For the Practicum Course of UC Irvine’s e-Learning Instructional Design certificate program we had to design a working course in 8 weeks. I wanted to design a course that could have an actual application to a working professional. In my current field, I work with many professionals who are invested in the future of the Community Health Worker role in California. Community Health Workers are trusted frontline workers in public health who can serve as an intermediary between health and social services. They play a large role in helping BIPOC communities access better care because they share similar socio-economic backgrounds with the people that they serve. Last year, the Department of Health Care Services added Community Health Worker services as a Medi-Cal benefit. This has created momentum to incorporate Community Health Worker services in clinical care, but there is still widespread misunderstanding and unfamiliarity about the Community Health Worker role.
This course is designed to help individuals who want to employ Community Health Workers go through the hiring and onboarding process while creating buy-in among staff on the impact of the Community Health Worker role in a clinical care team. I designed the course mainly on Rise 360 which is a web application of the Articulate 360 package, but it has two activities that were designed on a separate tool called Stroyline 360.
Storyline 360 is a course authoring tool that offers wide customization features. The two interactive activities I designed can be seen on the Onboarding CHWs and the CHWs and the Care Team lessons of the course. These activities use branching scenarios that offer feedback based on the selection of answers the learner makes and tracks user progress with a gamification scoring component. Using customized triggers and conditions I designed the customization to help the learner acquire the desired learning objectives. A lot of work went into the build-out of the course including an initial needs assessment and audience analysis, researching supporting material, storyboarding, designing the visual components, and writing the voiceover narration. To me the most rewarding aspect of designing this course, and of instructional design in general, is seeing all these components come together to become a fully realized project that will go on to help individuals acquire new skills and knowledge.
