San Diego Eye Bank Increases Awareness of Eye Donation With Articulate 360

The Challenge

San Diego Eye Bank needed to create engaging independent learning

Training—specifically independent learning—plays a key role in preparing San Diego Eye Bank’s employees to carry out the organization’s mission of ending blindness. Beyond onboarding, the organization relies heavily on technical and compliance training. These educational opportunities ensure teams and affiliate eye banks understand key policies and procedures, created and governed with FDA and EBAA (Eye Bank Association of America) guidelines in mind.

Before Articulate, the eye bank’s training program remained largely unchanged for decades, with updates limited to regulatory requirements. Furthermore, many of its independent learnings required participants to read extensive sections of policy, which led to a cumbersome and sometimes confusing learning experience.

“Knowledge retention and comprehension suffered,” says Shahri Jones, Learning Management System Developer at San Diego Eye Bank. This made the organization highly reliant on a trainer—a full-time employee who would be pulled away from their job to facilitate the learning process in person.

The eye bank needed a way to make their independent learning more engaging and less reliant on in-person trainers. This would help them not only boost employees’ knowledge retention but also better prepare them for practical application. It would also shorten the time needed to bring new hires and affiliate eye banks up to speed on key concepts.

The Answer

With Rise and AI Assistant, San Diego Eye Bank streamlined technical and compliance training

With Articulate, San Diego Eye Bank has been able to create more engaging online training that blends seamlessly with in-person instruction. “Articulate helps us integrate hands-on learning and online learning without overwhelming participants,” says Jones. “With Articulate, we’re able to streamline training so it’s not highly dependent on the schedule of an in-person trainer.”

Today, new hires can immediately start their training with online pre-work built in Rise that prepares them for their essential hands-on training and eventually, instructor signoff. Topics span across three key areas of the business: family services, technical training, and distribution. Depending on their role, employees may take training on key regulatory guidelines, how to perform specific procedures, interacting with physicians, and more.

After the online training, employees receive in-person training and eventually instructor sign-off on their new skills. “We’ve gotten fantastic feedback from our new hires on how the online and in-person content complement each other,” says Jones.

In-person trainers have also noticed a difference. “Our trainers say that learners are more prepared when they get to the hands-on portion of their training,” says Jones. “They know the questions they want to ask, they’re thinking critically already, and the sign-off timeline is shortened.”

Jones finds Articulate’s AI Assistant to be a helpful tool for creating high-quality first drafts of specific steps within a course. “Being able to upload a source document and have AI Assistant create a step for me is very helpful,” she says. “AI Assistant gives me a great foundation that I can build upon—it’s worth the investment.”

Unlocking Human Potential

Articulate 360 helps San Diego Eye Bank’s employees become spokespeople for ending blindness

Since implementing Articulate, San Diego Eye Bank has seen new hires prepare for their hands-on training dramatically faster, and engaging learners with more interactive online training has also improved knowledge retention. But the benefits don’t stop there.

One of the major challenges San Diego Eye Bank faces is the general public’s lack of awareness about eye donation and how it works. “With Articulate, in addition to our technical training, we’ve been able to go more in-depth as to why eye tissue donation is important and how it impacts patient outcomes across the world,” says Jones. “It’s an investment in our employees. Now, when we send them out into the community, they become spokespeople for what we do.”

Jones notes that when people don’t know about the process of eye donation, it can be scary to make decisions around it. The passing of a loved one is one of the most challenging experiences a person can go through, and the eyes carry particular meaning.

“Our eyes are the windows to the soul, as they say,” says Jones. “Having a team of people that knows how to start the conversation around eye donation in a sensitive, respectful, and informative way is paramount to our culture and our mission.”

With Articulate 360, San Diego Eye Bank creates comprehensive, engaging employee training that improves knowledge retention and increases awareness of eye donation.