1 of 9

Learning Experience Redesign

Internship Program

Department Coordinator Leadership Training

Welcome! Thank you for your time today. I’m super excited to be here to discuss a redesign proposal for Department Coordinator Leadership Training for the internship program. This project is near and dear to my heart since this was a passion project of mine during my time on the Executive Team of the internship program. As most of you know, I started with this organization as an intern, joined the internship’s Leadership Team in the role of a Department Coordinator, and then progressed to the internship’s Executive Team in the role of Director of Departments before getting hired as an employee in the Org Learning department in May of 2015.

The current Supervisor of the internship program expressed that the current Departments division of the Executive Team would like to redesign this training because currently it is not meeting their needs or achieving the intended outcomes. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to apply what I’ve been learning through my formal and informal learning to facilitate the redesign of this training!

2 of 9

Goal of the Learning Experience

Provide new Department Coordinators with the knowledge and skills to successfully complete the administrative tasks required for their role

The training that is being proposed for redesign is the onboarding training for new leadership team members who have accepted Department Coordinator roles. Department Coordinators are the liaisons between interns and the program’s Executive Team. In addition to training and mentoring interns, Department Coordinators provide administrative support that keeps the internship running like a well-oiled machine. Without these administrative tasks being completed, the internship could not function. Thus, the purpose of the Department Coordinator Leadership Training is to provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills to successfully complete the administrative tasks required for their role. After 1-2 rotations, we want all Department Coordinators to be able to complete the administrative tasks with limited support.

3 of 9

Organizational Goal

Organization

To heal, comfort, and promote health in the communities we serve

Internship

To inspire, prepare, and develop the future healthcare workforce

Before diving into the specifics and current state of this learning experience, lets take a wider lens look at the organization. When determining whether it’s worth the time or investment in a training initiative it is helpful to look at the larger organizational goal and how that training may align or support that goal.

As a healthcare organization, our mission is to heal, comfort, and promote health in the communities that we serve. Our interns support that mission by supporting the creation of an environment that promotes healing, comfort, and health. However, the main goal of the internship program is to allow pre-health individuals to gain hands-on experience in the healthcare field to inspire and prepare them to pursue their future careers in healthcare. The internship is designed to develop relevant knowledge and skills to prepare the future healthcare workforce. For the internship to deliver on these promises, operations must run smoothly, and Department Coordinators play a key role in providing operational support to the internship program.

4 of 9

The Learning Experience

Department Coordinator Leadership Training

5 of 9

Progression Over Time

2015 Redesign

Standardization
Group training
Multiple in-person sessions over a rotation
Designed to be just-in-time training
Interactive
Practice/feedback/problem solving
Community building

Current State (2024)

One-time lecture-based training in-person
All content is front-loaded
No opportunity for questions
No opportunity for practice
Reliant on current DCs to supplement on-the-job practice and support

During my time on the Departments Team, my team initiated this training redesign because we were all trained individually and by different leaders. Thus, some of us had more knowledge and skills than others based on who was teaching us. Although those leaders had a general outline to follow, a lot of the content was just from the individual leader’s own experience, teaching/training style, and the time they had or scheduled to invest in training. My team wanted a consistent and standardized process so every Department Coordinator had the same knowledge and skills regardless of which leader was delivering the training. Furthermore, to reduce our time commitment, we switched to a group training model, rather than the one-on-one model. This enabled us to teach content once during the rotation, rather than multiple times throughout the rotation. Each training session was about 1 hour in length and held in-person. Content was mostly presented via PowerPoint slides, but it was broken up with practice, discussion, and team-building activities. Department Coordinators were provided a laptop so they could practice the computer-based skills in the moment.

Unfortunately, after speaking with the Supervisor of the internship program and the current Departments Team members on Executive Team, it sounds like the training has morphed back into how I was initially trained, but just with more standardization for the content. For example, they still use PowerPoint presentations and host the training in-person, but now content that was designed to be delivered over the course of one rotation is delivered via a one-time 3 hour in-person one-on-one training where the Department Coordinator is just being lectured to the entire time. Thus, for 3 hours, two people sit and look at a PowerPoint presentation being presented onscreen while one person talks and the other listens. They don’t have any time for questions or practice.

