Corporate Learning In the Virtual World Webinar Transcript

Deb Bolton 0:10
All right, however it looks like we've got lots of folks joining. Thank you so much and welcome today, webinars on corporate learning in the virtual world. gonna kick off today with some introductions, Kurt is going to share an overview of the work that Dignity Health global education has been doing. The real focus of our conversation today, though, is going to be around the evolution of healthcare education, Kerr and team have been doing some really awesome work and thinking about how do we continue to support the needs of healthcare professionals, particularly as the the challenges of the pandemics in the last, you know, 12 to 18 months have created a strong need for creative solutions. So really looking forward to that there is a chat function in the webinar, which I'm sure after last year and a half everyone's familiar with, so feel free to drop in any questions along the way, we'll try to keep an eye on them as we're chatting. We'll also save some time at the end for q&a if we don't get there. And it looks like we're gonna have some fun comments from Sean who I haven't met yet. But it seems to be shared a similar sense of sarcastic sense of humor. We'll definitely have to catch up after.

​

Deb Bolton 1:38
Just jumping into introductions, welcome again, my name is Deb Bolton, I'm the chief marketing officer with Yellowdig. For those not familiar, just a quick intro to Yellowdig. It's a community building platform that supports active learning in classrooms. So whether it's online or face to face, or in a hybrid delivery modality, it can connect or plug right into your LMS. It combines social media interface with gainful learning principles. And really, we're trying to build a healthy learning communities and impact outcomes. On a personal note, I'm super excited about the discussion today, I've had the opportunity to spend the front half of my career in the business of healthcare and the back half of my career in higher education. So it's really exciting to be able to talk about two things that I'm really passionate about. So without any further ado, I'm going to pass it over to Kurt Hays chief learning experience officer with dignity, health, global education, we're so thrilled to have you today. So I'll pass it over to you to introduce yourself and kick us off.

​

Kurt Hayes 2:49
There's so much to Hey, everybody, it's so great to be with you today. I appreciate you giving up an hour of your time today to come listen to us speak. I hope that you know, we'll share some ideas today that maybe inspire some things within the work that you do and help improve outcomes within your organizations. But a little bit of back about me, I've spent the last almost 20 years focused in on the instructional design educational technology, area of online learning. And so I've seen online learning go from its earliest days of a very archaic approach, very boring, dry, flat approach to today where it can be really rich and engaging. And we do some really meaningful outcomes for the in the applications where it's used, which we're going to talk about some of those things today. So just a little bit to say, you know, me, my personal mission in my personal professional mission is to rid the world of subpar online learning. And so a lot of what I'm going to talk about today is how we do that is how we ensure that we're achieving high quality online learning and everything that we do on an effort to make an impact, real, meaningful, measurable impact. And so with that, let me share a little bit about an organization Just so you know, who we are. And what we do is to provide some context for the discussion today. dignity, health, global education, is an online education workforce development company. So we work across health systems in the United States, to understand what the needs are for the workforce development areas. And then we go in as source, the best minds, the best thinkers out in academia, and other areas to bring them to the table to design solutions to those needs, that take different forms, but all are delivered in a scalable format. So we can reach anybody in healthcare no matter where they are, whether they're urban or rural. And so with that, you know what our work ends up looking like if we can not come to the next slide here. It takes the form of several different things. We have short course programs. So very targeted things like let's say healthcare finance, to certificate program, so things Like nurse leadership or business education, to degree program so that you know that everyone is aware of RN to BSN, MH A's, MBAs, etc, that are all needed across the workforce to do several different things. And that's move to the next slide here. And so this is an example of the type of offerings that we have across our portfolio that are available to health systems to help, you know, utilize as workforce development solution. So everything you see on the list here from project management, to leadership, like I mentioned, rural health care, management, medical, assisting community health, etc. And so the idea is, is that, you know, our offerings are able to help healthcare systems can work with us to use our offerings to meet the wide range of needs to address all healthcare workers, not just one specific area. And so with that, you know, the input and output of what we do is on the next slide, you know, we're looking at how we improve healthcare outcomes. But looking at is education a benefit? Are we developing on ramps, are we rescaling upscaling out scaling, and so all of these things are needs across every healthcare organization. And so what we believe is that there can be scalable, high, high quality solutions to every one of these needs to meet today's incredible demands that are placed on these these health systems. So that's a bit about dignity, health, global education. Just wanted to paint that picture before we dive into the discussion today.

