Macmillan Cancer Support is offering 48 online courses from Video Arts as an alternative to face-to-face soft skills training for its 4,000 health and social care professionals across the UK.
The courses are available through a virtual learning environment, called Learn Zone, which provides ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to education and support resources for Macmillan professionals.
As well as the Video Arts online courses, it includes careers information, advice and guidance, a learning needs assessment tool and professional development resources.
“We wanted to give our professionals a more holistic approach to learning and development, without always having to pull them away from their workplace to attend face-to-face training,” said Lesley McGuire, Macmillan’s Learning Technology Manager.
“We looked for relevant external learning content and chose Video Arts’ courses to provide soft skills development that will help our professionals to be more effective in the workplace.”
The 48 Video Arts online courses cover subjects such as communication, people management, customer service, managing tasks, equality and diversity, assertiveness, coaching, interviewing, finance and performance management.
“The Video Arts courses are extremely well produced and their use of humour makes the learning engaging, memorable and fun,” said Lesley McGuire. “The courses are ideal for self-study because people can work through them in their own time and at their own pace. The quality of the materials is so good that we can now offer a viable alternative to face-to-face training.”
Video Arts’ online courses feature video content showing memorable and engaging characters in a range of situations, interspersed with thought-provoking questions and tutorials.
A pre-test establishes the learner’s current knowledge, and helps them to determine the most relevant modules, and a post-course test checks the learner’s retention of the key messages. Full tracking and reporting is available to help administrators monitor the progress of each learner.
Based throughout the UK, Macmillan professionals include doctors, nurses, consultants, counsellors, physiotherapists, radiographers, dieticians, social workers, speech therapists, pharmacists and benefits advisers.
