What upgrades or changes are necessary to provide better technology integration for adult learning opportunities?

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's (MSKCC) Research Animal Resource Center has strict policies controlling the handling of research animals.  Legal and ethical requirements guide the treatment and handling of all research animals.  The training department at the Research Animal Resource Center implements a training program that provides opportunity for both physical skill development and increased cognitive understanding of the necessary care and treatment of the animals worked with.  To facilitate this training, the department employs various types of technology.

Trainers at the Animal Research Center employ various technologies like Lectora, Camtasia, or Snag-It applications to accomplish organizational training goals.  Specifically, they are tasked with ensuring all animal handlers are trained in the legal and ethical application of departmental procedures governing the humane care and treatment of research animals.  Training modules or classes are developed to deliver instruction on several key points including:  proper handling of animals, procedures for limiting animal discomfort, and methods of euthanasia.  Training is provided through electronic learning modules (elearning modules) or in face-to-face training sessions.  While most training components can be considered highly successful, there is room for growth and development.

Increased use of knowledge based elearning modules would greatly benefit the organization by providing additional learning on topics not currently addressed by the training department due to time and human resource constraints.  Increasing the number and variety of elearning modules will increase training productivity and worker efficiency by freeing trainers to engage in more face-to-face training activities.  Examples of additional elearning modules might include expanded coverage of important topics such as animal behavior, protocol writing, and drug selection.

The training department currently employs the use of the company intranet to disseminate information on current and upcoming training classes.  Links to training documents could be imbedded to provide learners with additional work aides like “How-To” work sheets providing important information on the steps or procedures necessary to complete departmental paperwork correctly.  For example, students could download information on organizational standards for writing protocol.

Due to time constraints, training classes are not able to address all aspects or components of any given subject.  Student questions go unasked and unaddressed.  This often results in frustration out of the training room in real life application.  The creation of a training blog would effectively address this matter by providing the training department a platform through which commonly asked questions can be addressed in Q&A postings or a section on Tips & Techniques for research animal handling.  Employing Web 2.0 technologies in this way provides asynchronous 2-way communications that can be answered by the trainer, departmental leadership, or another student.  Such a tool would provide enormous benefit to both the student and the department as necessary training information could be disseminated outside the training room.  

Finally, the training department at MSKCC Research Animal Resource Center would greatly benefit from the addition of a Learning Management System.  Currently, the training department tracks training completion on Excel spreadsheets and requires the manual submission of paperwork or files to document accordingly.  This process is antiquated, and insufficiently allows the training department to track learning success in elearning modules based on time, accuracy, and content understanding.  Departmental adoption of a learning management system would allow the organization to electronically track and monitor online training courses, videos, course assessments, and learner surveys enabling continuous improvement within the training department, increased learning for the student, and best possible handling for research animals.