Virgin Atlantic Airways is the UK’s second largest international airline. Committed to providing and promoting a safe and healthy environment for its employees and the travelling public, the company developed a policy to minimize problems caused by the effects of alcohol and drugs which may affect the ability of any individual to carry out their duties safely.

Viewed as a major PR win for the airline its worldwide application to all Virgin Atlantic Airways employees, agency workers and contractors, implementation of the policy was considered high risk for employee morale. As a result, the positioning of the e-learning was crucial to the success of the policy and future e-learning projects.

The drugs and alcohol policy programme was the first to be developed as part of an ongoing e-learning strategy for Virgin Atlantic Airways and V2 Media (Park Lane, London). The project therefore needed to demonstrate a return on investment (ROI) for cost and effectiveness compared to classroom based learning.

Requirements for Drugs and Alcohol e-learning programme included:

  • Educating all employees (in excess of 7500), agency workers and contractors
    • The hazards associated with alcohol and drugs.
    • The support structures available to them.
    • On the policy and how it applies to them.
  • To ensure that neither alcohol or drugs affects the running of the business, or the health and well being of Virgin Atlantic employees.
  • Creating a resource for future reference and e-learning for new employees.
  • The e-learning programme to be available online, CD and print.
  • The ability to track and report on employees interaction with the programme.
  • Test and measure the extent of policy education among employees.
  • Provide hosting and support for the e-learning application for 12 months or more.
  • Create a development cycle for future e-learning courses.
  • Be animated, interactive and include written text, narration, audio and video.
  • The design should reflect the Virgin brand in tone and style.
  • Consideration to the varying levels of computer literacy amongst the target audience, from both the course access and course usability viewpoint.
  • The ability to update course content by administrative staff  in-house.
  • Integrate into the Oracle iLearning LMS and Oracle HR user database (initially 7,500)
  • Comply with AICC and SCORM industry standards.

As Technical Project Manager and Application Developer my initial role in this project was to create the technical documentation to help win the tender on behalf of V2 Media.

My solution was to first develop an application framework which enabled the interoperability of the programme content (text, image, animation, audio, video and quizzes) across all the delivery platforms; a bespoke online LCMS e-learning application; a CD application and print ready distribution version. 

This flexible and cost effective asset management solution helped streamline the content creation process and could be easily replicated for future e-learning courses,  further reducing maintenance and upgrade overheads.

For online delivery of the learning programme I developed a bespoke learning content management system (LCMS) that was both AICC and SCORM compliant, that could utilise the existing HR database and integrate into an Oracle iLearning LMS.

The bespoke LCMS provided all the tools required by Virgin Atlantic Airways in-house administrative staff to securely manage and reuse the programmes learning objects, track and report on interaction with the programme, test and measure the extent of policy education for all employees. The administration user interface provided a suit of tools to manage users, view online user status reports, view online assessment results statistics and automatically send user reminder emails.

The Drugs and Alcohol Policy Programme was required to educate all employees, agency workers and contractors worldwide. To compensate for bandwidth constraints, delivery methods and user preference for interacting with the course, I had to create multiple optimised versions of all the learning objects (including image, animation and video encoding) and engineer the LCMS to deliver the appropriate learning objects based on bandwidth and user preference settings.

Working with award winning interface and games designer David Kori, a user interface and user experience was created to clearly identify the e-learning programme as a Virgin Atlantic Airways corporate entity but at the same time reflect Virgin’s established informal approach.

Crucial to the presentation of the programme was the need to convey to the user both the importance of the policy and that the course is compulsory. Opposed to an experience to be feared, the programme had to be interpreted as an enjoyable and beneficial learning resource.

The e-learning course consisted of carefully constructed rich media assets, including written content, graphic, illustration and photographic imagery, interactive animation, spoken audio and HD videos.

To test and measure the extent of policy education for all employees, a series of interactive quizzes were developed. As the authenticated user interacted with each quiz, progress was tracked and recorded to create statistical reports.

I have provided web hosting services and support for the Virgin Atlantic Airways online programmes for over 3 years.Contact Me To Learn More