​

Deb Bolton 6:33
Great, thank you so much. I think we're what we really wanted to kick off the conversation with was getting a sense of how healthcare education has changed how the needs and setup has changed. So if you can share a little bit about what you've seen in the last, you know, 18 to 24 months in, in health care education, that would be that would be a great place to start

​

Kurt Hayes 7:01
I think. Absolutely. You know, Deb, I, you know, before we even dive into this, I just want to say thank you to every healthcare worker in this country. I mean, what healthcare has just gone through in the past 14 months is, is quite unthinkable. I struggle to find adjectives to describe just how bad it was for health care workers across the United States, across the world. And there's just been this deep sense of admiration and appreciation that I've had, you know, throughout this, as we've realized just how critical and important every single healthcare worker is, you know, one of my favorite memories of, of COVID, if I can, if I can put it that way, is, you know, there was this, there was this moment in time where there was this shared appreciation across the country where folks would go outside of their house, you know, in the evenings and bang pans and make noise to show their appreciation for healthcare workers. And, you know, I just hope everyone felt that and heard that within healthcare, because I think the world is certainly much more aware of their appreciation than they ever have been. So, um, with that, you know, I, when I think about how the health education system has changed, since the onset of COVID, I actually want to share a bit of an example, in how some care has changed in this change in the care model actually led to increased outcomes, just to show how the pandemic really forced people to try new things that had unimaginable outcomes as a result. And so I'll share a link to this, but it mercy won in Des Moines, Iowa, a very large system in Iowa.

​

Kurt Hayes 8:47
They implemented a virtual nursing program, you know, as a result of COVID, they had a nursing shortage, they had to find a solution. And so imagine, you know, this program where they wheeled in video conferencing equipment, or they had video conference equipment, I should say, in every single hospital room, and they sit they centralized, a nurse manager that could then coordinate care for every single patient. And throughout this process, they actually found it increased outcomes across the board, they had improved quality, decreased falls, decrease medication duplication, decreased missed care, zero catheter associated urinary tract infections, which is quite unheard of. And they even saw their patient engagement scores go from percentile ranking in the 60s, up to 100%. And so pre pandemic, the thought of having a video conferencing system in a hospital room would probably have been just like, Oh, come on. No, we people in there, right. But if we think about what changed is, they improved communication. They improved collaboration through a change in their technique, a change in their process, and it took the pandemic to draw I have the need to get to that point. And so what I, what I the the, you know, lesson that I take from that, and I look at that example, while it's not education and education example, the lesson I take from that is that virtual doesn't have to be a limiter. In fact, it can be an enabler. So if we're willing to take the plunge and try something different, and try a different approach, we can lead to actually incredible outcomes as a result. And so now if we kind of look at some of the education, things that changed within healthcare, you can start to see some hints of that exact same thinking that's happened across education. And so, um, you know, early in the, in the pandemic, obviously, there was a drastic need for COVID protocol training. So massive, you know, amounts of efforts are put into e-learning modules for, you know, rapid dissemination of information, you know, everything that that, that clinicians needed to know about, you know, COVID, and how to handle these these patients. But then there was a 240% increase in demand for ICU nurses in during the first wave of the pandemic. And so then it was about, okay, how do we how do we train folks that have been focused on other areas of care, to now be in the ICU and do that quickly. And so you saw some really innovative adaptive learning solutions that came out, you saw numerous, numerous online programs that came out, that could handle the didactic portion of those, you know, transitioning those nurses in community education. So this is one that I actually really love this story, is, you know, if you know, health systems, especially not for profit health systems, dedicated a good amount of resources to educating the community around things like oral health, diabetes, you know, those sorts of things that are these, you know, chronic illnesses, for the community members that don't always have access to those kind of resources, so that they can help improve their, their health outcomes. And so they've always relied on in person sessions. You can imagine the demographics, the demographics of these communities, a lot of the demographics that are needed, these educational programs are older. And so pre pandemic, the thought of having them join a zoom session was Nope, there's no way they're gonna join zoom session. You know, you just mentioned, you know, I think by now everybody knows how to use chat. Right? Well, yeah, the world has changed, you know, using zoom is now as familiar to everybody as using a, you know, a touch telephone. Right? So that's exactly even even my mom's on on zoom calls and zoom.

​

Kurt Hayes 12:31
Yeah, yeah. And so you know, in with, so, you know, we work with community educators to equip them with zoom skills, and also best practices for, you know, zoom training and those sorts of things. And now, though, I don't know that they'll ever go back to just in person sessions, because they've increased the number of participants that are able to join these sessions, because they have these virtual programs now. And so they've been able to expand their educational programs as a result of now having taken on this, this new virtual format. So again, virtual doesn't have to be a limiter it can it can actually be an enabler. And then if we look at nursing schools, and how they shifted to virtual clinicals, you know, how can we be more efficient in educating nurses across the country to increase the you know, the the pipeline of incoming nurses, nurses, and nursing is one of the, you know, roles within healthcare that has the greatest shortages? So how can we learn from what we had to do to then improve outcomes from here on out and not go back to the way that it was? So that, you know, the kind of the last thing that I saw change within healthcare education is all of a sudden, instructional designers became a critical role within every healthcare system, and over every organization around the world, nothing, every instructional layer is going to give them a superhero cape in a sense, you know, throughout the pandemic, because they really led the way and how do you do this in, you know, how do you transition to virtual formats as you transition to alternative formats in a strategic way to still, you know, lead to high quality educational outcomes? And so, you know, to me, when I look back, what's happened is there's been a change in perspective, and a willingness to solve problems differently. I think that's the biggest thing that's changed in healthcare education. There's this willingness that was never there before, to approach things with different solutions. And that's what I want to talk about today is what are those different solutions that we can utilize to improve healthcare education across the board? So yeah, so that's, that's, that's, as I reflect on that question, that that's what comes to mind for me in terms of what's changed.

