The Journey Begins:
Traveling Toward Blended Learning in a Corporate Environment
Charles Osburn
My Work in Context
I am an instructional designer and e-learning development manager with a company that provides a branded healthcare credit card for purchasing treatment services and products from doctors, dentists, audiologists, chiropractors, optometrists and veterinarians. The company offers a variety of promotional plans that provide a cardholder a credit card loan that is interest free if the cardholder pays the loan in full within the promotional period (usually 6, 12, 18 or 24 months). 80% of the cardholders pay back the loans within the promotional time period. 20% of the cardholders choose to revert the promotional loan into a standard credit card line of credit with a standard credit card APR. The company charges the healthcare provider a merchant fee when they process a sale through the company’s credit card. The bulk of the company’s profit is from the merchant fees since a majority of cardholders take advantage of the interest free options.
Both cardholders and providers benefit from the credit card. Cardholders benefit by saving on interest charges, the additional credit reserved for healthcare, and the ability to reduce monthly expenses by spreading payments over time. Providers benefit with the reduction in Provider financing to patients. Provider financing is defined as the healthcare provider extending credit to patients/clients by agreeing to take monthly payments for treatment. Provider financing has many disadvantages. Provider financing of patient debt forces the Provider to commit worker hours towards the managing of debt collection, reduces monthly cash flow (an IOU from a patient isn’t cash until it’s collected), and increases the risk of non-payment of debt or default.
For every newly enrolled provider, the company provides live face-to-face or telephone classroom instruction for the office staff (called Activation Training). We track the success of our training with metrics such as the average number of defect free company credit card applications that newly trained Providers submit each month. The behavior of submitting defect free applications for processing tells us that the provider office understands the program. Another set of metrics that we record are a cluster of questions asked post training that comprise the Training Effectiveness Rating (TER). The higher the TER score (scale of 1 to 5), the more satisfied that providers are with training and their likelihood to recommend our training to others.
Although the use of the company’s credit card benefits the Provider, there has been increasing regulatory oversight that brings with it a cost: Providers are subject to consumer credit federal and state regulations. The hidden cost to the regulations is the need to ensure that Providers’ workers are educated on what they can and cannot do when interacting with company credit card applications and transactions. With over twelve thousand Providers each year enrolling as new merchants for the company’s credit card, the company must train consistently and effectively the Providers regarding company, state, and federal requirements. Because of Provider office time constraints, Activation Training duration must be no more than 60 minutes. Our Providers who prefer the training to occur during the time the office is closed for lunch have imposed this limit upon us. This short time-frame creates a challenge to both consistently and effectively train the federal and state regulatory requirements as well as train product knowledge and procedural topics.
The Possible Solution
Since there is not adequate time to train all required and important topics, my possible solution is to add more time to Activation Training. Because of the time constraint imposed upon us by providers, my plan is to blend the additional learning time with web based e-learning preceding the 60 minutes of scheduled live training. While I suspect that this solution is optimal, I must first review existing literature regarding blended learning to confirm that this course of action is viable.
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NEXT: Review Of Literature
Both cardholders and providers benefit from the credit card. Cardholders benefit by saving on interest charges, the additional credit reserved for healthcare, and the ability to reduce monthly expenses by spreading payments over time. Providers benefit with the reduction in Provider financing to patients. Provider financing is defined as the healthcare provider extending credit to patients/clients by agreeing to take monthly payments for treatment. Provider financing has many disadvantages. Provider financing of patient debt forces the Provider to commit worker hours towards the managing of debt collection, reduces monthly cash flow (an IOU from a patient isn’t cash until it’s collected), and increases the risk of non-payment of debt or default.
For every newly enrolled provider, the company provides live face-to-face or telephone classroom instruction for the office staff (called Activation Training). We track the success of our training with metrics such as the average number of defect free company credit card applications that newly trained Providers submit each month. The behavior of submitting defect free applications for processing tells us that the provider office understands the program. Another set of metrics that we record are a cluster of questions asked post training that comprise the Training Effectiveness Rating (TER). The higher the TER score (scale of 1 to 5), the more satisfied that providers are with training and their likelihood to recommend our training to others.
Although the use of the company’s credit card benefits the Provider, there has been increasing regulatory oversight that brings with it a cost: Providers are subject to consumer credit federal and state regulations. The hidden cost to the regulations is the need to ensure that Providers’ workers are educated on what they can and cannot do when interacting with company credit card applications and transactions. With over twelve thousand Providers each year enrolling as new merchants for the company’s credit card, the company must train consistently and effectively the Providers regarding company, state, and federal requirements. Because of Provider office time constraints, Activation Training duration must be no more than 60 minutes. Our Providers who prefer the training to occur during the time the office is closed for lunch have imposed this limit upon us. This short time-frame creates a challenge to both consistently and effectively train the federal and state regulatory requirements as well as train product knowledge and procedural topics.
The Possible Solution
Since there is not adequate time to train all required and important topics, my possible solution is to add more time to Activation Training. Because of the time constraint imposed upon us by providers, my plan is to blend the additional learning time with web based e-learning preceding the 60 minutes of scheduled live training. While I suspect that this solution is optimal, I must first review existing literature regarding blended learning to confirm that this course of action is viable.
PREVIOUS: Introduction
NEXT: Review Of Literature