Using E-Learning to Develop Expertise in Pharma

“Effective training involves more than teaching the rules and requirements of national regulatory authorities \[such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration\]. . . . Personnel need to have the cognitive skills and develop expertise so they can flexibly and critically evaluate various options, including identifying potential risks and ways to control and mitigate them,” writes James L. Vesper in his dissertation, “Developing Expertise of Those Handling Temperature-Sensitive Pharmaceutical Products Using E-Learning.” Vesper’s submission earned him the 2015 ATD Dissertation Award. This award recognizes outstanding dissertations that hold significant implications for practitioners in the talent development field.

His design-based research (DBR) study revolved around the design, development, and refinement of an e-learning project currently being used around the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) on the handling of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products in what is known as “the cold chain”—keeping these medicines at the right temperature throughout shipping, storage, and distribution. The DBR method is one that varies from what many people think about in terms of research, Vesper explains. Often, people think of research as comparing group A to group B, which is used, for example, in drug clinical trials where you change one or two parameters. What DBR focuses on is “How do you optimize the solution?” It’s a pragmatic approach, he says. The design principles that emerge can be used by others in future projects and are evidence of this pragmatism. Vesper emphasized his appreciation to ATD for recognizing DBR as a valid method that can be applied to educational research like his.

The conceptual model for his e-learning course was that of the WHO’s Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Management on Wheels bus course, a training program that consists of 15 carefully selected individuals plus three mentors taking a bus trip through Turkey, visiting healthcare facilities and vaccine storage sites along the way. During the six days, participants examine how time- and temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals are handled throughout the length of the cold chain. Because of costs and logistics issues, and the fact that learners are at disparate locations, an e-learning alternative to the bus course was created. The e-learning program now has run six or seven times, with Vesper serving as a mentor during two of the training sessions.

In completing his research, Vesper fully appreciated the need to do risk assessments around the technology that is at the basis of an e-learning program and its implementation. In performing the risk assessments, he and his team determined, to the best of their ability, what could go wrong during the course—such as YouTube video clips that were part of the course materials being blocked for individuals in certain countries. What was not considered was that the switch to summer time occurs on different dates in some regions or countries, causing confusion when scheduling team meetings of people around the world. Another lesson learned, says Vesper, was the importance of relationships—for example, mentors staying involved in the process and coaching the participants. You have to “think of the people and not just the technology.”

The research and course evaluation included three iterations of design/development and formative evaluation. During the first iteration, expert reviewers used an evaluation checklist and a Failure Mode Effects Analysis risk assessment tool. The second iteration included a mentor review; the results of this step in the research led to recommendations around creating facilitator’s guides, establishing expectations for them, and reducing identified risks using a different risk assessment tool.

For the field test, the third iteration, 15 individuals from 11 countries were selected to try out the course. Participants were grouped around time zones that allowed for greater ease of collaboration, included a mix of backgrounds (nonprofit, governmental, and industry), and represented what future learners would look like.

One of the 13 design principles that resulted from the research was that of opportunities for articulation: How do we create opportunities for people to show what they have learned? Throughout the course, the activities used were “authentic”—practices that were typically performed, such as developing quality agreements and writing contingency procedures. The final activity had teams evaluate the vaccine-handling system of Albania. The goal was for each team to produce an evaluation report and a 10-minute fact-based presentation on the strengths of the current program and ways that it could be further enhanced, with the presentation given to authorities at the Albanian Institute of Public Health via a teleconference.

James L. Vesper was awarded his PhD in education in December 2014. His chair and supervisor was Jan Herrington, professor at Murdoch University’s School of Education in Perth, Western Australia. Tom Reeves, professor emeritus at University of Georgia School of Education, was his local supervisor. Vesper currently is with LearningPlus, located in Rochester, New York. Dissertation Award This award recognizes outstanding dissertations that hold significant implications for practitioners in the talent development field.