​

Deb Bolton 14:37
That's, yeah, that those are some great examples. I haven't thought about the community aspect, either of really being able to amplify access, right. So rather than being limited to physical, like a distance or driving time, or you know how many and particularly for elderly folks, you know, can they can you get to them, or can they Um, in that that was something new that I hadn't really thought about yet, sir. Certainly instructional designers have seen the value of their work increased dramatically in the last year. So one of the things that, that we were talking about that I thought was interesting is, is how how does the the team support the different educational needs? across healthcare? healthcare professionals? Right. So when you think about the technicians, you know, are folks working in more diagnostics versus nurses, you know, we're even within the nursing community in the ICU nurses, maybe very different than the OB GYN nurse, you know, and then the physicians as well. So how do you approach thinking about the needs of the different types of professionals, when you're putting together plans to improve?



Kurt Hayes 15:55
So, you know, for us, it all starts with listening. So, you know, a big component of our work is listening to the needs of those different leaders across those different functions. You know, so, you know, you mentioned technicians, you mentioned, nurses, you know, staying connected with the chief nursing officers, the nursing directors, or, you know, the pharmacists, and, you know, the folks that are, you know, near the frontline, and in need of hiring upskilling, rescaling or even, you know, out skilling, you know, certain, you know, roles. And so, in terms of how we solve those problems, we actually have a similar approach to how we go about developing solutions across all those different needs. Because, you know, what we do is not complicated. It's just, we stay true to practical proven pedagogical principles. And then we use technology in what we've learned over the years about instructional design and other things to ensure that we can execute and meet the needs for those various functions, whether it is a pharmacy technician, or whether it's a marketing professional, you know, for a hospital. And so, you know, if I, if I, you know, the process that we go through, to ensure we're meeting those needs is, like I mentioned, first we listen, we listen to those needs, and we understand what's the real, you know, impact that's that we're trying to meet here. You know, again, is it onboarding upscaling rescaling? You know, what is the need, then we co design a solution. So we bring the industry professionals to the table along with our academic partners. So we never have one or the other do it alone. Right. So you know, whether, you know, across our different academic partners we work with, you know, Duke, Pepperdine, American University, all three Arizona state schools now.

​

Kurt Hayes 17:50
You know, folks across the country, and leaders in their space, we bring them to the table, listen to argue that the need that's been stated, and we collaborate to develop a solution. And then what we do is we, you know, we we put all of that in an online format in a way that you can scale to meet those needs. And so, for example, a pharmacy technician needs in Iowa, is likely a very similar to pharmacy technician need across every state in the US. And so how can we work with the folks in Iowa to meet the needs of the rest of the country, as an example, we were just on a phone call this morning, with with folks talking about a pharmacy technician program that needs to be you know, put online. And so and then from there, we, you know, we develop, we develop a solution, and I'll get more into depth about what that solution looks like, in a moment. We implement that solution, but then we measure its impact. So too many educational programs stop an implementation. You know, and don't ever move on to actual evaluation in the measurement of impact. And one of them our internal mottos is, is, you know, an impact, are we designing something to make an impact within the organization it's intended to serve? And so how do we measure that? How do we look at skill growth, competency development? How do we look at you know, impact on their career, their career trajectory, the, you know, the department, etc. And so that's, you know, across all the needs in healthcare, ladies, you mentioned those different roles, we play that same process. And what we find is that while the curriculum may be different, a lot of those techniques and those approaches stay the same across. Now, you know, I'm gonna take leadership in business as an example. Those are two really big programs for us because as we talk to leaders, across departments, all those functions that often comes up that they need leadership training, and they need business acumen, healthcare, business acumen. And those two top top competencies that we hear continuously brought up as you know, their staff members evening and so we've done it to solve those pain now to address those and those needs as we've developed in the leadership side programs to do so. See, which is ranked in the top three consistently for executive education. And we've developed what we call a mini MBA program is a 12 week business acumen focused program for healthcare with the University of Arizona's LR Executive Education Group. And in both of those cases, you know, we developed a program that takes learners through a really strategic learning model. And, you know, we co develop high quality learning content, which we use so that learners can acquire new information, right. And we even go as far as bringing in top professional athletes to add a dose of inspiration and motivation, you know, we think about healthcare this past year, they've been punched in the gut, you know, and so we actually sat down three top top, you know, world leading athletes of two times, Super Bowl champs, Olympic gold medalists, and we said, How did you do that? And what advice would you give to healthcare professionals who want to achieve greatness in their career, and we pumped all that into the content, that's the kind of high quality content we're going to go for in our programs, in addition to you know, excellent content from the schools and their, their faculty, you know, that we work with. But then we know that content can't stand on its own. You know, if you look at, you know, Netflix, everybody's watched a Netflix documentary, you're inspired in the moment, but then you don't do anything about it the next week. Or the second week, you've kind of forgotten everything that documentary is about because you don't do anything with the knowledge it was edutainment, it was an action. And so we take that, we take that, you know, that entertainment, factor that content, but then we build action around it, which are built on strong pedagogical principles, one of them being this idea that folks need to elaborate and collaborate with newly learned information, we know adults need to take what they've already know, what they already know, and merge it with new information to form new understandings. So we have that as part of our model. And that's where yellowdig comes into play.



