Engaging Learners with Online Training is a five-part blog series featuring stories from E-learning Institute Fellowship (ELI) alumni. Alumni have different stories to tell about the impact ELI had on their work in public health.

As a Project Officer at the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), a national, non-profit in Canada, my learning needs were slightly different than many of the other fellows who worked for state departments or public health units. When I began ELI, my organization did not yet have an authoring tool nor did we have the technical support or financial resources for e-learning often available to larger organizations. While this could have impeded my ability to benefit from ELI, my mentor worked with me to suggest an authoring tool (Adobe Presenter) that fit within my project budget and helped me become familiar with its various features to ensure that I could create an interactive course that met the learning needs of my target audience.

My work at CPHA focuses on enhancing the capacity of frontline health and social service providers to offer safer and more respectful sexual health, harm reduction and sexually transmitted and blood-borne infection (STBBI)-related services, and ultimately reduce stigma within health and social service settings. When I began ELI, CPHA was interested in integrating some of its content from face-to-face professional development workshops into an online learning course so as to increase reach to health and social service providers across Canada. My mentor helped me explore the different interactivity features that can be used to help professionals explore their attitudes, values and beliefs and engage in exercises of transformational learning.

Although CPHA has not yet developed any e-learning courses internally, my participation in ELI greatly enhanced my ability to engage with external instructional designers and online course developers. Ultimately, my learnings were used to inform engagement with an external firm to develop a full-length course focused on reducing the stigma associated with STBBIs. I was better able to participate in all aspects of the development of this course, including storyboard development, pilot testing, course launch, and selection of an appropriate learning management system. I continue to refer back to ELI materials when working with course developers and instructional designers to ensure that I am integrating e-learning best practices into CPHA’s work.