Axia Digital Ireland

15th May 2023 by retheridge

Skills Passports – Creating a Transferable Workforce

At Axia Digital we are very proud of the work we have done to develop digital passports and this is a continuing area of growth for our company. Skills passports allow staff to demonstrate their core skills effectively and easily against a standardised framework and share this information quickly with fellow professionals and line managers, across their organisation. This enables staff to move across locations without the need for lengthy skills checking and assessment procedures, saving time and money for employers and organisations.

Please read our case study Skills Passports – Creating a Transferable Workforce

3rd May 2023 by retheridge

National Competency Assessment Document for nurses in Ireland online event

The team behind the implementation of the first digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document for nurses in Ireland will be telling their story at an online event on May 11^th between 11.00 and 13.00.

The primary purpose of the event will be to enable delegates to hear directly from the team, about how their initial concerns and doubts about whether a digital solution would work, especially in the dispersed communities around Letterkenny, were allayed by the discovery of the benefits that an online solution can bring. Such as on the day when although storms prevented a CPC from visiting a placement, they could still meet the student online and review their portfolio.

The event will also feature Professor Thomas Kearns, Consultant and Co-Director WHO Collaborating Centre who was one of the first to recognise the impact that digital solutions could have on the education and professional development of nurses and has for many years been a powerful and persuasive advocate of e-portfolios.

The event’s Chair is Dr. Louise McBride who as well as being the Head of the Department of Nursing and Healthcare, Atlantic Technological University is also the current President of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. It was Louise who could see the potential of adopting a digital approach to the practice assessment of nurses, following her attendance at the RCSI’s annual conference, where a presentation was made by Bournemouth University of their e-portfolio which was being used by nurses and those that supported them.

Delegates will both be shown MyCad.ie and receive reassurance about the measures that have taken to make sure that the site is secure and about how scalable the site is if other institutions in Ireland decide to adopt it.

Registrations for the event are still being accepted however both registrants and anyone else who is interested can join the “Teams” event by selecting this link on the May 11^th 2023 at 11.00

The programme for the event is as follows;

11.00 Welcome by Dr. Louise McBride Head of Department of Nursing and Healthcare, Atlantic Technological University

11.10 Professor Thomas Kearns Consultant and Co-Director WHO Collaborating Centre ‘Some reflections on the importance and benefits of those involved in the education and professional development on adopting digital solutions.’

11.20 Mr Chris Peat Chair of Axia Digital (Ireland) will speak on ‘How the legitimate and important concerns about adopting a digital approach can be addressed and resolved.

11.35 Presentation of the digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document on the MyCad.ie site. This will include looking at the reports that are available.

11.50 An opportunity to respond to questions raised during the presentations using Chat, chaired by Dr. Louise McBride

12 noon to 12.30 The User experience, an opportunity to hear from students, CPCs and Tutors who use MyCad.ie

This will include a presentation of a Video that captures the user experience and the opportunity to then question those that were involved in the creation of the video.

Following the event this video will be available to share with other colleagues.

12.30 Concluding remarks and opportunity to ask further questions.

28th April 2023 by retheridge

Axia Digital wins prestigious Irish Education Award

Axia Digital’s work in Ireland – in collaboration with the Department of Nursing, Atlantic Technological University, Donegal – was recognised last night (April 27^th 2023) at the prestigious Irish National Education Awards in Dublin. These awards recognise excellence in the third level education sector in on Ireland from both State and privately-funded institutions.

The Department of Nursing ATU Donegal, HSE and Axia Digital (Ireland) received the Best Industry/Business-Academic Collaboration Award for implementing the first digital version of the National Competency Assessment Document for Nurses.

This collaboration has brought together academic and industry partners to develop a cutting-edge nursing education programme. The collaboration leverages the strengths of each partner to create a web-based version of the assessment document that is accessed by the students and their practice-based Preceptors, who assess their work, and the Community Practice Co-ordinators who support the nurses when they are on placement. The assessment document can also be accessed remotely by tutors and the other University staff responsible for quality assuring the assessment process.

One of the remarkable features of this project was that whilst everyone accepts the direction of travel is towards digital because ‘it is the way to go’ – the practicalities, both real and imagined, represented challenges that hitherto have prevented such an approach being adopted. The project also began at a time when the cyber-attack at the HSE had ‘rocked’ the belief of health professionals in the safety of digital systems, and when the Covid pandemic was still leading to significant pressures on Hospitals and community health teams. The geography of the project area was also, on the face of it, potentially unhelpful. The site was not being accessed from a major city like Dublin but rather from smaller hospitals and community settings across Donegal.

