Danish Committee for Health Education supports citizens’ well-being with digital workshops delivered through Adobe Connect.
Established 1964
Employees: 45
Copenhagen, Denmark
www.dche.eu
Adobe Connect Channel Partner
20x
Scaled operations to meet demand
Products:
Combine self-paced e-learning with live webinars to best connect with participants
Reduce the strain of long learning sessions for facilitators and participants dealing with physical or mental health conditions
Deliver intuitive controls for participants and workshop facilitators
Delivered 19 six-week courses reaching 500 citizens in four months
Trained new facilitators and producers to use Adobe Connect within an hour
Provided informational videos to cut down the length of in-person meetings
Scaled operations 20x to meet demand during the COVID-19 pandemic
90% of participants complete all sessions in a workshop
For people living with chronic diseases and conditions, medical treatment is only the first step in helping them live long and fulfilling lives. Health education and intervention work alongside medicine to provide holistic support for patients and caretakers alike.
The Danish Committee for Health Education (DCHE) is a national non-profit organization that provides public health information and services, including books, apps, awareness campaigns, and events. One of DCHE’s most significant ongoing projects is its series of workshops aimed at supporting caregivers or patients dealing with chronic pain, chronic disease, or anxiety and depression.
“We find that group workshops can be very helpful for people, even if they’re dealing with different illnesses or conditions,” says Nicolaj Holm Ravn Faber, Chief Advisor at the Danish Committee for Health Education. “It helps them feel less alone knowing that others are dealing with similar issues.”
Lifecycle of a DCHE course with self-paced e-learning and live webinars using Adobe Connect.
Over the course of six to eight weeks, groups meet to discuss their struggles and learn tools that may help them cope with challenges for more satisfying lives. But Faber recognized that in-person group meetings weren’t the best option for everyone. Patients might feel social anxiety when participating in groups. Others might tire easily due to their conditions or live far from a meeting location. Online courses seemed like a good option for many people.
Faber began looking for a solution that would combine self-directed e-learning for individual work with the live interactivity of webinars for group sessions. Adobe Connect delivered the on-demand and live learning that DCHE needed.
“Adobe Connect is very easy to use, for both participants and facilitators,” says Faber. “With Adobe Connect, we have expanded our workshops to reach many more people across Denmark.”
Nicolaj Holm Ravn Faber
Chief Advisor, Danish Committee for Health Education
“We use a lot of short videos during sessions and Adobe Connect is second to none when it comes to handling video.”
Faber encourages a 40-20-40 learning model in workshops, where 40% of the learning occurs through activities and education before a session, 20% through collaboration and communication during a session, and 40% through reflection after the session. Adobe Connect helps guide participants through each stage with flexible layouts that can display any type of content.
Participants log into Adobe Connect any time before a group session to complete an individual learning activity. The activity might involve video, slides, or quizzes. For instance, in the first session for people dealing with chronic illnesses, participants are asked to type into text boxes and submit any challenges that they face during daily life due to their illness. Since this learning portion is self-directed, participants can log in and complete the activity when it’s convenient for them.
Example of an individual DCHE e-learning activity using Adobe Connect.
This individual activity is followed by a live, hour-long virtual session using Adobe Connect. In the first meeting for people dealing with chronic illnesses, the facilitator gathers the challenges that people submitted into a single slide to display for the group.
“People can see that even if their illnesses are different, they’re dealing with many of the same day-to-day challenges,” says Faber. “We could brainstorm these challenges together, but it encourages more participation when we give people time to think and share on their own.”
Facilitators and producers can change the layout as needed for each session, delivering breakout rooms, chat, quizzes, polls, and videos to keep participants engaged. The high engagement has helped increase participation, with more than 90% of people completing all six sessions in a workshop.
“We use a lot of short videos during sessions and Adobe Connect is second to none when it comes to handling video,” says Faber. “Normally we need to share our screen and double-check that sound is being shared correctly. With Adobe Connect, producers can just switch the screen from the facilitator’s video camera to a video layout made for video streaming.”
Nicolaj Holm Ravn Faber
Chief Advisor, Danish Committee for Health Education
“Adobe Connect is so easy to use that I could train someone to work with it in an hour. This allowed us to scale out and provide services to more people.”
A video layout in Adobe Connect is used for seamless video streaming during live DCHE group sessions.
DCHE had been using Adobe Connect for several years when the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person group meetings impossible. Municipalities across Denmark reached out to DCHE about expanding online group sessions to meet the growing need for support, particularly for people dealing with anxiety and depression.
Over the course of two weeks, Faber held nearly constant training sessions with facilitators across Denmark. In addition to its regular group sessions, DCHE started holding sessions for youths dealing with anxiety and depression during the pandemic. Ultimately, the organization saw its operations increase 20x since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We held 19 workshops reaching 500 participants in four months after the COVID-19 pandemic hit,” says Faber. “Adobe Connect is so easy to use that I could train someone to work with it in an hour. This allowed us to scale out and provide services to more people.”
“Adobe Connect has shown us the power of digital connection by allowing us to provide continuous support to the most fragile groups in our society.”
Nicolaj Holm Ravn Faber
Chief Advisor, Danish Committee for Health Education
Adobe Connect channel partner Connect-Innovation provided initial training to DCHE facilitators and producers as well as ongoing support for servers, security, and encryption.
“Connect-Innovation understands that Adobe Connect needs to be as intuitive as possible for our participants and producers, so they’re very active in discussing better ways for us to run programs and connect with people,” says Faber.
DCHE also uses Adobe Connect for training and workshops with facilitators. One thing that makes DCHE unique is that many of its facilitators also live with chronic conditions. This adds another layer of connection between participants and facilitators, but it means that many of the facilitators can get worn out by long, multi-day workshops. Faber broke down the workshops by providing small, informational videos that participants can watch beforehand, reducing the length of in-person meetings.
Faber sees this type of hybrid learning as a potential future for DCHE. Even with pandemic concerns lessening, combining individual e-learning sessions with in-person group sessions could make workshops more manageable for participants. DCHE is also in the process of integrating Adobe Connect with an open-source learning management system (LMS), which will allow participants to log into Adobe Connect sessions directly through the LMS screen.
“Both online and physical sessions will continue to have a place at DCHE moving forward,” says Faber. “Adobe Connect has shown us the power of digital connection by enabling us to provide continuous support to the most fragile groups in our society.”
NOTE: Connect Innovation is focused on supporting companies and organizations from various market segments and driving the most ideal outcomes by increasing the communication and collaboration with their employees and clients with Adobe Connect.
Connect Innovation is a leading provider of Adobe Connect for web meetings, webinars, and e-learning in the Nordic area. It provides online courses for each and any kind of user of Adobe Connect, no matter if you are experienced, or just started to use Adobe Connect. Our courses are available in all Nordic languages and English language as well.
Other than that, Connect Innovation organizes great webinars where you can get familiarized with the software, learn new skills or be up to date with the software updates.
You can check our courses here, and our webinars and blogs here.
You can contact us here.
You also may be interested in:
News
Webinars