded. They think that the new information is too much for them to grasp. So, all of a sudden, they are bombarded with duties, which makes them feel appalled. They can’t understand what their role requirements are and are also confused with training because it’s not enough.

Apart from that, they can also feel that their seniors are not happy with them.

This can cause dissatisfaction and make them look for jobs elsewhere. The employees feel disoriented during their onboarding when they have not been properly told about their job duties.

Patient safety is an important reason why medical training is paramount. A new hire in the medical profession requires a lot of mentoring. They should accompany the experienced doctors so that they earn a lot of valuable experience.

When medical professionals don’t have proper knowledge about procedures and policies, it can cause a lot of accidents. It can also damage the reputation of the healthcare provider. The following errors can be prevented with the help of medical training:

  • Diagnostic Errors:

There can be many errors which can arise in the beginning. For example, the doctor can prescribe the wrong medication to the patient, which happens due to lack of experience. There can also be a need for more consideration of how one drug interacts with another, leading to side effects.

There can also be a wrong diagnosis of the disease. This can hamper the recovery of the patient because sometimes symptoms which lead to an indication of an ailment are not recognized early, leading to an exacerbation of the situation.

The medical provider has to be extremely cautious during any surgery because even the wrong blood transfusion can cause issues for the patients. This happens when the doctor does not check that the blood types don’t match. In this case, the blood transfusion should not happen because this can cause a life-threatening condition for the patient.

Even surgical doctors require intensive medical training so that they know how to conduct the process properly, like not leaving any incisions open or causing any unwanted damage to the patient.

Moreover, when doctors look tired, they should be sent home because the fatigue causes them to make wrong decisions, which is not favorable for the hospital.

  • Discharge errors:

Medical training videos are so crucial for doctors because they can only discharge patients after giving them all the tips for necessary care so that if any symptom develops, they are to immediately consult. The patients must have all the post-operative care instructions given to them so that they don’t lack any knowledge. Any resources not being disseminated to them means patients are in the dark about their condition and can lapse in their post-surgical or treatment routine. They can miss the visits to the hospital or even skip medicines.

  • Surgical errors:

Infection control procedures also need to be taken seriously because if any medical treatment is not done properly, the patients can be inflicted with serious conditions. The infections that a patient gets when any external object is inserted into the body or any time during which he is in the hospital are known as hospital-acquired infections. For example, a urinary tract infection can occur when a catheter (medical tube) is inserted into the urinary tract of a person to drain out urine because a patient cannot do so himself. When a situation arises, precautions have to be taken so that no germs enter the body. The doctors dealing with such a patient have to keep their hands clean, wearing gloves all the time. Even the catheter has to be cleaned so that no infection happens to the body.

So, all these precautions can be learned by the new hires when they observe the elder doctors performing such procedures.

Hence, the doctors need to be shown medical training videos so that all procedures are standardized and any evidence of any negligence is taken care of in time.

The medical training videos can be a lot of aid in preventing such errors. The doctors can be taught about how to administer important processes so that if any adverse events indicate a symptom, this can be clearly shown to a novice. This can help the doctors in getting to any infection that might have occurred after the process. Various case studies can be shown where any negligence by the doctor has led to a severe condition so that it can be prevented in future by exercising due caution.

  • Lack of informed consent:

Medical training videos are also very effective in situations when patients don’t have much clue about the procedure. They are not aware of the post-operative cure and the surgical risks, like how much success rate it has. So, in that scenario, the consent of patients must be taken after duly informing them about surgical risks through such videos where they can also get a better understanding of their condition.

When informed consent has not been taken from patients, there can be a risk of legal consequences.

When surgery is being conducted, or treatment is under process, the doctors cooperate among themselves to provide the best cure to the patient. Therefore, the teams need to be trained in collaboration with each other. Each of the doctors, whether he is an anesthesiologist or a surgeon, has an important role to play and hence must be shown videos about complex conditions when their duties intensify.

