Using SharePoint and Office 365 to Deliver Educational Content

“Better file distribution & collaborative editing abilities - Pliable and user-friendly mobile user interface - File storage & document capabilities of a fortune 500 companies without huge implementation overhead.”

– SharePoint review by Brett C.

The current trend of Industry 4.0 has made innovative training environments a new norm; the emerging Online Learning Solutions support innovative learning through rich media formats to break down complex data in easier formation. Among those solutions, SharePoint and Office 365, is becoming widely popular because of its versatility and user-friendly manuals. It is being used as a document management solution, a help desk and ticketing solution, a policy management solution, a learning management solution and more.

In this article, we’ll review SharePoint as a learning management system, and see its document library feature, and will take into account how the users can activate video and rich media in SharePoint.

Learning management solutions

SharePoint and Office 365 can be used as a learning management solution or LMS by healthcare organizations to deliver patient education, push patient-focused guidelines, and video or rich media-based educational content. Here’s how SharePoint helps healthcare organizations to deliver educational content to healthcare professionals.

Automatic Training Schedules

Healthcare professionals have to receive regular training so that they can stay updated about contemporary insights in order to provide effective patient care. A SharePoint LMS assists healthcare organizations and professionals through its automatic training scheduling feature. Employees can view ongoing and upcoming training programs and enroll with just a single click. They can also view the strength of the training program and the waiting list.

Track Employee Training

Healthcare organizations can track the progress of employee training programs via reports. Using SharePoint LMS, not only they can see how many employees registered for the training program, but they can also track the number of employees that finished training or are on the waitlist. 

Deliver Training Content

Healthcare organizations can use SharePoint LMS and save time by directly providing training materials to employees. The professionals working remotely can easily access training materials by using the SharePoint mobile app. The training material can be in any form, i.e., text, audio, or video for onboarding, patient-focused guidelines, educational training, etc. Healthcare organizations can also create an FAQ section and attach web links to assist the training process further.

Assure Regulatory Compliance

Healthcare organizations and professionals have to follow several state and federal regulations, such as HIPAA. SharePoint helps organizations to train employees to follow relevant regulations and make sure that the employees are adhering to them by providing a platform where they can share training content. The organizations can make sure that everyone receives training by activating the acknowledge function. They can even temporarily block user profiles to ensure further that everyone completes compliance training.

Evaluate Employee Knowledge

The healthcare organizations can use SharePoint to evaluate their employee’s knowledge through online tests on SharePoint soon after completion of respective training programs. The organizations can provide feedback on employee skills of differential diagnosis, problem identification, patient communication, clinical reasoning, and much more.

Create Surveys

Healthcare organizations can create online surveys in SharePoint and Office 365 to increase the quality of their training programs. They can use MS Forms to create online surveys and share it on a group, the homepage, or individually to all employees. Employees can answer those surveys and provide their feedback; as a result, the healthcare organization will learn about staff satisfaction with the training program and can tailor their training program accordingly.

What is a Document Library?

SharePoint provides a safe and secure place where you can store video and rich media files called document library. It supports co-authoring so you and your coworkers can work on the documents together from any location. There are four main types of document libraries.

• Document Library: Stores documents only
• Pictures Library: Stores images/photos only
• Site Pages Library: Stores pages
• Site Assets Library: Stores all types of content, i.e., text, audio, video.

Tutorial: How to create a document library in SharePoint

How to Enable Video and Rich Media in SharePoint?

Healthcare organizations can enable video, and rich media feature in SharePoint to deliver patient education and educational content. This feature allows them to activate a type of document library known as the asset library, where they can store and manage rich media assets. Here’s how you can enable it.

Please note that to enable the asset library, you must have administrative privileges.

• Go to the site settings page
• Look for site collection administration and select site collection features
• On the site collection features page, activate video and rich media
• Set up an asset library
• On the ribbon, click the new item or new document to add a file on the library page. You can upload, embed or link a video.