Best E-learning Tools and Services for CPD Offices to Take Advantage Of

As a busy CE director, you may find that your LMS’s e-learning tools are lacking in what they can do for you. Having to manually enter every aspect of your CE courses is time-consuming and prone to errors. Furthermore, if you’re only offering static or poorly developed content, your learners will go to your competitors.

LMS tools are invaluable when it comes to addressing the CE needs and challenges in your CPD office. But what should you look for if your LMS is doing less than expected?

You may not think that you can solve this problem if you’re juggling your time between your content development and handling extra duties in your department when the busiest times strike.

There are automated LMS e-learning tools available, as well as a service that you can take advantage of when you’re short staffed and/or busy and need extra support.

Is a Manual LMS Dragging You Down?

If you’re using an old, outdated LMS, chances are that you’re looking at falling course enrollments, declines in learner numbers, and overall poor program growth. All of these can spell monetary losses for your CPD department.

LMS administrators know that manual assignments can create logistical nightmares, especially since learners’ needs are constantly changing. But there is a way to regain control and save time and money.

Consider this in your LMS: automation.

Automation is the way to go in an LMS enterprise-grade platform. Manual work is not only error-prone but also time-consuming and repetitive. Administrative automation saves organizations time and money, allowing content team members to devote their time to activities that require their specific skills.

What can an enterprise-grade LMS do through automation? For starters, your staff can perform the following tasks:

• New learner registration
• Payment processing and reminders
• Welcome emails
• New learner onboarding
• Order fulfillment
• Bulk transcript importing
• Course credit monitoring
• Course completion certificate print-on-demand
• Classroom management
• Online text delivery
• Offline event registration and check-ins

Automation extends far beyond these tasks. For example, let’s say that your CPD office recently expanded your CE courses. You started with several dozen students, but through a successful social media campaign, you hit your busiest times when that number increased to several hundreds—or thousands—seemingly overnight. It would take forever to process those new learners using manual means. That would be hundreds of hours of admin work, and if not done right, it could bog down your program’s operations. If you had the right LMS, however, you could automate all those tasks and streamline your entire process, no matter how many learners came on board.

So, why is automation a win-win for your busy CPD office? In addition to saving time and reducing errors from incorrect data input, it also frees up your team for critical tasks, like focusing on learners, instructors, and programs, and streamlines operations. Also, you won’t need an entire department to use your LMS: as few as one or two team members can potentially handle the whole operation.

With EthosCE, you can take advantage of these benefits using the wide range of tools in this enterprise-grade system. When you want the best e-learning tools, there are several to seek out.

Tools of the Trade: What E-learning Tools Should You Look For?

A good LMS platform will provide you with the best e-learning tools that are automated and cover every aspect of your CPD office’s needs. Let’s take a look at the tools of your trade.

Assessment tools

With LMS assessment tools, you can give online quizzes and surveys that assess your learners at any time during the course, including pre- and post-test assessments. These tools also let you create multiple-choice, true-false, essay, and other common question types so your learners have robust assessments. You can also automatically notify learners of follow-up assessments that are scheduled at regular and customizable intervals.

Curriculum development

When it comes to curriculum development, you need to provide your learners with online content that enhances their learning and complies with ACCME standards. Using a curriculum development tool helps them retain their knowledge, keeps them compliant, and inspires them to continue their learning with you.

Course updates

Updating a course can be a tedious, time-consuming chore. A course update tool gives you the ability to quickly add any necessary modifications without rewriting your entire course. Your content is all in one place, so you only need to change the master course. You can also add new compliance standards to your online courses, so your learners have the most current ACCME mandates.

Data management

When it comes to having the best e-learning tools, a data management tool is at the forefront. EthosCE Analytics pulls your data directly from the system, as well as selected sources, helping you avoid erroneous data due to manual data entry. The tool has user-friendly analytics that transform raw data into actionable insights. The advanced data visualizations pair with customizable templates so it’s easier to share insights with your stakeholders.

