Introduction to AGCP E-learning program
Course Title: E-learning
The elearning program is currently not for sale due to the pending decision from Ethics Committee and Medicines Control Council on the acceptability of e-learning
The AGCP course is to be designed as a self-managed e-course to allow learners to complete the learning in their own time and at their own pace and convenience.
The emphasis is on knowledge application rather than on content retention and regurgitation. For this reason, much of the content will be delivered via realistic scenarios in which the learner is placed.
The first two units offer the foundational knowledge upon which the balance of the course rests. Leveraging off their credibility and status in the health research industry, the remaining units will open with background information being delivered by one of the subject matter experts (Savi Chetty-Tulsee, Lawrence Reiter, Fathima Amod or Heather Maher). Each expert will be represented by photo images or as characters alongside the introductory text.
On the same introductory screen of each unit, a scene-setting scenario (in which the learner is centrally placed) will be delivered, once again by one of the four experts. This scenario will invite the learner to enter the ‘landscape’ of that particular unit, made up of visually rich representations of the main topics of that unit. As the learner clicks on each area of the landscape, it becomes enlarged and he/she ‘enters’ that part of the scene in detail. Some areas may not warrant an enlarged scene; in this case, the learner would click on that area in the greater landscape and a pop-up would offer some information.
The learners will be asked to ‘negotiate’ the landscape where it is necessary to move from one area to the next in the correct sequence. If the correct process is not followed, the learner will be prompted to rethink his/her direction. Wherever possible, topics will be conveyed via information-gathering activities, to guide the learner to the correct solution via brief feedback and prompting. This method of delivery encourages the application of knowledge in a realistic setting, rather than the mere passive reception of content in a vacuum. In addition, the ‘landscape’ becomes a useful means of keeping the learner constantly aware of the ‘bigger picture’ of what they’re learning.
The learner with no previous clinical research experience should take approximately 14-16 hours to complete the e-learning. The e-learning course content is based on the current 2 day GCP workshop which has been accredited with 12 CPD points and 3 Ethics points. A learner with previous clinical research experience may not find it necessary to go to all the information links and use the program as an update to current knowledge and should take approximately 6-8 hours to complete.