Kurt Hayes 22:29
And that's a such an important piece for us is, you know, yellowdig allows us to do that in a very modern way that enables it really honors, true collaboration in a very human centric way, which a lot of LMS is don't, right. But then we take it further, we have them apply what they're learning and work based projects and actual hands on things simulation, you know, those sorts of things that, you know, allow the learner to really attain those, those competencies in a tangible way. So it's not just consume content and move on, which you see a lot of folks doing on LinkedIn learning, for example, I completed this course, okay, what now? What are you doing with it? Right, you consume information, but has it really changed behavior, has it really affected, you know, growth within yourself, or, you know, within your department or organization. And so, so that that approach, we've applied within, you know, the suite of, you know, programs I had on the screen earlier, but specifically in leadership and business, education as well. And so, you know, for us, what this does is, you know, this allows us to support the needs of all healthcare professionals, regardless of what the need is, and do it in a way that's cost effective and scalable. So, you know, what, what good is a program that only addresses a small number of people. There are hundreds of 1000s of healthcare workers across the United States that are in need of upscaling rescaling, and, you know, onboarding, and all of those things. What good are programs that don't scale? Yes, they're good in a very isolated situation, but healthcare needs big solutions to these these massive, you know, workforce development challenges that they have. So I think, you know, for me to questions, you know, for the group here for the l&d professionals that are out here is, you know, are you limiting yourself with face to face offerings? Right, when I talk to Ellen od folks across healthcare, oftentimes I find that they rely on face to face offering. So that leadership program as an example, traditionally would, it would be delivered as his get leaders in a room for three hours once a month, and have didactic session, you know, with somebody that comes in and discusses and maybe some, some, you know, activities that take place, and then next month, it's a new topic. And then next month, we only fit so many people in a room and I can tell you healthcare professionals are the hardest to schedule. Now, they're nationally in the last year, right? Yeah, absolutely. And now so can we take what we learned this past year, and apply it to implement a new way of approaching or your way of addressing these, these educational you know, offerings. And so, so that's one question is, are you limiting yourself with face to face? You know, obviously, face to face wasn't an option for a very long time, but as it does come back Are you limiting yourself? And then are you achieving meaningful outcomes with self paced? elearning? So a lot of systems that I talked with as well, we have all this, this elearning library elearning libraries do not solve workplace development, you know, workforce development problems. And, you know, if you look at, you know, completion rates across those libraries, but then also how you measure how are we measuring true skill growth and competency development, via just standalone self paced elearning modules, there has to be more than just a learning mode. And so those are the, you know, as I, as I think about how we've approached, you know, solutions to that to these different healthcare professionals, and how it contrasts with some of the traditional methods that are utilized across healthcare, those are kind of the two questions that I think can help all of us get to implementing, you know, a model that changes the way we educate, that can also then lead to better outcomes. Much like what happened with the mercy one example I gave with the change in their care model.



Deb Bolton 26:01
Yeah, I particularly love the second question. Well, both questions, obviously, are great, but this is something that, that we've been talking about, too, that's come up in the last couple of weeks is well, and really, you know, I spent discussion in the online learning space for years is the cost to develop elearning programs, right, an online degrees, and it hasn't necessarily been, you know, the cost saver that that people originally thought it could be, you know, it does take quite a bit of skill and craft to create, you know, SharePoint, like an engaged digital learning experience, not, you know, the 20 years ago, when we're, you know, we're still sort of probably mailing DVDs for each other. But, you know, what, how are we actually creating the learning platform, so you so much time and thought goes into developing them, but your point, if we're not, like, they're not getting used? And they're not, they're not impacting outcomes? Or we don't know, they're impacting outcomes? You know, that's a significant investment that's been made. And we don't know, what what did we get out of it? Yeah, and,



