The Discovery research carried out at the end of 2016, which followed Government Digital Service (GDS) best practice and guidelines, investigated the way in which individuals working in health and care use technology to learn in their daily practice. Through thorough research including desk studies, focus groups, stakeholder events, workshops and surveys, the TEL Programme identified the need for a national learning solution with thousands of digital learning resources available for the health and care workforce.
The Learning Solution project uses an agile approach to project management, which encourages teams to build quickly, test what has been built and iterate the work based on regular user feedback.
This next phase of the Learning Solution project, Alpha, focusses on building a prototype of the service and testing it with potential users, as well as demonstrating that the service we want to build is viable. This development phase enables us to test, and learn from, the assumptions we’ve made from the research undertaken in Discovery, identify risks and issues and ultimately decide if the service should move into the Beta phase (and if so, what we will build in that phase).
A wide range of healthcare professionals, educationalists, learning technologists and HEE staff have been invited to take part in ‘ideathons’ so that we can explore the functionality and test potential ideas to get feedback for further development. Participants have been tasked with testing key concepts with exercises designed to identify solutions to the most pressing concerns and riskiest assumptions. Using the feedback gained from the ideathons, we are developing wireframes and initial prototype designs to carry out usability testing with users. This is being carried out both in person and remotely and the prototype tested on a laptop/desktop and mobile.
Feedback during Alpha indicates that users require a learning solution that enables them to:
• Upload and share learning resources they have developed
• Easily access learning resources
• Rate, review and discuss learning resources
• Collaborate within communities of practice.
The prototype, which focused on uploading a resource and searching for and accessing it, was very well received by users when tested. We now have invaluable user feedback to convert into functional requirements. The recommendation is to move into the Beta phase, to further build on this by developing a working version of the service which handles real user journeys and works at scale.
For more information about the Learning Solution visit www.hee.nhs.uk/tel and follow us on Twitter: @HEE_TEL.