Dr Louise McBride, Head of Nursing and Healthcare at ATU, commented: ‘The MyCad Eportfolio project collaboration brings together academic, industry and our HSE clinical nursing partners to develop a cutting-edge online access dashboard for nursing students and staff for a competence assessment Eportfolio in our nursing education programmes. We’re delighted to see our efforts being acknowledged and these nominations are a testament of collaboration, commitment and success of ATU with HSE North West Nursing and Axia Digital.”

Chris Peat, Chair, Axia Digital (Ireland) – who with Max Jordan, the company’s Senior Developer with Specialism (Assessment Systems) – led the team who implemented the site added:

‘Our technology platform has been developed over 20 years and it enables us to transform paper based assessment processes into digital ones. This transformation brings many benefits and crucially enables health professionals to focus on what matters, which is the practice development and assessment of nurses by streamlining the administration of the process. We’re delighted to have collaborated with ATU Donegal so that it has become the first University in Ireland where nurses are using an assessment document that they can access from their mobile phone.’

An online dissemination event to present the site and provide an opportunity to talk to some of its users takes place on Thursday 11^th May between 11.00 and 13.00. Please book your place by emailing events@axiadigitalireland.com .

24th April 2023 by retheridge

College of Radiographers – CPD Now

Read the College of Radiographers Case Study

Axia Digital and the College of Radiographers (CoR) have been working successfully together since 2004 to support their member CPD. We are proud of our long association with the college and the online CPD planning, recording and evaluation system we developed for them, ‘CPD Now’. This is available to all members of the Society of Radiographers.

Richard Etheridge, Managing Director said:

“The College of Radiographers have been trailblazing the development of online CPD since 2004. It has been a pleasure to work with the team, old and new, we have learnt a lot from them. We are pleased to celebrate the success of our longest standing ePortfolio. Working with the College has helped us to improve our core platform and led to other work around the world, including the Irish Institute of Radiography and Radiation Therapy and the New Zealand Institute of Medical Radiation Technology. It has also informed the development of our site for the Centre of Advancing Practice. The Centre plays a key role in enabling Health Care Professionals in a wide range of areas to have their skills and knowledge recognised.”

CPD Now is a user-friendly ePortfolio website that enables the CoR members to set up and maintain a fully comprehensive record of their ongoing CPD. This ensures that they meet their requirements for the bi-annual CPD Audit of Radiographers which is carried out by The Health and Care Professions Council. Those working as Assistant Practitioners, Mammography Associates, Practice Educators, Advanced or Consultant Practitioners can also use CPD Now to apply for individual accreditation with the College of Radiographers through the College’s portfolio of CoR Accreditation Schemes.

2nd March 2023 by retheridge

Educational Development Trust ePortfolio

The Educational Development trust (EDT) engaged Axia Digital to develop an ePortfolio that allows their clients to build a body of evidence to demonstrate organisational capability in relation to the national Quality In Careers Standard. The site went live for the initial cohort in January 2023 on time and on budget.

Read the Educational Development Trust Case Study

Managing Director, Richard Etheridge, said:

“The key difference in this project is that it’s the school or college working towards the Quality Standard rather than an individual. Most of our ePortfolios allow individuals to build a portfolio of evidence to demonstrate capability. We have developed some new tools that allow the school or college to start an application and then add collaborators thus allowing a team rather than an individual to build and link the evidence to the Standard within our ePortfolio platform”.

About the Quality in Careers Standard

The Standard is the single national quality award for careers education and guidance in secondary schools and colleges in England. It is “strongly recommended” by the Department for Education in its Statutory Guidance to schools and colleges on their careers duty.

The Standard is owned by the Quality in Careers Consortium which has appointed a number of Licensed Awarding Bodies across the country to assess, accredit and award the Standard. One of the Awarding Bodies is EDT.

You can find out more about the Standard at the Quality in Careers Consortium’s website https://www.qualityincareers.org.uk/

Our Client’s Perspective

One of the challenges EDT has had using a paper based system is demonstrating the time and commitment of the EDT Consultant and the value it adds to the process. Axia Digital added a section that allows the EDT Consultant record their hours making the involvement transparent. When completing the external summative assessment EDT Assessor are able simply to bookmark evidence while reviewing the ePortfolio. The system remembers the bookmarked items and draws them into the final report which is a significant time saving.

EDT Operations Manager, Renu Jaswal, said:

“Working with Richard and his team has been nothing but excellent, they understood our needs perfectly and when certain things didn’t work or could be improved, they came up with suggestions which really supported and navigated us through the whole process. I would recommend using AXIA in the future to any organisations thinking about moving to an E portfolio as for us, they understood the Quality in Careers Standard perfectly which in turn made the process a lot more less daunting for us.”