Kurt Hayes 27:13
you know, strategy I would give folks is, you know, leverage leverage programs that have been established and created quite high quality programs, not all online learning, or programs, etc, available are created equal, you know, I'm a little biased, but I believe our programs are high quality, and, you know, from, from a pedagogical perspective, as well as a content, you know, perspective, but then adapted, you know, so you know, you know, you can, you don't have to, you know, bite off the whole elephant, right, you can use some of the things that are there, and then really focus in on some of the things that only, you know, you can do, like coordinating great networking sessions on ground that complement an online curriculum, or, you know, to make it more hybrid, for example, and that's something we do with health systems as well. So, you know, there'll be, you know, a group of nurses that go into our Duke, nurse leadership program, and, you know, monthly, they'll get together on ground and network. So you really leverage that human experience for what it's great for, but you leverage the online component for what it's great for, which is, you know, high impact application based learning, rather than passive, you know, passive recipient of the lecture, right, or a didactic, you know, component, you're engaged in the learning, but then you're using the, you know, the valuable in person time for what it's best for. So we do a lot of that work as well. So I think yes, it's, it can be expensive to develop content, absolutely. and time consuming. But there's a lot of options that are out there that you can then just use to, you know, to leverage to create something for yourself. Okay,



Deb Bolton 28:57
what one of the things that I thought was interesting, too, about the work that you're doing is, is how you purposefully create this student communities, right? And how do you create the classrooms? So for courses, like the leadership courses, or the mini MBA courses, balancing you the the individual needs with the benefit to to diverse group learning? So do you want to share a little bit about how how do you approach building the student communities when you're putting students together to to create those connections and support and you to your point around, you know, how to how do we use the virtual classroom to really expand access and use it as a leverage to support more healthcare professionals?



Kurt Hayes 29:49
Yeah, I think, you know, if we look at going back to the comment I made a moment ago about collaboration, the importance of that and you know, the learning process



Kurt Hayes 30:00
process. You know, having giving learners the opportunity to authentically elaborate on what they're learning in a meaningful way. But feel to do that with their peers is something that we found is has been crucial, both from a desire for the learner. So one of the highest rated incoming reasons that folks will take a program with us, or that systems will, you know, work with us on our program is to create a network of professionals. Right, so as adults, we need networks, we need him his children to but you know, in our professional lives, networks are important. And in health care, it's often siloed. And, you know, it's one of the longtime criticisms of healthcare is that they're silos across, you know, these these hospitals and these different systems. And so, we really double down on that collaborate to elaborate, you don't realize it, it rhymes. Yeah. So, you know, we really double down on that. And that's where, you know, as I mentioned, yellowdig, comes into play. And so to your point about connecting folks from different areas, different groups, how do we decide who's in those groups? In the beginning, we actually, we saw that there will be resistance for for systems wanting their employees in with employees of other systems, or certain departments in with members of other departments, etc. But what I've actually found is that where people want to be, you know, co mingled with others from other departments, other systems, other roles, etc. and that there's great value in that. And by doing what we do, and an online format, we can create networks across the United States, we can create networks, and we've had folks internationally as well, we can create networks across the United States, and get people truly collaborating and sharing ideas coming up with ways to solve problems that they never thought of before, because they've always been focused within their system, or within their department. That's the power of, you know, online, these these online formats, these virtual format, is that you can increase collaboration, and you can increase access to other professionals with other ideas, to form new ways of thinking. And so I think if I, you know, again, going back to, you know, you know, this, one of the approaches that we take, you know, in our product ethos, one of the lines that we have is we use practical proven pedagogy. It's not a mystery about how people learn. It's just not always easy to design solutions that best match how we best learn. But there's never been a better time than now to implement those solutions. because number one, the perspectives have changed. Right? So people are more willing, just like, you know, you mentioned about people knowing how to use zoom, right, just like, all of a sudden, people were willing to have a video conferencing system in their in their hospital room, right, and the perspectives have changed, the world has changed. We view things differently than we ever, you know, then we did prior to the pandemic, the technology is here. We have the right technology tools to implement solutions that honor, good pedagogy. For a long time online was held prisoner, to the availability of quality technology that you could use to implement and good pedagogy. That's no longer the case. There's quality technology like yellowdig that you can use to put in place good pedagogy. So then now you've got the right person, you know, the perspectives have changed, the tools are available, and then now it's just about implementing. And to me, it's, there's never been a better time to solve problems in new and creative ways and not go back to the old ways of doing things prior to the pandemic, which, you know, I know, I'm kind of beaten up in person learning and elearning, you know, self paced elearning. But those are largely those were largely two options, attend this Lunch and Learn, tend to this monthly session, complete this self paced module. It's gonna be more to it, we can be so much more dynamic in the way that we solve these these problems. And now now's the time and so in, I think the world's receptive to it. So let's do it. Let's, let's put in place and big solutions to these these big problems that we're looking at, I should say opportunities, right. I know I'm not supposed to say problems, but



Deb Bolton 34:43
opportunities for creative solutions, I think, yeah, there we go. Yeah, no, that's it. You know, it's true. There's been so many. Yeah, there's so many challenges to the way we've looked at things. I think, you know, it I think your comments on the perspectives changing is really great. Because Jeremiah doesn't have to be either or anymore. There's just there's a lot of gray in between the lunch and learn in the self paced course that we're able to take advantage of now, it's, you know, it's just trying to really imagine how we want to go about doing that. You go and and try it.



