EBME Forums Forums Management Training Online Video Conferencing

My company is considering a substantial investment of hardware and software for online video conferencing. This would be used to provide training sessions over the internet for a range of medical gas control and safety products that we manufacture. Courses could include servicing, general awareness, safety etc.

I would like to know if you think this is practical solution, especially for those of you working within the NHS. Do you think you have a fast enough connection to stream video at 128 kbps?

There is a connection speedtest available at:

http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/speedtest/

Does anyone know if there a 'Start a Poll' function that I can use to gauge opinion on this site?

Any help or advice will be very gratefully received.

Hi Ben,
When you start a new topic, just click on the 'poll manager' link to crate a poll.

Hiya,

Video conferencing is great in theory but I think hands on people prefer hands on teaching on service courses and face to face discussions. Thats in the nature of your typical service tech is hands on.

NHS IT policy restricts bandwidth and server space to its users. The use of streaming audio and video is banned in all our trusts hospitals. It would be worthwhile checking if this is national policy for NHS IT before going down this route.

Training and awareness sessions are always better face to face IMO. Video conferencing smacks of a company trying to avoid meeting (prospective) customers and reducing training costs and effort providing customer support.

Not so bad if any savings are passed on in reduced cost of spares training or product to the customer I suppose.

If technical training and safety awareness sessions were foc with no strings and NHS had access then it might catch on but it depends on what your selling and how it compares to the competitions products.

Ben,
I have been looking at e-learning within our Trust. I would agree with Rob's post. ICT departments put a lot of restrictions on what computers and networks are allowed to do. They do not like me to put video clips within documents because of the bandwidth these large documents would eat up and video streaming is right out.
You also have to consider lowest spec PCs and make sure any software will run on these, and there are still some very old ones out there, many without basics such as speakers for audio.
You could have dedicated PCs with all the appropriate permissions and hardware but end users still like to touch things and have a real hands-on training.
Robert

Where it could be useful is at remote locations, overseas, etc. But, there again, you would still need to be thoughtful about the possibility of "low-end" technology and less-than-ideal internet "bandwidth" etc. But you could always supply some nice new laptops as part of the deal! Are we talking about a free service here, by the way (?), or just another exploitation of the revenue stream?

I totally agree that hands on face-to-face is by far the best way to to provide training and we run these courses once a month at present. The problem we have is reaching a big enough audience. We try to keep our courses small, maximum of eight at a time and many people don't have the free time to attend.

Considering your feedback above and that recieved from our guys in the field, I think live video delivery is flawed as far as the NHS is concerned.

Geoff - Yes, we expected to deliver our online training courses FOC - once it's set up there's very little ongoing cost.

The hands on courses we already hold are at best breakeven(inlcudes 1 full days training, 1 night in a five star hotel, all meals, drinks etc. - only £150/person).

We are now considering downloadable training modules for each serviceable product, both with and without video components. By converting video to Flash (free player download from Adobe) and keeping their size and frequency to the minimum necessary, it should make them easy enough to download.

Sounds like you want to wind down training on your company site Ben.

Hi Rob,

On the contrary I'm very pleased to say. One of our key performance indicators is how many people we have trained hands on during the year - the more the better. We have stepped up from bi-monthly to monthly courses this year.

We are expanding geographically, so online training or on demand training modules compliments this too.

Maybe you can attend one of our courses Rob, I'm sure you would gain something from it. I think we still have places left from July onwards.

That's one day. £ 150 all in, right, Ben? Well, to be honest that's less than the going rate for tech courses. So, here's your chance ... care to list what your course includes? And I'm thinking here of the real-world one, rather than the "virtual"!