Samiedu’s Successful Student-Employee Training Plan Example

Kyla Ball August 9, 2022

At Samiedu Vocational College in Finland, teachers and employers jointly created highly effective training programs with ThingLink which have increased students’ and new employees’ skills. Learning material on patient classification, treatment of stroke patients, and emergency driving have been created for emergency medical care teaching. In the tourism sector, learning materials designed for the onboarding process were created in cooperation with Samiedu and Hotel & Spa Resort Järvisydän.

Employers and college collaborate to create learning materials

The eWorking project is a two-year EU-funded development pilot project that will continue until August 2023. The goal of the project is to provide exciting and experiential digital learning in the workplace, as a co-operation between Samiedu College and employers. The project incorporates simulation training, digital environments that help students familiarize themselves with work, and distance learning. The pilot fields are basic emergency medical care, basic degree in business, and the restaurant and tourism sector. The learning material created in the project is used in work experience modules.

The project’s training needs were for teachers and employers to be able to plan, describe and produce up-to-date learning material together. This approach of producing visual, interactive materials online together with companies is still quite new at Samiedu. But a lot has been learned in the process and this co-creation approach to training methods has produced many rewards for both school and employers.

“As a learning environment, the advantage of ThingLink is that the learning material can be easily edited by all content producers – you can update the content yourself at any time.”

Sami Pirhonen, Samiedu

The goal of the eWorking initiative is to produce high-quality and up-to-date learning materials for the selected training schedule, to conceptualize best practices and to encourage teachers to create content. The team have learnt how to use different platforms side-by-side – using ThingLink, Canva, Padlet and Miro together for example to create training course materials that are intuitive and smooth.

“Collaboration with the ThingLink team has been rewarding and we have received support quickly.”

Sami Pirhonen, Samiedu

Learning materials for emergency medical care

In the eWorking project, one sector that learning materials have been created for is emergency medical care. Teachers have acted as photographers and content producers, and ThingLink have supported them by organizing training and helping with the pedagogical design of learning materials, 360-degree filming and implementation.

Nikki Kotilainen, an emergency medical care teacher at Samiedu, says that the produced materials will benefit both students in the field and employees who have already graduated. Nikki also works in the orientation team of the Etelä-Savo rescue service, so he acts as a representative of both the educational institution and employers in the project.

Realistic learning materials help prepare students

Teachers had noticed that there was not enough real-life learning material based on simulations in Finnish about patient triage or classification, treatment of stroke patients and emergency driving. Similar material has been produced in Germany for some time, and the eWorking project partners want to proceed in the same direction.

Traditionally, paper windshield reports have been used in the teaching of triage, which professionals in the field also use in real work. In accident situations, the first authority unit to arrive on the scene sends a quick, concise overview as a windshield report to the other units proceeding to the accident site. In teaching situations, the student is shown the windshield report and asked to explain how he or she would work in patient classification.

However, the teachers noticed that the students would benefit from more realistic learning materials. When a first aid professional arrives at the scene of an accident, he or she has to triage or classify the patients very quickly in challenging conditions. The teachers wanted to give the students opportunities to practice handling the emotions which can be triggered by an accident and the ability to make decisions under pressure.

“The advantage of the ThingLink implementation is that the human factors of the hectic work of emergency medical care – situational leadership and keeping a difficult situation under control – can be practiced.”

Nikki Kotilainen, Samiedu

Patient classification practiced with VR simulations

Now the project participants are creating interactive learning materials that offer students an authentic VR experience of arriving at an accident situation. In the learning experience, students can experience the challenging emotions brought about by the VR simulation exercise in a controlled environment. Students can practice the correct treatment and receive feedback from the teacher for next steps. When the skills and competencies can be sufficiently practiced with the help of authentic simulations, real emergency care situations become easier.

“Using ThingLink with VR glasses brings realism and realistic emotions to the simulation teaching.”

Nikki Kotilainen, Samiedu

Scenario-based learning materials have been created for guidance on treating a stroke patient. The student progresses through the scenario step by step, identifies the patient’s symptoms and makes decisions according to medical protocols.

“Protocol is central in care work, and scenario-like learning is particularly well suited to nursing education.”