15 Sep 2023
Are VR simulations necessary?
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Are VR simulations so necessary for training? 

AI has added a new scope and dimension to companies’ learning and development initiatives. The term technical training has acquired a new context with the development of AI. But chatbots are no longer adequate to answer the queries of the employees. Companies must develop and implement large language models (LLM) that can answer employees in real time. 

How does the AI function? 

A large language model functions with a transformer model, which reads and simplifies the text, and then the LLM produces the text in response to human questions. A transformer model was first invented in 2017 when this neural network structure-based model was used to convert one kind of input into another. This neural network was used to produce French from English. 

The companies can now use large language models that can browse the complicated company manuals with a transformer model so that employees can use them to search for information. They can analyze the company’s compliance database compared to chatbots, which only provide employees with basic information.

Let’s talk about VR simulations:

Although the Metaverse is the coolest thing to have hit the industry now, it’s not always the best answer. The first reason for criticizing this much-celebrated simulations-based technology is that employees are taken from work for a long time, which is not feasible in every industry.

Companies must make critical decisions like where to use the simulations based technology to get the best return.

The companies have to create a plan and then follow it to ensure that such technologies are not overused, leading to an excess budget. 

However, immersive learning is needed when it comes to learning technical skills for employees, like using heavy machinery. The employees can’t be trained on using such machines in person due to the cost of accidents. When AR/VR-based technologies are used, the solution happens in a simplified manner because the learners imbibe the exact manner in which a robot or machine has to be used during their work. 

In certain industries like manufacturing and healthcare, it’s the demand of the competition to use such technologies. 

Pros

  • Industrial demand: 

It’s the job of the L&D professionals to see that success equals prudence, too, and using technologies like augmented reality/virtual reality is well justified. It can only happen when they have done a thorough analysis to prove why such simulation-based technologies were the best solution possible in a certain situation.

They can also implement a small program to check whether the investment in AR/VR systems is necessary, and then scale up everything if necessary.

  • Better results: 

They can lead to lesser costs and lead to easier recall. In such a situation, making employees learn about surgeries through such technologies is the most effective way to create efficient surgeons of the future with the least possible training time. 

Cons 

  • Need for data collection: 

Implementing VR is another task, but collecting data after its execution is also equally important. This data helps the company analyze whether the learners are truly gaining anything from this implementation. If the learners find any problems with the simulation that they cannot fully engage in the experience, it is time to contact the vendor.

Who uses the VR experience to learn and cannot understand anything? All this data has to be collected by a company before implementing VR for training. 

Why is data collection necessary? 

The data needs to be collected according to the stakeholders who are responsible for making decisions about implementing this technology. xAPI is a brilliant way to capture all the data about a user’s movements during virtual reality technology, where his hands are positioned on the controllers. For example, when the learner is putting off fire in a simulation, how long does it take to do that?

Does he consider certain other factors before taking that decision, like how many people had to be evacuated before the fire was extinguished?

In this kind of simulation, did the learner consider the number of people in the room who had to be evacuated? If the fire could not be extinguished, the occupants had to be evacuated, but it was not the case when it was possible to douse the fire(Decision point). Also, it is important to set a milestone so that the time taken by the learner to extinguish the fire is measured(Milestone).

 So, when the learner’s time exceeds that milestone, he can’t be considered relevant for the job. All this data assortment is necessary for VR/AR to generate successful results in a company and be considered a useful training resource. Whether VR simulations actually lead to intended training results causing a better performance in the company, or does the performance between a simulation and real-life events differ? 

In every decision a learner takes, it’s important to evaluate the chain of events, like when a learner took a certain decision. He might have extinguished the fire when he saw people running, not when the smoke alarms started beeping. So, such a learner needs more training, depending on his slow reaction to the beeping smoke alarms. 

Midway:

Blended learning is a better approach than virtual reality training. It’s because a company needs to analyze data like learners who were trained before performed better in VR simulations. Was it necessary to distribute instructions to elicit a better response from learners? 

