Philips HD3 Training and Creating a Learning Framework

At the beginning of September training for the Philips HD3 Ultrasound machine was released in the Blue Mango Learning System. So far the feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive.

We did a few new things with this release. First off, it is going out with every HD3 system which only makes sense. Why wouldn't you want everyone to have access to product training materials?

We also incorporated some new teaching concepts into this training piece. This was a very large project containing over 50 lessons and over 600 individual screens. We implemented a new concept that we have been exploring over the last couple of months. At the present time, for lack of a better title, we call this concept "Multilevel Learning". The concept revolves around the idea of having different lessons with varying degrees of detail. There should be at least one lesson that encompasses all material that will be presented in other lessons. This lesson creates the framework for all later learning.

We have recently been using a puzzle metaphor to explain this concept. What is the first thing you do when starting a puzzle? You put together the edges. Why? They are the easiest to work with and they give you a framework in which all of the other pieces will fit.

We tried to do the same thing in our training for the HD3 system. Instead of teaching everything about patient setup, and then everything about 2D, and everything about Color, etc. we finished the edges first. With one lesson we took users through an exam on a very high level. By high level I mean with very little detail. We didn't get into all of the details of each function. We just wanted to create the framework so that the user would understand where other lessons would fit in the overall framework.

Subsequent lessons provide increasing levels of detail, gradually filling in all of the gaps. We think that it has turned out to be a very effective training piece.

This is one of the things that really excites me about the Blue Mango Learning System. We aren't just creating an easy to use software application. We are exploring new ways of organizing and presenting educational material and then creating software that supports those concepts.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 10:42 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.