Annual EMSC Grantee Meeting

T1 Grant and PECARN Reps

Using Technology Effectively for Data Collection, Training and More:

Web-Based Platforms for Information Gathering and Transfer Tools

June 20 – 22, 2006

MARK ADLER: Well, I get to go first. Again, I’m Mark Adler, thank you for coming. There are some topics that we’re interested in. Who in here so I have some ideas has used web-based technologies for either distributing information or collecting data? Okay.

And of those people, how many of them did it themselves? Okay. It’s about a half. Okay. And how many would want to do that again? One. Okay. Kind of. Okay.

Some objectives today, we would like to review how information gathering and transfer tools can be implemented using web-based platform. We going to go through two models of effective web-based training to sort of the smaller and bigger version and how you can extend the life of your web-based tools beyond EMSC grant period.

Very basically, given the audience, I think I’ll go through this very quickly and it can facilitate content delivery, feedback from learners, data collection, and validation. But it can’t do is to make the content for you and it doesn’t reduce the work, it probably increases the work needed to maintain or develop and maintain that content.

It does not make bad content good and it can’t bring people to use it. Those are all the things that you have to do separately. We’re going to go over knowledge delivery, data collection, what things you need to get those things done, and what are the common stumbling blocks.

Everyone here is now immersed mostly in the Internet and knows what you can do with it. It allows for a wide range of content to be presented from simple text to synthetic images to power point slides, to video streaming or download video. And then, many forms of applications: Flash, tutorials, java scripts applications, some of them. Now, anyone who has been in the Internet has seen what is good and what is bad delivery of content. Now, you don’t have to be an expert to know usability. You go to a website and you look at it and you’re like, what are they trying to cross? What’s the message? Where is the click that I need to go to get what I want? If you can’t within five seconds know what that is, it’s a bad website. And there’s a lot of that and interestingly enough, it’s not people who were limited resources, limited skill are making all the bad ones and the people with lots of money are making great ones. There are some very, very big companies with very bad websites.

And the goal is, what’s your objective? Your objective is to communicate information. You don’t need the Flash intro that spins around then lightning and fireballs go by, that’s delaying people from looking at it and most people realize you have not much time to engage someone. So, if you want to—you say, “What is my objective?” and then you build around that not what is cool.

Content development requires time. It requires front and we estimate three hours of filming and video an hour plus three hours of teaching for written and that varies obviously depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. The more complex, the more time and that’s a cost that you have to figure in. It’s something you have to plan for and it will require ongoing maintenance. There’s nothing worse than putting up something and in a year, having it be out of date and now they’re going to your site with your name on it and saying, “Hmm, when did they get trained?” So, you certainly want to be spending the time and planning for and finding the person who’s going to be responsible for the ongoing maintenance.

Based on my question, it requires involvement of technical experts. If you’re going to do this on any scale, you might be able to do it but you probably don’t want to do it. It’s a lot of time commitment, “I can do this stuff but then I don’t get my other stuff done.” You want people who have done it before, who know what works for what you want to do.