Nikki Kotilainen, Samiedu

You can try the learning material “Care Path of a Stroke Patient” above. The material is in Finnish.

Scenario-based training materials

Next, the eWorking project participants are creating scenario-based learning material about emergency driving. The training objectives are to teach the important skills required by drivers of emergency vehicles – for example, how to change lanes safely. The goal is to record the observations of an experienced driver on video. Questions for students can also be added to the learning material with ThingLink’s Scenario Builder. Students can move on to the next section only when they have answered the questions in the training checklist correctly. The scenario tool allowing the student to choose different paths, allowing them to make mistakes in a safe, virtual environment and learn from them. With the help of the study material, the tacit knowledge of more experienced colleagues is given a visual and narrative form and the students get to test their knowledge.

In the future, the aim is to also create material for role-playing training sessions based on treatment situations. Using ThingLink scenarios, students could practice how to meet a patient according to a protocol model and how to take their colleague’s actions into account.

What is Scenario-Based Learning? Read our handy guide here.

Training materials that are quick to create and simple to use

The study material “Care Path for a Stroke Patient” has already been tested with a group of students with encouraging results. ThingLink was found to be easy to use and it was especially important that the material could be produced and edited quickly.

The students found the learning material to be good and informative thanks to its realism. Having had no previous experience of using similar e-learning material, most of the students answered that they would like to study with this kind of material in the future, because “learning was meaningful and interactive”.

Introductory material for the tourism sector

In the eWorking inititative, orientation material has also been produced for new hire training in the tourism sector. Hotel & Spa Resort Järvisydän acts as Samiedu’s partner, and the project has produced employee onboarding material for the orientation of the hotel’s short-term new hires in the summer season. The training material also supports Samiedu’s students, who get to familiarize themselves with the tasks of the workplace training period in advance.

Employee onboarding training materials

The Järvisydän hotel has versatile services and facilities in a wide area. Samiedu’s on-the-job learners and new employees need to familiarize themselves with their work tasks as part of the onboarding training process. The project partners wanted to put together a clear interactive employee training program based on the various facilities and company policies. The material fills in knowledge gaps and makes it easy for new team members to understand tasks, locations and individual employees’ roles. For example, when students first arrive in-person, team members in the equipment rental shop and the spa are already familiar to them from the videos. The materials also help Samiedu’s students get to know their new skills even before the on-the-job learning period. This especially helps those students who are nervous about putting new skills into practice. The ThingLink implementation can be viewed anytime and anywhere, and it also offers a review opportunity during work situations.

The start view of the orientation material and a drone photo of Järvisydän premises are shown above. Please note this is a demo version of the introductory material and therefore you cannot move beyond the drone image.

The end result is a clear package, through which the user can easily progress using clear paths. However in addition to ready-made paths, the project partners wanted to give users the opportunity to freely choose the order in which they explore the premises. This is done with the help of a drone image, which serves as a map and an overview of the area.

From the embed above, you can explore the demo created on the basis of the introductory material in more detail. In the actual orientation material, the new employee moves from one facility to another using transitions.

Positive feedback from students and project team

The orientation material will be used in helping to onboard the Järvisydän summer employees. Samiedu’s students have already tested the learning material with very favourable feedback. The material has been found to be clear, easy to use and very effective employee training. With the help of ThingLink, getting to know the Järvisydän premises and work tasks was smooth. Feedback from the project partners was that they appreciated the ability to create the materials themselves and to modify them as needed.

Future employee training plans and integrations

In the future, the Järvisydän team plans to use this material as a new employee training plan template to create in-depth orientation material for different premises and work tasks, safety briefings and marketing material with ThingLink. Orientation materials wil be created in future with ThingLink’s Scenario Builder. They can be used, for example, to create alternative paths for safety training, in which case the user would progress through the materials by answering questions and making choices.

The benefits of online employee training

This case study demonstrates why creating interactive online learning using methods like ThingLink’s Scenario Builder can work well for many types of employee training. Simulations and scenarios can help new employees prepare for their new roles and location, can address any skill gaps before they start, which leads to a better employee performance from the very start. It is also extremely cost effective, given that instructor-led training can be costly and time-consuming.

Read more here:

• Creating Scenario-Based Learning for Corporate Training
• Five Great Examples of Scenario-Based Learning