Since Arthritis New Zealand joined us mid 2020, they've built, piloted and are ready to add to the courses they offer. Read on to see how far they've gone in such a short time with iQualify.

About Arthritis New Zealand

Arthritis New Zealand is a charity dedicated to improving the lives of New Zealander's with arthritis. They provide information, advice and support to people diagnosed with any of the more than 140 forms of Arthritis.

Transforming Lives
Building Communities
Finding Solutions
Sharing Expertise

The need for online learning

Arthritis New Zealand already had great information on their website and in pamphlets distributed to businesses, but they needed:

  • A broader reach
  • Greater consistency of information
  • An easy-to-update source of truth
  • Visibilty over who's accessing, using and most importantly understanding the information.

They saw that iQualify could answer all of these needs and was a really cost-effective solution. An added bonus for them was that iQualify had a local base and that remote support was readily available.

How they're using iQualify

Arthritis New Zealand got started creating one course, then with just a few pointers had an exemplar course they were able to use as a guide to develop more courses!

Let's take a look at what some of the techniques they've used in their courses.

Repurposed videos, slides and pamphlets

What: The team were able to repurpose the assets they already had. Videos popped right in and they took information out of the slides and grouped it into similar areas. For example, causes of gout, who gets it, and the treatments.

Why we love it: You don't always need to reinvent the wheel when creating an online course. They were able to take the best of the slides and put that in the course. Being part of the course (rather than slides) makes sure the content is screen-readable, searchable and mobile-friendly. So much more accessible!

Focused and active learning

What: Short pages and frequent activities that were often information from pamphlets turned into engaging tasks.

Why we love it: Shorter snippets of learn and then practice keeps learners active and helps them use (and remember) the new info. And hopefully... keeps them engaged.

Wrapper text

What: "Wrapper text" like: "Over the next few pages we'll be..." or "On the previous page we learned that... now we're going to...".

Why we love it: Just a simple sentence helps orientate learners, it tells them what they should expect or helps them connect what they've just learned to what they're about to learn. It's the "connective tissue" of learning and it makes things much clearer for learners.

Easy sign up

What: They've added a simple form to their website to allow anyone to sign up for the courses.

Why we love it: Easy integration removes barriers to gaining skills and knowledge. Both for those with arthritis themselves and the people who support them.

Flexible delivery

What: The team can use these courses as the base for really quite flexible learning, with part online and part either face to face or via zoom.

Why we love it: Online learning is not one-size-fits-all and Arthritis New Zealand have managed to organise their courses to offer a range of delivery methods. The face to face sessions also allowed the team to add in some tabletop activties.

Learners' impressions

Arthritis New Zealand ran 11 focus groups with retirement village managers, their support and nursing staff, and residents affected by arthritis. This gave them an opportunity to show the courses and also see if managers may feel comfortable to present or co present the courses themselves in the future.

These snippets below from the focus groups shows how much participants learned and how this will directly help those affected by arthritis.

I know now that exercise is important in pain management and not just to go straight to medication especially use of opiates.
Blooming interesting
Could relatives of residents attend these courses for more information?
Brilliant!
Wish we had this education ages ago to help with our practice as we have had a few young clients with Gout arthritis who were not getting the right care because we didn’t know.
Can you come back and do[these courses] again with more topics?

What next?

From the focus groups they found that most retirement village managers could see opportunities to facilitate or co-facilitate the sessions themselves. So far they've tried this out with one centre and they're keen to do it again. This develops an upscaled way of delivering skills and knowledge to the people directly interacting with those affected by arthritis.

They also learned that people are keen to learn and keen to see more from them so Arthritis New Zealand are busy creating more courses to add to their offerings with four more due early this year. From one course to six+ in less than a year!

Want to know more?

If you’d like to know more about Arthritis New Zealand and the programme and support, check out the Arthritis New Zealand site.

If you’d like to give iQualify a go yourself, sign up for a free trial to see how iQualify and online learning can help your business succeed.