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Two groups of trainees
Blended learning is helping to reduce the costs, improve the effectiveness and quality, and reduce the inconvenience of training delivered to managers and administrators on a financial system used by BUPA Care Services.
The company, part of the international health and care company BUPA, operates 300 care homes across the UK. Many are in rural locations. Each home has managers and administrators - and each of them must be trained on the financial system, known as CHEERs, before they are allowed to use it "live".
The care-home administrators are directly involved in the day-to-day use of CHEERs and so need to know the system "inside out". Care-home managers, meanwhile, need at least an appreciation of how CHEERs operates.
Drawbacks of the traditional instructor-led course
Traditionally, the two groups were trained in a five-day, instructor-led, residential course. But this strategy had a number of drawbacks:
* new administrators had to wait until one of these courses was being run and, consequently, were usually not able to carry out their full job duties as soon as they took up their new post;
* there was a wide range of knowledge about CHEERs, as well as a range of IT skills and work-based experience, among the trainees on each course;
* there was also a wide range of confidence levels among the trainees, based upon such things as their previous job experience and preferred learning style;
* trainees were lost to their jobs for at least five days - sometimes more when they were travelling to the course from the more remote parts of the UK- and this not only had staffing but also cost (travel and subsistence) implications;
* the trainees were not happy being away from their families and friends for five days or more;
* the costs of delivering the five-day course were high; and
* there were long waiting lists to attend these courses.
The blended-learning solution
In consultation with staff within "group" - BUPA's name for its centralized functions - Tracy Fell-Smith, information-technology...