Kurt Hayes 35:26
The space between, right, yes, that's exactly what he did Matthew song, but the, the space between, you know, like, if we hone in on that, like we look at that that's the missing piece. Yeah, learning is not a one time event. You know, there's very few things in life that occur once that we drastically learn from, right. It's a, it's a process, in terms of, you know, workforce development and professional development. It's a process. So very rarely do you, you know, sit through a 90 minute lecture, and then all of a sudden, everything I had is changed without a very intentional approach to the implementing those changes. And so, how do we look at that space between how do we fill it in with with, you know, an opportunity to collaborate and opportunity for learners to really dissect what they've heard, understand it and then begin to build a new understanding that they can then go and apply in their, in their practice in their in their world? And, you know, the goal here, I think, is to incentivize learners to collaborate to elaborate on newly learned information. Right? That's the goal is how can we incentivize learners to collaborate beyond just the lunch and learn or the self paced e-learning section?



Deb Bolton 36:46
And you're reminding me your comment about, you know, what do we take away from a 90 minute session of, of painful ADM, undergraduate cellular biology classes, where I apologies by professor at that time, but I guarantee I did not take away that, from that, that early morning, class, you know, versus I had the opportunity to do a cadaver dissection based anatomy class, you know, where it was group work, and, you know, yeah, I don't get much more out of that, then then an 8am, didactic lecture on. You know, we're required significant amounts of caffeine. Take me.



Kurt Hayes 37:36
Yeah, field of education hasn't evolved as rapidly as other fields, right. So if you, you know, look at what's happened with, you know, the, the Mars lander, I mean, 100, like, 18 years ago, we started flying with the Wright brothers, like 118 years ago. That's not that long. In that time, now, we've landed three rovers on Mars, completely autonomously, right, like what mind blowing, you know, that was one of the greatest moments I, you know, that I have seen in life, you know, seeing that little lander thing, make it. But if you look at education, this pandemic exposed that we haven't really evolved, the way in which we deliver education, at least, especially to that extent, we have evolved other fields. So you know, the sort of the pandemic, you had everybody all of a sudden take their classroom based instruction, to where zoom right into your classroom based instruction to zoom, and you had students complaining that all they're doing now is sitting eight hours, in zoom sessions to replace the eight hours of in person instruction. That's not that's not an evolution of education. That's not an effective, you know, pedagogical approach. So, you know, how do we implement new models that really lead to true meaningful outcomes by respecting proven pedagogy, leveraging technology, and now this new willingness to try, try new things, do things differently?



Deb Bolton 39:08
I brought the slides back up, because the comments you're making about, you know, how far have we come? I think tied to the one slide really well, that we we put together here, you know, in thinking about how long has the traditional lecture class been in place? You know, and, you know, I think we've all sat in, in Well, maybe not all of us is that in the second row, but you know, certainly all of us have sat in the different rows. Yeah. We don't know how much engagement you need to stay awake. Yeah, we've Yeah, but most of us have those those memories. So anyway, I just I thought that was a great segue to this slide. And thinking about what You're talking about in terms of the opportunity, which is a lot of what the yellows a team has been thinking about in the last few years is, is, you know, there's definitely aspects of the classroom setting that were great, you know, and that still are great. And that work really well. But there's aspects of the classroom setting that are challenging, like, you know, the folks in the back room or accessibility concerns. And, you know, there's, you know, there's a number of things that that we could do to try to impact that. So. So just for context for folks looking at the slide now, on the right. One of Kurt's classes using the yellowdig community engagement tool, we're able to produce network graphs of the students in class. And what this does is show us To what extent our students connected to each other and actually engaging with each other in the classroom. So this one is actually a particularly interesting example. Because normally, what you would see in classrooms is a handful of folks not really connected. So this network graph is really showcasing the the balance of connections that people were able to develop with their peers, their student, you know, their peer students in class. What it also lets you do, like I said, in a normal case, where you see outliers or students that are not as connected, or they've only got one line coming in, is identify the folks that are not as engaged and maybe not participating in the ELA and not kind of jumping into the elaborate collaborate philosophy. And, you know, for faculty, there's an opportunity, then to outreach more specifically to understand how can we bring those folks back in, you know, how do we provide more support on those on those folks?



