October 11, 2011
According to Troy B. Adams, PhD (Chief Operating Officer, WellSteps), learning communities are a group of like-minded individuals who connect around a common cause. "The goal is to learn... to get better... and to grow together. That can be accomplished through all the media available today. Now we have webinars, conference calls, teleseminars and workshops, podcasts, visual communication technology. Networking forums are growing in popularity. For corporate health promotion practitioners, learning communities are a way to help clients. But it's also an avenue to expand individual professionalism by connecting virtually with peers and industry leaders."
The Business Case
Online broadcasting provides significant value to corporate wellness professionals. There can be direct financial benefits, but much of the appeal is indirect. As Troy points out, people value knowledge and sharing. "If you have good content you can sell webinars on a registration basis, but many organizations use this technology to generate good will. It allows you to collect email contacts, so you can further communicate about services and goods that do have a monetary value."
In today's tight economy, online learning has increasing worth. When WellSteps hosted a webinar on healthcare reform and its impact on wellness, "We had over 1000 attendees from all over the planet. When you attend a conference, you have 3 costs... getting there, staying there, and participating. If you can eliminate any of those costs for your audience, you have a better chance of capturing more participants. Obviously they miss the networking aspect, which certainly has value. There is no way to reproduce face-to-face networking online, but it's still a great way to get content to people who need and want it but are constrained by costs. For those from international locations, it's a lot less inconvenient to get up in the middle of the night to watch a seminar than travel for days just to get to it."
Leaders in Wellness Learning Communities
Troy sits on the board of the National Wellness Institute. One of the world's oldest nonprofit wellness organizations, NWI provides community and corporate health promotion practitioners a wide selection of resources and services to promote professional as well as personal growth. He was directly involved in helping the NWI conceptualize and develop their leading-edge webinar series.
NWI has jumped into online learning in a big way. Ongoing, modestly priced, interactive live webinars are offered throughout the year -- featuring highly respected leaders in all dimensions of the wellness field. When a member establishes an account with NWI, they can order recorded webinars from NWI's archives, loaded directly into their personalized Webinar Library, to play as often as they wish.
In only a short time these webinars have shown wide appeal for audiences interested in health and wellness:
In early 2009, NWI offered 3 free live webinars to promote their upcoming National Wellness Conference. Troy recalls, "Attendance was overwhelming. Many had never been to the conference, so this was a great way to give them a taste of what would be available. We have no data on how many webinar attendees went on to the conference, but they learned what we were about."
The Wellness Council of America is another nonprofit professional organization leading the way in online training opportunities targeting corporate wellness practitioners, business leaders, and employee health professionals. WELCOA holds monthly webinars (free to members and at nominal cost to nonmembers). Each year they offer a 4-part online national worksite wellness certification opportunity for members, through Well Workplace University. Although onsite consulting is available, WELCOA provides consultations using teleconferencing capabilities, which represents considerable savings to interested companies.
Find out what's available through these and other online wellness webinar schedules and libraries:
The Future of Learning Communities
Troy predicts online learning will become more personal and interactive as the bandwidth to handle information transfer increases. "Videocasting is where we're heading. Once we can stream things fast enough, the cost will get lower. Technology will provide a more real-time, live experience. Eventually we'll be able to see a speaker online and not have it come across like a badly dubbed film. People will be able to ask questions."
"We all have jobs to do. Most of us have common concerns and challenges. There is no better way to address them than by tapping into the community. Someone out there has already experienced that problem and solved it -- they have advice to give. Getting together to share is the basis of any community. That's why we put our kids in school. That's why we get involved. Employee wellness professionals can do that virtually right now."
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