At Creativ Technologies, we provide 2D simulations for our clients so that they can provide unrestricted learning experiences to their employees. With the right integration of authoring tools and craftsmanship, our niche simulations have been used by clients all over the world for focused experiential learning.

08 Sep 2023
L&D
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What is the need for an L&D partner?

L&D staff needs an enhancement in every company due to the workload pressure. Although a company might have an internal L&D department, problems arise when there are many projects.

There can be a requirement for an external training partner who knows where the skill gaps of a company are.

These are the reasons why an external L&D partner is needed:  

  • Conducts a skills assessment:

An L&D company knows the difference between how a company is performing and how it is supposed to. It knows how to conduct a needs assessment to detect skill gaps. It can ensure that simulations are handed over to employees, through which real skills can be evaluated. If they are lacking, it’s time to implement a training program.

Tests for assessment

There can be quizzes handed over to employees to check their real skills. There are many red flags for a company that its employees suffer from skill gaps when it has trouble meeting its desired ROI. The company also might have adopted a new technology, and employees might face trouble using it.

A company can use a Likert scale and rate skills from 1 to 5 depending on their importance. Then, evaluate the employees based on their skills. These skills gap can be higher for freshers who have just joined the company.

In that case, an L&D program is not the complete solution; shadowing is the answer, where the novices follow the expert people on the job. Also, every job profile has some skills that are more important than others, and the training should focus on closing the pivotal skill gaps first. For example, in the case of a telesales executive who sells products to customers daily, knowing negotiation skills is much more important than being an expert at Excel.

He can just know how to store data in Excel, but it’s a waste of time when he can’t make customers buy at certain prices.

Hence, for every employee, skills must be rated for criticality, i.e., which skills are more necessary than others. This is the last stage of a skills assessment process. After this process, the company can begin training for skills deemed a prerequisite for job performance and hire an L&D partner if needed.

  • Cheaper to use external resources:

The L&D team of a company needs to be supplied with expensive software licenses. But this is not the problem with an external L&D team, which gets its own software licenses, reducing the costs for a company. 

  • Access to the best resources:

When an L&D partner is hired, a lot of problems are solved for the company. It’s able to come up with the best output required for training. It gets access to the best training partners in terms of instructional designers.

Furthermore, it has content developers like subject-matter experts who know the topics in detail. Even if such an L&D partner does not have the best people on board currently, it can suggest the most productive resources to a company based on its connections. Especially in the case of technical skill gaps, where finding a subject-matter expert and instructional designers is not so easy.

When a Company has access to an experienced L&D partner, it hires the skilled resources swiftly and saves time. It also hires L&D staff who know the latest eLearning processes and authoring tools. It also knows the technology a certain industry needs to create its eLearning content. 

L&D Partners often help companies fulfil their training needs without hiring resources for a long time. 

  • Diversification of resources:

Such external L&D partners also help companies hire resources from other countries, which also helps an organization create resources for local training. It may have trouble finding the right resource for creating training materials for employees of a certain region. But with an L&D partner, all its localization needs are solved.

This freedom to choose resources from anywhere ensures the company can work with resources with complete credibility. It can allow remote work to them, and it’s the headache of the L&D Partner to manage them and get the work done seamlessly. A company can also save costs by opting for resources from cheaper regions than its own. 

Sometimes, better resources also exist for a company outside its own country; hence, hiring an L&D partner is necessary to find them. 

Conclusion

When a company opts for an external L&D partner, it maximizes its productivity with internal and external resources. The company benefits from cooperation between its resources and the L&D partner. It can also give feedback to the L&D partner so that its staff performs to the best of its abilities and any performance gaps are removed on time.

However, a major problem can arise when the in-house L&D refuses to collaborate with an external partner. This can be more troublesome when both kinds of resources work in different time zones, and cooperation is required. So, the company should convince the internal staff to be at their best level with an external partner.

