With a series of online courses already live, the team at Prostate Cancer UK (PCUK) approached us with the aim of enhancing their current offering and making it more accessible and engaging for their audience of busy clinicians.
“The PCUK team already had a series of courses in place on their platform, but they were text-heavy, and they were concerned it was harming their engagement and overall impact,” explains Director of Technology, Adam.
“The mission was to treat their content and make it easier to read and follow, and more engaging for their learners.”
In the initial discovery session, the Wellknown team centred their questions around the target audience for the eLearning and the key messaging for the course.
“The audience itself presented some challenges, as the learning is designed for those who need an overview of the condition and want to learn more about prostate cancer, but can come from a broad range of clinical backgrounds. They may be new to the role of supporting patients with prostate cancer, so it was really important that we could make sure the content wouldn’t assume a high level of existing knowledge. It had to be comprehensive, but not overwhelming.
“One of the key aims the client shared with us was that the eLearning should help to raise awareness and educate people about the different at-risk groups, so when these professionals came into contact with prostate cancer patients, they’d feel confident and be able to have informed discussions.”
One of the key challenges the Wellknown team faced in recreating Prostate Cancer UK’s online course offering was with the content itself.
“The subject matter experts on PCUK’s side were incredible to work with, and provided all of the written copy that they wanted to include in the course,” explains Adam. “The challenge was that, due to the medical nature of the content, the course content had to be written and signed off by the expert clinicians at PCUK, to ensure the content was fully accurate and representative of current medical guidance and research. This meant it was a rare project where we were working with content that was fixed and not open for redrafts or edits, so my priority was to honour that, but really think about the tools I could use to make it more accessible.”
With this in mind, work began on the introductory module, with further modules scheduled for redesign in the coming weeks.
Putting herself in the position of the primary audience for the course – healthcare professionals with an interest in learning more about prostate cancer – Hannah, Director of Learning, set to work on bringing the existing copy to life.
“I spent some time reading through the content and liaising with the subject matter experts at Prostate Cancer UK to try and establish what the key messages were that they wanted the learners to come away with. Then, I was thinking about how it could all fit together, structurally, to make sense. I was mainly addressing the layout and order of the content, and thinking about how we could highlight and draw attention to the key take-away messages, without amending the clinician’s copy.
“This led me to the approach we ended up taking, which involved breaking the content down into manageable chunks that were framed with subheaders phrased as questions that our audience would likely have. This seemed the best way to highlight key topic areas, provide direct answers to their questions, challenge misconceptions, and guide them through the content in a way that makes sense.
“We were also able to further enhance the learning experience by including patient stories and other videos from the PCUK YouTube channel, which provided additional resources for practitioners to tap into. It was important to think strategically about which videos would be most appropriate for the course and offer the most value to learners, and I think we settled on a library of videos that completes the course really well.
“The client also supplied an infographic that outlined the risk factors, and one thing I wanted to do was make this course as visual as possible. We ended up being able to break the infographic out of the PDF and incorporate the content directly into the Rise workbook.
“Because there was a lot of text, we identified an opportunity to convert an element into an animation. This delighted the client as none of the copy changed; it was still the same content that had been supplied by the clinicians, we just altered the format and repurposed it to produce a video walkthrough using anatomical imagery, bringing clarity to the topic and an elevated level of engagement.
“Finally, we incorporated scenario-based feedback opportunities, which would allow practitioners to explore their understanding of prostate cancer risk factors, within the context of a realistic situation that they might actually encounter with a patient.
“With the copy being locked in, the project became more about how we could augment it, and it was an interesting creative challenge to see how we could do that without making any changes. It all centred around producing a logical flow, incorporating reflection points, and highlighting key messages in different ways, without moving away from the copy we were supplied with.”
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