Tracking

The right LMS has tracking capabilities that tell you what courses learners have taken and which have been the most effective—and which haven’t. The EthosCE tracking tool allows you to examine your learners’ attendance, progress, and completions and what they did both online and offline. Your CPD office can keep track of credit types offered and the certificates provided when courses are completed. EthosCE allows you to identify learning patterns at every stage of your CME program. It lets you see:

• Your program to assess its overall performance
• Your individual courses to analyze specific performance
• Each learner’s performance

Reporting

An automated reporting tool enables you to view data more clearly, drill down more, and easily share your findings. You can use EthosCE reports to measure learner engagement by course or globally and get into the reports for a greater understanding of learner behaviors. You can download your reports immediately or create schedules for email delivery. The optional self-service accounts allow site admins to build and share custom reports.

EthosCE reporting also covers PARS-compliant reports and integration with ACCME web services, including ABA, ABIM, and ABP MOC 2 programs, as well as automated reporting to boards and other external systems, including ACCME PARS, CE Broker, CPE Monitor, and others.

User management

When you have any number of learners, it’s critical that you have tools that allow you to manage them. EthosCE provides the right tools to:

• Bulk import learners and transcripts.
• Manually create, delete, or suspend users.
• Enroll and remove learners from courses.
• Extend enrollments.
• Manually mark completions.
• View learner transcripts
• Export learners.

Learner notifications

It’s essential to contact your learners whenever potential problems arise. An automated learner notification tool using templates can help. You can gently remind learners who haven’t returned to their courses lately about the great content they’re missing. You can give them the options to take a break or receive help with issues that are preventing them from continuing.

With customized messaging, you can communicate with a learner who may need special attention, particularly those who might be considering dropping their course. Additional customized messaging can assist learners who come to the LMS platform for the first time. This helps avoid new user frustration and unneeded support calls.

Your Office Struggling because of Limited Staff? There’s a Solution.

Even with the best e-learning tools for your CPD office, having limited office resources isn’t fun to contend with. You don’t have to be alone in that struggle.

EthosCE has a professional concierge service that addresses the challenges when you’re short staffed or need help with skill gaps. It helps you get your continuing education content online as quickly as possible, letting you spend more time on innovation.

This expert service helps you resolve short-term issues resulting from your staff turnover problems, increasing the number of activities that your CPD office can do. It can do things more quickly and efficiently—and cheaply—than using temps or students. It also costs less than a full-time employee and can be done remotely or on a retainer basis.

EthosCE’s concierge service brings in experienced LMS administrators who are highly skilled and can perform tasks quickly and implement best practices for improved user experiences.

It allows for access to expert CPD technical resources and for offloading menial duties, but it doesn’t have to be used for just one task. Since the service is flexible, you can use it any time that you have gaps in skills and in any combination of ways. You can use it for:

• Setting up courses
• Creating and sending reports
• Pulling data
• Creating, reviewing, and updating forms
• Emailing learners
• Providing end-user support
• Performing data entry
• Recording documentation
• Doing supplemental training

EthosCE supplies experienced project managers and dedicated data entry staff to make sure your course production stays on track so you can stay focused on developing crucial CME content. The project managers supply a template for data collection for:

• Learning objectives
• Faculty bios and disclosures
• Pre- and post-assessment questions with an answer key
• Program evaluation
• Release and expiration dates
• Types and number of credits offered
• Commercial support statements and other relevant information
• Certificates for awarding credits

While you’re saving valuable time and money by using the various e-learning tools, this concierge service from EthosCE also enables you to:

• Earn more revenue from your existing course content and realize the benefits of earlier learner participation in courses.
• Spend more time on innovation.
• Take advantage of best practices in course delivery so your learners receive the best value from your courses.
• Save additional money from flat-fee course pricing because there are no hidden fees or surprises.

EthosCE and Your CPD Office Success

With EthosCE, your CE program is at an advantage and will never be limited by the size of your staff. We give you the best e-learning tools to provide the right training to your learners.

Developing your CE courses and running your CPD office at the same time is challenging enough. Take advantage of the best e-learning tools and the EthosCE concierge service to move your CE program ahead. Schedule a 1-on-1 demo with one of our specialists today!