“Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it’s been.”
Truckin’, The Grateful Dead

In case you haven’t heard, I’m trading the canal towpath alongside NXLevel’s headquarters for the beach, where I will be contemplating the meaning of life and writing about something besides life sciences compliance. In other words, I’m retiring.

While I will still be “virtually” hanging around NXLevel Compliance on a part-time basis and even contributing to this blog, my journey in the world of life sciences’ compliance training is coming to an end. And it has certainly been a long, interesting trip.

That’s 16 years of custom and off-the-shelf eLearning modules and a plethora of workshops and games all intended to help companies reduce risk and help their employees conduct business in a more compliant manner. Some were produced by us at NXLevel, some by in-house resources at industry companies, and some, based on the quality of the work, by vendors who had no business developing training, let alone expecting clients to pay for it.

So, the time has come to pack my bags and to ruminate on the evolution of compliance training I have witnessed during my professional journey. I leave impressed with the progress (albeit not always with the pace of that progress) and hope for a brighter future of reduced risk through better training.

Where We’ve Been

All those years ago, when I first joined NXLevel Compliance (then known as PharmaCertify), compliance training was somewhat in its infancy. To be more exact, “effective” compliance training was in its infancy. Slots reserved for compliance during POA meetings were often filled with representatives of the compliance department speaking to a PowerPoint deck. And even if the slides were created with some sense of creativity and imagination, little to no thought was given to engagement and instructional design…or heaven forbid, fun! After all, this was compliance, we had to be serious. Fortunately, that notion has faded.

Online eLearning offered opportunities to raise the engagement level and impact of the learning, but off-the-shelf “industry-generic” modules from large vendors were commonplace back then, and nothing will send a life sciences learner into a haze of disinterest more quickly than seeing an ethics scenario featuring characters from an insurance company. When modules were targeted to the industry, they were often developed by vendors whose primary business was focused on consulting, and they lacked the instructional and visual design necessary to improve the retention of policies and key concepts.

Not all training was dark, dreary, and dull back then though. There were leaders on the industry side who recognized early on that training needed to do more than just check-the-box in case the regulators came calling. As a vendor, I had the opportunity to call a number of these individuals my clients, and their steadfast commitment to raising the training bar was refreshing and presented us with a welcomed challenge.

Where We Are Now

Eventually, that commitment started to permeate the industry and the light at the end of the learning tunnel grew brighter. Instructional design concepts like adult learning principles became more than a buzz phrase and companies realized that training needed to be relevant to be effective.  

Today, our clients come to the table knowing that training, whether off-the-shelf or custom, needs to be targeted to a learner’s role and feature up-to-date content designed in a manner that optimizes learning. Even the government is getting on board, with recent guidance highlighting the need for “shorter, relevant” training programs.   

The bar has been raised on design as well. Simply put, it’s easy to see that compliance training looks better across the life sciences landscape. Many of our clients are even asking for more thematic training, with the imagery and verbiage being carried across the entire curriculum and the communications plan. (By the way, you really should contact my colleague, Dan O’Connor, to see examples of the award-winning “pulp magazine” concept we helped one client create and execute. It’s cool stuff they’re using to great success.)  

And fun is no longer a dirty word! In addition to asking us to develop bolder concepts for online training, clients utilize our workshop frameworks like the Compliance Escape Room, and the series of games we offer through the Training Arcade, including the always popular JEOPARDY! game (check out the demo here).

At long last, compliance training industry professionals seem to finally be catching up with the colleagues on the sales training side of the business in terms of creativity, engagement, and instructional design. It was a tall hill to climb, and we are getting there. The future looks bright, now all we need to do is mix a little science into the formula.  

Where We Are Going (Or Should Be Going)

“Science is magic that works.”
Kurt Vonnegut

A few years back, I wrote on this blog about the German scientist, Herman Ebbinghaus, and his well-established “forgetting curve,” which essentially demonstrates that the amount of information humans remember after a learning event drops precipitously after the completion of the of that event. Our colleague, Steven Just, Ed.D., a leader in the field of learning science explains Professor Ebbinghaus’ theory this way, “The secret to long-term learning is to retrieve the memory from long-term memory, bring it into working memory, process it, and then re-encode it into long-term memory.”

So, the future of training isn’t virtual reality, as the faddists would have you believe, it’s in the continuous reinforcement of key concepts and the on-going delivery of training no matter the format. And for the compliance professionals wise enough to understand that reviewing training materials at regular intervals (spaced repetition) leads to better learning, the future is now.

Beware though, micro doesn’t just mean shorter. In addition to mini modules, learning nuggets like quizzes and gaming, deployed over time all heighten retention as well. Spacing the delivery of those components is the key to ensuring the proper guidance and best practices remain top of mind as employees conduct their business. It’s why the team at NXLevel Compliance emphasizes the use of foundational, or core, training, reinforcement solutions (quizzes, games, assessment, etc.) and performance support tools (interactive PDFs, posters, videos, etc.) to continuously “encode” concepts into the learners’ memories. Continuous learning leads to lasting results. It’s not magic, it’s science.

That’s a Wrap!

Over the last 16 years, I have had the pleasure of working with great clients, subject matter experts, and associates. I have learned from all of you. As you continue your compliance journey, I urge you to keep reading this blog and even more so, stay in touch with my colleagues at NXLevel. I know I am biased, but they truly are at the cutting edge of training design, and they bring a sense of professionalism and dedication to every project, no matter how large or small. I have been fortunate to work with them.

Thanks for reading everyone. I will see you down the road!

Sean Murphy
(Formerly) NXLevel Compliance