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Bespoke eLearning Supporting Digital Transformation in the Third Sector
Setting the Scene
Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) is a national non-departmental public body. Formed in 2013, they are responsible for recruiting, training and supporting skilled volunteers across Scotland. Panel Members are people from the local community and their valued role is to make the best possible decisions with and for infants, children and young people attending children’s hearings across Scotland.
Currently, CHS is in a period of digital transformation focused on improving the process for the 35,000 children’s hearings that take place across Scotland each year, in partnership with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA). CHS wanted to create a series of bespoke digital learning modules and asked eCom Scotland to produce these. The CHS Learning Academy is a partnership with West Lothian College (WLC) and provides training support for CHS volunteers.
All the online learning is hosted on the Learning Academy where Children’s Hearings Scotland staff and volunteers access the digital learning and resources. Following the success of this initial eLearning, eCom was commissioned to create online learning to expand the Learning Academy. eCom was subsequently asked to undertake further eLearning development based around a new CHS system that would enable CHS to realise their digital transformation vision of extending the support available to volunteers.
The Challenge
Children’s Hearings Scotland were looking to develop a range of learning content, covering many subject areas, including role specific training for panel members, rota managers and a range of other roles. Due to the geographic spread of volunteers and also because they would have to fit learning around their paid employment and other commitments, CHS were keen to deliver this additional training digitally, to the volunteers own device. This was a good fit with their digital strategy, which acknowledged that creating an online academy to support their volunteers would be more effective.
The Solution
Building on the success of the previous third sector eLearning content, eCom Scotland engaged in creating a programme of eLearning content, working closely with subject matter experts (SMEs) at CHS. The content is suitable for the digital world and gives volunteers easy access to the knowledge and expertise they require. The collaborative content development process ensured we captured the “why” of each module clearly, before detailing out the specific learning outcomes and appropriate content and interactions to meet these. To maintain user engagement eCom included instructional interactive elements throughout each course, along with video content and links to additional resources. eCom held regular meetings with CHS and the SMEs throughout the content development process, to ensure a good understanding of the needs at each stage of content development and to ensure turnaround was efficient, prompt and smooth.
The Benefits
Taking a digital approach enables Children’s Hearings Scotland to easily reach their entire volunteer network and deliver training in a consistent way, to a large number of people, in a way that face-to-face training could not replicate. Volunteers also have the opportunity to learn at their own pace, at a time and place that suits them, so they can benefit from training instantly. Additionally, CHS can monitor training completion rates as well as collect feedback on how volunteers are finding the training materials thanks to this digital transformation.
What our clients have to say
Digital learning has enabled Children’s Hearings Scotland panel members to develop key skills and digital confidence while juggling busy lives and their volunteering roles
Children’s Hearings Scotland National Training Lead
