Case Study: Improving Online
Engagement with Your Stakeholders
By Rick Nigol
We thought it was time to move from general
discussions about online engagement strategies to some specific case
examples of how we have helped organizations to do this. Over the
next few weeks we will be sharing accounts of real projects on which
we have worked. Personally, I find it much easier to relate to
concrete examples.
Background
SafeGuards Training for Children and Adult Services is a joint
training project of five provincial associations in Ontario that are
focused on support services for vulnerable children and adults.
Their mandate is to provide state-of-the-art training and resources
to the people who provide this support. SafeGuards specializes in
training related to abuse prevention, assessment, treatment, and the
related effects of abuse.
The Challenge
SafeGuards faced two common challenges experienced by training /
learning organizations.
1. The need to provide up-to-date information to their
constituencies about a constantly changing curriculum of courses, on
a multitude of topics, taking place at various times, and in
multiple locations and modalities.
2. A need to provide
learning opportunities to a highly dispersed and time-starved
audience of learners efficiently and effectively (distributed
training challenge).
The Solution
To help SafeGuards address the first challenge, we set them up
with a new website that is run via an easy-to-use back-end database.
Their staff can now update their site in an instant, on the fly,
without needing to rely on any IT support to do this for them. As
soon as they have new information about upcoming course offerings,
for example, this can be posted instantly. The database also allows
them to post news items on the home page, publish an electronic
newsletter, upload documents for easy user access, and receive
course registrations online.
From a user’s perspective, there is nothing less engaging than a
website that is clearly not up-to-date. This new website improves
SafeGuards’ engagement with its members by providing constantly
updated information on upcoming Professional Development programs
and new ways of communicating online with these members.
To address the second challenge of distributed training, we
helped SafeGuards develop an online Respite Services Training
Certificate. This allows those who provide part-time support to
primary care givers of individuals with intellectual or physical
disabilities, access to a self-paced interactive training program at
any time and from anywhere. Learners work their way through modules,
maintain an online learning journal, and interact with other
learners via discussion boards. They receive their certificates once
they electronically submit their journals and successfully complete an
online quiz.
Since the course launch two months ago, 95 registrants have come
on board. It is estimated that hundreds of current and prospective
respite support providers will benefit from this program across
Ontario.
www.respitecourse.ca/online_course_sample.html
Conclusion
By creating a better and more dynamic website, SafeGuards is
better able to serve its members and have more frequent and
meaningful communication with them. And by starting to move more of
its professional development programming online, Safeguards provides
learners with a greater level of flexibility and convenience in how
they learn. Both of these initiatives enhance engagement with their
key stakeholders.
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