30 Aug 2023
simulations
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How has the creation of simulations evolved over the years?

The simulations are now being used for all kinds of eLearning in the corporate world.

Importance of simulations for banking training:

For example, simulations have been extremely useful in banks, where they can be used for explaining to the employees what can be the harmful effects of making wrong decisions.

They are taught how various situations can affect the balance sheet of a bank.

In such simulations, various factors become more understandable to banking employees like how they must cope with poor business conditions which happens when there is a recession in the economy and banks don’t get many lending opportunities.

When the banking employees see a change in numbers due to any alteration in regulatory conditions like a hike in interest rates, they learn how to adapt to such situations. Also, there can be problems when the central bank increases interest rates to curb inflation.

When the central banks increase interest rates, the cost of lending increases, and hence banks have to increase their own interest rates to earn profits. The interest rates are increased and banks have to convey to the borrower the reasons behind them to maintain their loyalty. It’s because their loans go for a toss in such situations and hence, they must know how their decisions influence assets and liabilities.

These and many more changes in external factors require intelligent decision-making by banking employees, and this skill gets enhanced through a simulator. The simulation shows how the assets and liabilities of a bank change as a consequence of the changes in such factors, and how to cope with such situations.

Simulations before 1980s:

A simulation showcases a business situation. When this happens, the businesses know how to leverage or emerge as a survivor in such a situation. They understand the challenges of a situation as a whole, rather than being absorbed in the complexities of the situation.

Now, due to authoring tools, creating simulations is not as tough as before.

The simulations were however initially not so popular. This was because there had been no advent of eLearning authoring tools. So, it was quite complicated to create simulations using programming and generating computer variables. The users could not be given simple variables for decision-making, due to which it was tough for them to understand and learn. Therefore, the users could not establish any relations between the variables chosen in decisions and their results. Consequently, the earlier simulations could not fulfil any kind of learning goals of clients. Hence, making simulations simple was required.

How were simulations created back then?

There was a need for creating graphic characters from scratch using design software and then creating body movements and gestures for them through Flash.

Apart from that, it was also required to use programming languages such as C++ and Java to showcase the behavior of the elements in such simulations after any option was chosen, like the user would see a pop-up on screen after he chose any option in a quiz.

Creation of Simulations after invention of authoring tools:

Firstly, the authoring tools have templates, elements, and characters designed for a specific business situation. Even gestures and facial expressions have been created to depict situations.

Therefore, the creators just need to drag and drop animated characters and other elements into templates to create situations. There is no coding required to create templates.

Benefits of using authoring tools for creating simulations:

  • No need for programming:

Moreover, programming is also not needed to create branching scenarios in such simulations. The eLearning authoring tools are already well-endowed with the triggers and the users just have to choose the options.

They contain triggers that are invoked as a user chooses a certain option in a pre-built quiz, and then the user is enlightened about his choice.  Therefore, the user can be presented with many options in terms of situations and quizzes.

  • Immediate feedback received:

Another advantage of these simulations is that since they can be produced so quickly, feedback can be sought immediately from the client. So, the procedure to produce these simulations is quite agile. Changes are made often, and the client does not have to wait for a certain time to offer feedback before the final results are shown to him. Different scenarios can be prepared, produced and altered till they satisfy a client in terms of end results.

  • Easier collaboration:

Since these authoring tools are hosted on cloud-based servers, the graphic designers can work alongside them with SMEs who can tell them whether a certain situation has been shown correctly. When they find anything wrong with a situation, they ask the graphic designers to correct it immediately.

25 Aug 2023
Create instructional video with Mayer's principles
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How to make an instructional video using Mayer’s principles?

Instructional videos are at the core of learning now. But how to ensure that the learners remember everything? It’s not so simple. The learners don’t watch a video completely, hence an organization cannot transmit all the information. Moreover, learners can also not pay attention to a video while watching it, which means they go through it for entertainment purposes only.

