Two prominent Peoria area service organizations, the American Red Cross and Catholic Charities began using Iona’s Doctum® eLearning Development System in March. Both organizations will be using Doctum to create their own, custom eLearning courses that can be delivered to employees, volunteers as well as those who use the services of Catholic Charities and the Red Cross.

Doctum, with its easy to use interface and variety of output options, offers several advantages for service organizations looking to produce eLearning content. Doctum’s web-based interface allows training professionals and individuals who have little or no eLearning development experience to quickly and easily produce eLearning modules. In addition, Doctum facilitates collaboration between individuals by providing an easy way to review and comment on modules as they are being developed. Doctum’s Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model makes it simple for those new to eLearning to experiment without incurring the higher costs associated with purchasing packaged software or hiring outside consultants to do the work. “The Red Cross is always searching for effective ways to reach more people with disaster prevention and health education. Iona’s Doctum eLearning Development System is an exciting opportunity to expand our training.” Anne Fox, CEO, American Red Cross Central Illinois Chapter.

In today’s economic times, organizations are turning to eLearning as a way to do more for less. The “create once, share with many” nature of eLearning allows non-profits who have a large constituency to distribute learning to many people at a significantly lower cost than delivering on-site, instructor-led training. “Using this software will be a great asset for our workers and help us reduce travel costs and time away from the office for training,” says Becky Cobb, Training Coordinator/HR Specialist at Catholic Charities Diocese of Peoria. ELearning also has the advantage that it can provide people the ability to work at their own pace. Plus, once they have taken a course, it can be easily used as a reference or taken again at a later time as a refresher.