CE for Healthcare Professionals: 4 Ways to Improve Learner Satisfaction

When did you last review the contents of your CE for healthcare professionals course? How much are participants learning? If your CE seems lackluster, know that there are many choices for improving learner satisfaction.

The underlying principle behind CE for healthcare professionals is lifelong learning and skills development. The more time you spend developing and refining your course content (and less time on administrative tasks), the better experience your healthcare professional learners will have. We’ve put together a few tips to help you increase learner satisfaction and engagement.

1) Use accessible, universal course design

Are your courses accessible for all audiences? Universal course design increases the level of usability, making your courses accessible for the broadest range of learners. A few principles of universal design include:

• Simple, consistent navigation
• Accommodations for vision- and hearing-impaired learners and their needs
• Captioned videos and transcribed audio clips
• Written descriptions of graphics
• Readable text that matches content and assessment

While universal course design is sometimes thought of as an accommodation for different learning abilities, including vision- or hearing-impaired learners, it can actually improve engagement and satisfaction among all learners. For example, some students like to speed through videos, even watching them at a faster speed than normal. Others benefit more from watching content repeatedly and using transcriptions. With adult learners in healthcare, terms and concepts may need reinforcement and should be provided at the learner’s optimal pace.

EthosCE supports individually-paced and accessible content for learners enrolled in your CE for healthcare professionals courses. EthosCE is accessible on nearly all devices, including Android, iPhone, and iPad. If your content is also accessible, then you can be confident that your courses will have improved learner satisfaction when delivered using EthosCE.

2) Build deeper learning experiences into your CE for healthcare professionals

These days, we’re hearing more about culturally relevant learning, learner engagement, and lifelong learning. Beyond tests and quizzes, how can you build and run your CE for healthcare professionals courses in a way that engages them and offers real value?

The basic principles of effective learning will serve your learners well. For example, whatever their learning style, people of all ages—but particularly, adult learners—learn best by doing. EthosCE is designed to facilitate social learning and active learning strategies. Use Ethos CE to support your design of collaborative assignments and assessments based on learning outcomes that go deeper than rote memorization, lists, quizzes, and tests.

EthosCE supports in-person seminars and courses, as well as online course delivery. In both online and in-person courses, group learning is supported, along with active learning strategies like concept mapping and roleplaying. Concept mapping of a patient’s clinical picture is one way to create a more profound learning experience for healthcare professionals.

3) Measure learning engagement

How often are learners accessing courses, how consistent are they in engaging, and what is the depth of their engagement? You can see how learners are being engaged on a per-course basis, as well as across your enterprise, with EthosCE. Built-in reports can help you understand your course engagement, from demographics to completion rates. Engaged learners are satisfied learners.

According to Pesha Rubinstein, MPH, CCMEP, of the American Medical Informatics Association, the CE for healthcare professionals has been generally regarded as a “good thing,” but evidence for its effectiveness and learner engagement hasn’t been that strong. Outcomes assessment doesn’t have to be difficult or incorporate a large amount of data. Learner satisfaction can be assessed through post-course questionnaires. Providing a good CE program for healthcare professionals in a broader perspective should eventually result in improved patient and community health outcomes, but measuring learner engagement and knowledge is all you need to do to strengthen your courses. EthosCE makes it easy to administer post-course surveys and questionnaires, as well as track participation and engagement.

4) Automate administrative tasks to focus on learning experiences and satisfaction

The more time you spend improving your courses and strengthening course content and engagement strategies, the better. One primary reason that certain CE courses stay the same over time is the overwhelming need to satisfy administrative requirements.

Using EthosCE’s administrative task automation will free you to develop active learning strategies, improve learner engagement, and enhance your content with accessible and interesting material, from videos to slides and discussion boards. EthosCE can automate time-consuming administrative functions, including enrollment, reminders, course completion, and certificates. You can add the attendance tracker to automatically record attendance, prevent cheating, and import records of external meetings like Cvent and WebEx. Clone courses with a single click-and-drag-and-drop course component.

Automated reminders to check course message boards or complete tasks can boost learner engagement and satisfaction. Many instructors who conduct CE programs for healthcare professionals have developed clever ways to automate reminders and provide feedback to learners. EthosCE supports active instructor-learner engagement, which can be sent in the form of automated messages and congratulations, in addition to emails, discussion boards, and social learning strategies.

EthosCE believes CME technology solutions should be designed to improve healthcare professionals’ user experience, comply with ACCME guidelines, reduce administrative costs, and demonstrate measurable outcomes.

To learn how EthosCE can enhance the continuing education of your medical professionals, request a free 1-on-1 demo with one of our specialists today!