Hence, in that case, the businesses cannot ensure that an instructional video has created the cognitive impact that they wanted to create. Due to a lack of understanding, the video is not stored in the long-term memory of a learner.

The eLearning companies USA know how to create the perfect instructional video for the learners which makes them focus. The research has proven over the years that when certain features are used in videos, user engagement is more. For example, in the case of demo videos, highlight boxes can be used to capture the attention of learners. Such boxes make users understand which button to press to complete or initiate a certain action. With the use of highlight boxes, the users can be made to remember such minute information for a long time. 

There are certain principles suggested by Mayer which are necessary to follow to have the maximum impact of a video. 

  • Signaling principle:

The first principle of signaling says that the user needs to be signaled that something important is about to come on the screen through narration or other means so that attention is maximized toward that slide only.

So, just like highlight boxes, in the case of text, we have blockquotes where a certain text is enlarged and enclosed with quotes to make sure that the user pays attention. The user does not know what to watch keenly, he can only do so when his attention is diverted to the important part.

Therefore, signaling is important because there is so much information contained in a slide, that the user can’t retain everything. But when important text is shaded, users know that it needs attention.  

  • Temporal Continuity Principle:

The temporal continuity principle is also crucial, as per which the users get the best explanation of things when the visuals and the text are shown on the screen simultaneously.

This implies that the audio and visuals should be displayed on the screen at the same time. The user gets the best understanding of the screen when both audio and video happen together, rather than audio coming after the animation.

  • Pre-training principle:

The pre-training principle of designing multimedia elements states that the users must have been given an introduction so that they can get the best out of the video. Such an introduction makes sure that the learners are not confused by the visuals included in the first slide, but rather comprehend them.

Hence, pre-training is critical before imparting the actual training.

A little history of the topics and the meaning of basic terms included in the module can be provided to the learners before the instructional video begins. 

  • Personalization Principle:

The personalization principle is also important for an instructional video as per which the user understands a simple language than the use of difficult words.

Hence, instead of using the third-person tone, it’s better to use the second-person tone to ensure the user understands. This is the basic principle behind localization also, where the use of complex words in the narration avoids forming a connection with the audience. 
  • Image principle:

Image principle is also vital in making a better instructional video where the use of visuals is better for human understanding rather than talking heads. In the talking head video, a human narrator explains the basic concepts, but the learners might not be interested in listening to him.

So, relevant visuals should be used to explain the concepts to the learners. Mayer has stated that when a talking head is included in a video, it does not mean better learning results. Research is still getting conducted on whether talking head videos are effective for learning or not.

A talking head in the video means that the source of the information is credible. It can be used at the beginning or the end of the video but refrain from using it throughout. Instead, the visuals should be used for a better understanding of the audience.

The following assumptions have been used to formulate these principles: 

  • The Limited-Capacity Assumption:

There is the limited capacity information stated by Mayer, which forms the basis of all his work. As per this assumption, most humans only have two-three channels of information that they can focus on. So, they can’t watch all the news channels at the same time, rather just one or two.

Similarly, they can’t understand five or seven actions at the same time in a module, rather their attention must be put to two or three. Hence, the important information must be highlighted in a module so that they understand everything because their cognitive load must be limited. 

  • Active-processing information:

Humans have to be made to understand, rather than expecting them to absorb everything which is fed/transmitted to them. This can cause problems for the learners.

So, to tap into their cognitive load, it’s better to organize knowledge into visual and auditory chunks. This knowledge can also be supplemented with the introductory session so that users can correlate it.

The learners must be able to build up knowledge by linking together auditory and visual pieces of information.

Hence, keeping these assumptions in mind and following the above-listed principles, an instructional video must be prepared. 

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He was a German psychologist who is known for discovering the forgetting curve. According to this curve, the biggest decline in memory happens within 20 minutes, and then 1 hour.