The Folioz Experience: Tailoring FOLIO elearning courses to an Australian audience

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The Folioz Experience Tailoring FOLIO e-learning
courses to an Australian audience by Anna
Wilkinson, Anthea Sutton, Diana Papaioannou, and
Andrew Booth School of Health and Related
Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield,
Sheffield,UK
Health Librarians, working at the frontline
delivering information support to health service
staff, often find it difficult to get away from
the workplace to attend training. In 2004 the
National Library for Health (NLH) commissioned
ScHARR to deliver the Facilitated Online Learning
Interactive Programme (FOLIO) to UK National
Health Service (NHS) Librarians. Following the
huge success of the FOLIO programme ScHARR had
interest from Australian librarians, and FOLIOz
was developed. The Australian Library and
Information Association (ALIA) commissioned
ScHARR to run a pilot in 2007. Following the
success of the pilot, a further six courses have
been commissioned between 2007-2008.
The Pilot tailoring FOLIO courses to an
Australian audience
Time difference The time difference between the
UK and Australia (7-9 hours) was a major factor
in the day-to-day running of the course. The
implications and solutions were as follows
Following discussions with the Health Libraries
Australia Executive, the pilot course selected by
ALIA was Designing and Delivering Information
Skills Training Courses (InfoSkills). The pilot
ran from March to May 2007 and was exceedingly
popular with 50 participants enrolling and 26 on
a waiting list. InfoSkills had originally run as
a FOLIO course in the UK in 2005. Running the
course for the ALIA audience in 2007 required
certain substantive changes. In this regard,
there were two key differences identified between
the FOLIO and FOLIOz audiences that needed to be
addressed in delivering the pilot
Tailoring the material to the Australian
audience UK FOLIO courses are delivered
specifically to health library and information
staff, whereas the ALIA audience for the FOLIOz
courses are library and information staff working
in a variety of disciplines. The pilot included
participants from the public and private sectors,
including government, commercial, health and
education organisations to name a few. This
diversity highlights the need to make the context
of the course, including any examples and case
studies, as generic as possible to ensure that
every participant could apply the learning to
their own role. To assist us in doing this, ALIA
identified two members to act as critical
readers, who peer-reviewed the course materials
and suggested Australian examples and resources
wherever possible. In general, the course was
also checked for currency as two years had passed
since the UK version, so naturally there were new
resources to included, examples to update, and
broken links to be mended or removed.
Timing of course emails rather then sending
emails at 9am as for the UK course, FOLIOz emails
were sent at 4pm the previous day so that
participants would have the email waiting for
them when they arrived at work the next
day. Queries typically responses to queries
were longer than the UK version of the course, as
the FOLIO team would not see the email and be
able to respond until the following day. This
also meant that communication was limited to
email only, phone calls were not practical due to
the time difference.
Results from the pilot

InfoSkills ran from March to May 2007. 43
participants completed the course. Feedback from
the evaluation survey completed by participants
was very positive. The majority of participants
stated they enjoyed the course, found it
informative and course objectives were met.
Time difference Although we had been concerned
by the time difference, participants were
actually impressed by how quickly they received a
response. All emails were replied to within 24
hours. Two participants commented positively on
this in the evaluation form I appreciated the
very prompt manner in which Diana the course
facilitator replied to my emails. Very well done
especially considering the time
differences. All responses by email from the
Staff, were very quick and helpful. Workload
Several participants felt the volume of work was
difficult to fit in over the time period of 2
months. Future FOLIOz course have included a
reading week during the middle of the course to
enable participants to catch-up.

Future Developments Several participants on the
pilot course indicated that they would like more
opportunity to discuss the course with other
participants. For the Clinicos and Knowledge
Management Course a discussion area was set up on
Google Groups for the participants.
FOLIOz Now Following on from the pilot, ScHARR
was commissioned to deliver three further
courses. e-FOLIO ran from September to October
2007, InfoSkills was re-run from October to
November 2007 and Clinicos from February to March
2008. For 2008 3 further courses were
commissioned Knowledge Management, which ran
from April to June, Evaluating Information Skills
Training will run from August to September and
Project Management from October to November.
Although, the buddy group system has worked
satisfactorily the FOLIOz team decided to offer a
self-directed route as with UK FOLIO courses. For
the Clinicos and Knowledge Management this option
was offered and on the Knowledge Management
Course two participants chose this option.

Conclusion
FOLIOz demonstrates the potential for UK
librarians to successfully provide e-learning
courses to participants in Australia. The
FOLIO/FOLIOz model could be adapted to other
English-speaking countries. Early negotiations
are currently exploring the possibility of
courses for Dutch health librarians and for
members of EAHIL.
For more infromation about this poster please
contact efolio_at_sheffield.ac.uk