Kurt Hayes 41:54
Absolutely, every one of those lines for me represent opportunities to, you know, really take their learning further, rather than just passively consume, like what's happening in that audience. You know, on the left, it's actually collaborating elaborate, it's actually doing something with what they've already, you know, consumed. You know, in the example here, that I think I shared with you, before that, that we're working on is, you know, in the fall, last fall, in the thick of things, with COVID, there were supposed to be a woman's heart health symposium that took place in person, well, couldn't happen in person. And, you know, for obvious reasons. And so they moved the event to online over zoom on a weekend. So one day there was, you know, I think it was a six or eight hour session with unbelievable speakers. I mean, some of the smartest people in the medical space presenting and then and then Sunday is it you know, I think a four or six hour session, I can't remember on zoom, as well. And so everybody was invited to attend yet all these people just like today, sitting in, you know, watching this session, all the people watching these advancements in women's heart health, and then went through, you know, a series of, you know, 40 to 60 minute sessions, etc, and, you know, some q&a panels and those sorts of things. But as I sat, and I watched this, and I thought, oh, gosh, this is not education. This is not me, this is a form of education, but it's not high impact. And so now we're talking about this year, is, you know, taking maybe, you know, potentially having an in person small session where we capture the content, but then repurposing that for an online interactive, collaborative event for the all those doctors that need to attend remotely. So instead of just having people sit and passively consume information, which is not an effective form of knowledge transfer, right? It's, it's getting them engaged. And so then if you look at that network graph, it's then all of a sudden, these doctors from around the country are exchanging ideas and collaborating around what they've now heard from the symposium, rather than just being passive recipients of that, that information and maybe and maybe not, actually, you know, having that you know, transfer. So, that's how we're looking at, you know, leveraging social learning workflows really and platforms yellowdig in particular, to change the way education information is disseminated across the you know, the healthcare and medical community. So imagine, you know, no longer having to sit in a boring lecture hall but rather being an active member and an active engaged member in a learning community.



Deb Bolton 44:54
And we we pulled a couple of the the network graphs of classes In your programs, and just super neat to be able to see the depth to which the connections were, were built. You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting you talked about too is the perspective is changing. And so, you know, shameless plug for reality here is one of the nice things about the platform is the gameful. Learning, right? And that's a, that's a specific way to try to incentivize students should build community and build interactions. And so it's really neat to see it work with healthcare professionals, and, and create the kind of connections to be able to support the pedagogical approach that that you're looking to deliver. So yes, definitely a shameless plug here. But these, these graphs are just really exciting to see. You know, because it like you were talking about the these are places where these are courses where you're bringing together different professionals across different health care systems, across different parts of the country, you may even have of international folks coming in and still able to you in an asynchronous environment, build these kinds of connections. Let's see.



Kurt Hayes 46:11
That doesn't happen in a lecture, right? This This only happens when folks are incentivized to collaborate, which is a critical component of, you know, good pedagogical practices. And so that yes, that these graphs, you know, really help us know, all right, yes, folks are actually doing what we set out to have them do. And that's be active participants in the learning process. Okay.



Deb Bolton 46:41
I'm just looking at the time, and I'm wondering if we want to switch to q&a. How folks are feeling we've been chatting quite a bit.



Kurt Hayes 46:56
And you all folks are typing in questions. Deb? You know, I know. You know, one question that was out there was about, you know, how do the points the point system within yellowdig? How is it received by healthcare professionals? Yeah, yeah, in To be honest, you know, I've you know, leveraged social learning, you know, approaches and online programs for quite some time, but I wasn't sure how it would be received by healthcare professionals. You know, their health care professionals are skeptical by nature, they should be. They're very driven. You know, one of the things I love about my job is that the folks in healthcare are incredible consumers of education, that they rely on education to advance their practice advanced their field Vasseur career. And so, you know, what we found is that, you know, the the point incentive system that yellowdig has actually drives folks in a very real and pleasant way. Now, within the programs that that we provide, there's actually been well received, which, you know, again, as I mentioned, I wasn't sure if it would be in the beginning, but it's been very well received, it actually incentivizes folks in the right way to get in and collaborate. And it's the right dose of I hate this word, what's the right dose of gamification? There's, there's probably a different term for what you know the way that Yoda uses it, but it's the right incentive. folks do need to be incentivized, they need to be incentivized to collaborate. Because, you know, when we step out into an educational program, as soon as we step in, when we step into an education, where as soon as we step out, we're swept in to the stream of work in life. That's just the reality of it. Right? The the current of our of our daily work in our lives is so strong, that, you know, that moment to step out. As soon as we step back in, we're just caught right up in that current. And so there has to be some kind of incentive there has to be. And, you know, what we found is that the yellow, yellow big incentive system works really well to keep folks active, engaged, even in, you know, that strong current that's pulling them back into their, you know, their daily tasks in their life and everything else.