6 of 9

The Problem

Cognitive overload
Time consuming
Knowledge and skills not being transferred or utilized within their roles

No practice
No assessment for competence
Heavily reliant on “seasoned” DCs for support on-the-job

Although the content is still standardized, the delivery method is not effective for learning. DCs do not find themselves capable of performing the tasks required for their role upon completion of the “training”. Similarly, the practice and feedback activities, on-the-job resources, and assessment activities appear to have been dropped from the curriculum.

The training is seen as something to “get through” or “check a box” rather than preparing DCs to perform their role. This has led to ill-prepared DCs who don’t have the knowledge and skills they need to perform their role, which has resulted in an increased time burden for administrative tasks and the spreading of misinformation. In addition to the negative impact on Department Coordinators, interns have also been affected by these inefficiencies and misinformation. For example, a Department Coordinator informed interns that they would lose all their program hours if the withdrew from the internship prior to meeting their hours commitment. As a result, some interns risked losing all hours earned by falsifying hours not served to try to meet their hours commitment even though they couldn’t, hoping they just wouldn’t get caught.

Given the current design of the training, it’s hard to fault the Department Coordinator for providing inaccurate information because they’re drinking through a fire hose to learn 3 months worth of information and tasks in a 3-hour period without any practice, feedback, or assessments, nor reliable or consistent on-the-job support upon completion of the training. The current delivery method is not designed for how people learn, which means we’re not setting our Department Coordinators up for success.

Furthermore, the current delivery method requires a facilitator to repeat content that rarely changes multiple times, which is extremely time consuming for that facilitator. For example, since January 2024, a facilitator has scheduled 16 of these one-on-one trainings, which equates to 48 hours of training. Since the content rarely changes, their time could be better spent on other tasks or developing the leadership skills of those interns. Not to mention the time spent driving to and from the office to participate in these trainings. And if they’re not allowing time for questions or practice, why not record someone delivering the presentation once and redistribute to new leaders?

Finally, since the majority of leadership team members are college students utilizing this program as a steppingstone to their next educational pathway or career, turnover can be high and abrupt. Thus, it is not feasible to rely mostly on on-the-job training. The knowledge and skills need to be easily passed and consistently passed between generations of leadership team members.

7 of 9

Learning Outcomes

Explain the time commitment, role, and responsibilities of the Department Coordinator role
Set-up access and utilize tools needed to support them in their new roles
Apply internship policies and procedures
Execute administrative tasks necessary for their role
Recall how to locate and utilize support resources

8 of 9

Vision for Redesign

Bite-sized content delivery to reduce cognitive overload
Maximize technology have access to now
Virtual training
Practice exercises and feedback

Validation of competence
On-the-job support resources
In-person time focused on office logistics and resources
Create virtual community-building opportunities

Given how much technology has advanced and how the tools we have access to have grown over the years, I was disheartened to learn that the training program has regressed and thus is no longer achieving the intended outcomes. However, given that these positions are unpaid volunteers, it’s not surprising to see that the curriculum was not maintained as intended. Time and scheduling constraints likely impacted and led to the current delivery method, content, and design.

Thus, the redesign will focus on two main goals:

Reduce time and scheduling constraints that may have impacted the quantity and quality of the training to prevent future regression
Design for how people learn

As such, the redesign will focus on the organization and delivery method of the content. To reduce the time commitment of the facilitators for this training and leaders completing the training, the bulk of the content and activities will be transitioned to a virtual environment; leveraging asynchronous training for delivery of knowledge and procedure-based skills so they can also be referenced in the future, while allowing synchronous time to practice and apply the content. This model will also allow knowledge and skills to be passed more easily and consistently from one generation to the next.

Content will be broken down and grouped into meaningful ways that follow the rotational timeline to maximize just-in-time learning and knowledge transfer. Furthermore, practice, feedback, and assessment opportunities will be re-introduced. Relevant and helpful on-the-job support resources will be re-introduced or developed. Likewise, authentic assessments will be re-introduced to assess competence and performance.

Most of these things have been done before and just dropped off over time. Some items will likely need to be updated or re-worked for relevance and accuracy for the current state, but there are existing assets to facilitate development.

Finally, we’d also like to bring back the community-building that group training provided but meet our current facilitators and learners where they’re at by providing it in a virtual forum.

9 of 9

Conclusion