How RCPsych Enables and Empowers its Members Through e-Learning

We want to create an enabling environment, that puts learners at the heart of our content design.

Katie Hughes, Head of eLearning, RCPsych

Where does e-learning fit into RCPsych’s growth strategy?

We have around 21,000 members, with opportunity to have as many of them subscribed to any of our eLearning resources wherever they are based in the world. To be able to do this well, we’re examining what our learners need, where the areas of clinical need are, and how our learners want to access our content as they progress through their careers.

We’ve introduced more blended learning options, for example, combining e-learning with live webinars, discussion forums and assignments in our first ever Certification course, and continue to expand and maintain our existing resources. Podcasts are seeing particularly strong growth since the pandemic. We currently have over 160 podcasts to choose from and our learners have the option to listen to them via Spotify, Soundcloud or Apple Podcasts, at a time that suits them, and then complete the accompanying assessment within the e-learning platform in order to receive their CPD certificate. Increasing their accessibility in this way has widened their reach.

What do you see as the biggest opportunities?

We’re currently assessing all our content and looking at how we can repurpose it and offer it to members in different ways to ensure we’re meeting their needs. For example, we’re working more closely with our Events team to record sessions from our conferences. For people who couldn’t attend in person we offer the option to purchase individual webinars.

Another potential avenue for growth is by working with other institutions. Institutional subscriptions offer the opportunity to reach potentially hundreds of members that could benefit from our e-learning content.

Is that changing how content is produced?

Essentially, we’re putting learners at the heart of our content design. We are focussing on areas of clinical need in line with the College strategic aims. We are ensuring that we’re including lived experience in our content development and releasing high-quality and evidence-based content that addresses the needs of the psychiatric profession. It’s vital that our research and content is always up to date.

Part of our strategy is also to improve content sharing across the organisation, for people with differing levels of knowledge and interest in particular areas. So, if we’ve worked with one of our authors on an in-depth journal article, for example, can that be repurposed for e-learning—in a more digestible module format for CPD purposes?

What are your short-term goals and challenges?

Resources are a challenge, in terms of both time and people. We’re keen to bring more e-learning content online as quickly as possible, but there are so many opportunities, and we have to prioritise carefully and consider where we can reuse and maximise use of existing material to benefit new courses.

The more content we produce, the more we also need to make sure that this is communicated across the association and is being shared and promoted appropriately. For example, working with different areas of the College to signpost to our materials where common themes align to ensure cross promotion, so our members are aware and able to benefit from all the information available to them.

So, interoperability and search are key short-term priorities for us. This could lead to ways of grouping learners together, to see where common areas of interest lie. If we can start to make recommendations based on those interests, then we’re really moving towards personalised learning.

How are you using data to analyse performance?

Everything I’ve mentioned above relies on having the right data. We’re investing time and resource into gathering more insights and using it to inform content design and marketing. This will enable us to understand how long someone has spent on a specific module, for example, where people are engaging more or what the most popular topics are, as well as which formats and lengths are seeing the highest completion rates, and how useful learners are finding the introduction of new functionalities, such as discussion forums.

We also gather feedback from our learners which we share with our authors in order to inform updates to modules. We’re gathering as much insight as possible to make continuous improvements and embrace new ways of working—for the benefit of all our members.

To explore these themes further, and hear from more associations on the industry landscape and how their learning strategy has opened up fresh opportunity for growth, check out our brand-new whitepaper, Unlocking opportunity: how professional associations are using learning to empower members and grow revenue.

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