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Your employer supports your continuing education, but to fit it into your busy schedule, something’s got to give. You need to block out a few hours of time to take a class, sit in on a webinar, or travel to a conference. You want to do it, but… there’s just not enough time.
Microlearning is a relatively new concept that lets people learn on the go by tuning into short lessons – sometimes no longer than a minute, similar to social media reels. People can learn on their own time, in between tasks, during lunch or while commuting without having to carve out large chunks of time from their days.
Microlearning is perfect for people who don’t sit at desks all day, like direct services professionals (DSPs). DSPs provide what are known as home and community-based services (HCBS). These services, paid for through Medicaid, are intended to keep people with disabilities and older adults in their homes and communities, rather than in institutions like nursing homes. DSPs assist with activities of daily living like dressing, bathing, cooking, shopping and accessing community resources. They typically don’t work at computers and may travel from client to client throughout the day.
Now, researchers in the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab are developing a free, online training for DSPs to help them provide more person-centered HCBS using a communication skill known as motivational interviewing. DSPs will learn about motivational interviewing through short, one-to-three-minute microlessons.
Motivational interviewing is a counseling and communication style used in healthcare settings to help people change behavior. It can also be used to help people think about and express their thoughts, feelings and needs. One of the characteristic skills of motivational interviewing is that the interviewer doesn’t put words into the interviewee’s mouth, but instead asks open-ended questions and gives the interviewee space to formulate and express their own thoughts. When HCBS are “person-centered,” it means that preferences, needs and values of the recipient guide the delivery of care instead of the assumptions of the provider about what their client needs.
“With motivational interviewing, the interviewer uses a set of skills, which will be taught through our training, to help the person they’re talking to think about and communicate back what is important to them, what they want, and how they’d like to be helped,” says Linda Ehrlich-Jones, PhD, RN, Associate Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and a researcher on the RRTC on HCBS. Motivational Interviewing will provide the DSP with skills to practically apply and make the services they support more person-centered. “This is what we mean by person-centered; it’s up to the person receiving the services to direct how they want things done, not the provider.”
The training is one of the products of the RRTC on HCBS, which is funded by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. The topic for the training was driven by interviews with HCBS providers and direct service providers as well as people who receive HCBS. The RRTC’s advisory council was also consulted on topics for the training.
“Our advisory council suggested that providing this training through a webinar or class would make it difficult for DSPs to participate due to their busy schedules, so we looked around for a way to make it more accessible and discovered this idea of ‘microlearning’ where information is delivered in short lessons similar to social media reels,” says Bridgette Schram, PhD, project manager of the RRTC. “DSPs can engage with the lessons in between tasks, on their commutes, or whenever they can spare a minute or two, rather than carving out time from their schedules to sit and learn for an hour.”
Schram and her team looked for a platform to deliver the microlessons and found a company called Learnie. It allows users to create short videos or presentations together with text and audio. The Learnies can be accessed through an app on a mobile phone, tablet, or online at a computer.
Ross Kaine is a research assistant in the RRTC on HCBS. He is putting together slide sets that will become part of each microlesson known as a ‘Learnie’ as well as recording voice-overs and editing captions to go with the slides.
The information is presented in plain language. Kaine says translating complex concepts like motivational interviewing into language accessible by a layperson is challenging. “In college, we learn to communicate our thoughts more conceptually or theoretically and now I’m doing a 180 to ensure our content is accessible to anyone regardless of their educational level or background,” says Kaine. “I'm excited that people who provide direct services are going to be able to learn in a way that is convenient and accessible.” Kaine is working with colleagues at Support Development Associates, a partner organization in the RRTC, to produce the trainings.
“Another focus of the training is that DSPs can immediately apply what they learned when working with their clients,” says Schram. “Instead of sitting in on a webinar where they may not be able to remember everything or have a chance to use what they learned until some time later, the Learnies enable DSPs to learn something new, and then turn around and use the new skill right away.”
The final training is intended for DSPs to complete three Learnies per week, over 10 weeks.
Next, the group expects to present draft Learnies to the advisory council for initial feedback on content, usability, accessibility, and user experience. After incorporating the feedback, the Learnies will be further evaluated by DSPs. “The evaluation will inform the final version of the training. We are currently talking about ways to offer the final training that continues to increase access to quality, person-centered trainings for HCBS,” says Schram.