Deb Bolton 49:24
And just a quick, quick note, for folks that are less familiar with yellowdig, the incentivization system or the point system. The way that it works in classrooms is to support students on three core behaviors, listening, sharing, and intern or interacting. So it's a little bit different than a typical sort of discussion board or sharing space where he sort of hat Are you a little bit more limited in terms of you know, singular discussions or The kind of one post two response kind of strategies. So the way that yellowdig encourages and rewards participation is on listening, sharing and interacting. And those are the behaviors that we've found draws the sense of community and the depth of connections that are able to be built. So just a quick addition. So I heard what you were saying for anyone who hasn't hasn't New Zealand. And this has been super interesting. I know, Kurt, you and I chatted a couple of times. But I definitely learned more again, listening to you today, which is great. Just a call out. I know, we still got some folks listening in if there's any questions that you want to ask. Well, so provide contact information for both current and digney health, global education as well as yellow Day gifts. There's things that you'd rather follow up and chat with us about more individually. Happy to continue the conversation. Both super passionate about the topic, obviously. So would love to carry on chatting. Let's see. I think there's one that just dropped in the q&a from Ryan. Hi, Ryan. Thank you. Um, let's see thinking about the LMS. Oh, yeah, that? That's a great question. So maybe I can take a stab at this from a yellowdig perspective and uncredited, know if you've seen this in action in your courses. So the way that the point system is set up is actually an incentivized conversation around the entire set of learning outcomes for the class, rather than around a weakly specific subtopic or learning objective. for that specific reason is is that allows for more robust discussion. So students have the option to talk about, you know, any of the, say, five learning outcomes that you've got for your class, or particular themes that are important for you, then the the dialogue around that can be a little bit more robust, because it's not sort of a fixed discussion point within one week within one topic. You know, I think, particularly in the last year, year and a half, that's been even more valuable, because the new cycle is so powerful right now. Right? So even within within healthcare, it means if there was a topic The class was focused on in week two, but there's a really newsworthy event happening in week seven, it's there isn't the limitation there to not being able to go back, you know, it's still relevant to the class that you're taking, teaching. So the way that yellowdig is structured to support community building is, is to design more fluidity around topics. So still connect to the themes of the class, but loosen this sort of rigidity that can sometimes happen with traditional discussion, more setups. Kurt, I'm not sure if that that resonates with how, you know,



Kurt Hayes 53:09
100%, you know, going back to that, you know, that space between comet we talked about earlier, that space between, you know, it could be a week, two weeks, four weeks, 12, you know, you know, the conversation needs to continue throughout that program, whatever the length is, and even thereafter. And what yellowdig allows us to do is have a continuous conversation and not limited to topic by topic, and week by week, which is what the traditional LMS is, is Ryan has alluded to, forced you to do, you know, here's the week one discussion forum. Nope, not good. Right. Conversations don't naturally start and stop based on Sunday and Monday. Like it's not, that's not how it works. And so, so yeah, yellowdig allows us to have a continuous flowing conversation that, you know, has the, you know, the most interesting and most important concepts and topics float to the top throughout the learning program.



Deb Bolton 54:14
Question from Laurie. Hi, Laurie. And there are quite a bit, quite a few metrics that are available at student level and yellowdig. And at the community level. So there's some tools that we have preset. So for example, if you're using yellowdig. In your class, you'd be able to access the community health dashboard, which would give you sharing links, listening and interacting scores for your whole community. You can certainly dive down deeper to an individual level. And we've got a client success team that has a ton of expertise to the folks on the team have PhDs and do a lot of work thinking about how do we continue to support the best practices from a pedagogical perspective. with how the platform is set up. So there's a ton of opportunity to partner with that team if there's particular data that you're looking to see, you know, so that can be designed while you're setting up your class or we can provide support all the way through. And thanks, john, I just saw you pop in, you can also see the topics of interest, you can word clouds, or you're forced to understand the types of topics that are most discussed. So there's a number of different views that you can can access when you use yellowdig. So there's, there's a whole conversation there if you would like to with someone from our client success team, and they can give you a tour of the type of data available.

We've got just a couple of minutes left, if there's any other last questions, folks want to drop in here. Otherwise, what I'll do is pop up our contact information or for everyone so that you are able to reach out to us after the Great, all quiet. Well, thank you everyone for joining. We really appreciate it. Thank you again for for joining today. It's just always awesome to chat with you and hear what you and the team are up to it's such important work as you said the you know, the this the stress and just absolute insanity that's that's you know, been the experience for healthcare workers in the last year and a half is just been unimaginable. So you know, really appreciate the applicants the Dignity Health Education is is doing to provide support and think about how to get folks the the training and education they need in a way that's going to work well for them. So thank you so much for your time. Thanks, everybody.