Creating a novel e-learning tool using authentic learning principles

"How do to fit a bus onto a computer screen?" - A World Health Organisation (WHO) case study. Over the past three years a WHO team has created a unique e-learning course using a "virtual bus trip". The WHO now offer this training course to those interested in the handling/distribution of vaccines and temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical products: A bus trip through Turkey, following the path of how these products enter the country and are distributed to healthcare centers.

The course has limitations:  it is expensive and only 15 people a year can participate.  How can more people get this important information and have an experience learning with others?

Using videos, 360 degree photos, documents and assignments, participants work with others team members and mentors completing authentic tasks at each virtual stop. The final task, consulting with the Albanian Institute of Health, gives team members the opportunity of being consultants, providing data-based recommendations to improve the vaccine handling program of this country.

In this presentation, one of the members of the design team and a mentor in both the physical bus trip and the e-learning course, James Vesper, presents the story of how this e-learning project was developed using design-based research and the principles of authentic learning.

The presenter

James Vesper established and is president LearningPlus, Inc, and is based in Rochester, NY, USA. He has worked eleven years at Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, including being on the extended design team for the industry’s first recombinant DNA production facility. His last assignment there was as Project Leader of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) Education and Instruction, establishing the department and its mission

Mr. Vesper has written five books, including Risk Assessment and Risk Management:  Clear and Simple, GMP in Practice (4^th Edition), and multiple technical articles.  He received the PDA’s Agallico Award for Teaching Excellence and has been an invited speaker at meetings around the world.

Currently, Mr. Vesper is a consultant to World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Vaccine Quality Network—Global Learning Opportunities, working in China, Turkey, and Switzerland.  He has a BS in biology (Wheaton College) and an MPH (University of Michigan School of Public Health).  He is completing a Ph.D. in Education from Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

Please RSVP to Denyse  D.Macnish@murdoch.edu.au