Course Makeover: Revenue Cycle Operations - 2025 Updates
- Client: NYU Langone Health, RCO Department
- Software: Articulate Storyline, ChatGPT, Gamma, Wellsaid, Adobe Photoshop, Camtasia Studio, Audiate
- Categories: eLearning development, instructional design, visual design, multimedia learning, project management
The department of Revenue Cycle Operations (RCO) trains staff on several tasks regarding entering and processing insurance information. Employees must schedule their in-office attendance using Planon software (when they are scheduled to work in person at the office) and follow office policies on use of their IDs and attire. As part of their duties, RCO team members identify and enter patient insurance information with accuracy. Every employee is required to take core courses on basic use of the system and customer service skills. After completion of the introductory courses, employees proceed to take courses that pertain to their area of specialty. I was in charge of redesigning the instruction for all their online courses, implementing all the eLearning courses updates, create and update job aids and other resources, and assisting in organizing the courses in learning plans in the LMS, based on specialty.
Project Highlights
The approaches for the instructional design and eLearning development in this project are the same used back in 2021 when the courses were updated from their 2015 versions. In 2025, the courses from 2021 were outdated in both the design and the content. Since then, there have been many changes in the insurance industry, in RCO department structure, in the learning thechnology used to host and assign courses, in the way employees perfomr their duties, and in NYU Langone Health as a health care institution.
Challenges and Constraints
All course content was provided in the form of PowerPoint slides containing:
- All course content was provided in the form of PowerPoint slides containing the updated information, some of which were pasted screenshots of the old courses.
- NYU Langone Health acquired Long Island Community Hospital, now NYU Langone Suffolk, which requires onboarding and training of the new staff on the current RCO.
- NYU Langone Health also released a brabd refresh and requires all communication and education to follow the new design guidelines.
- I must use NYU Langone Health's brand refresh design guidelines, not the design elements of the insurance companies used in the 2021 versions of the courses.
- NYU langone Health is in the process of restructuring and replacing the current LMS.
- A new CEO will start leading the organization in September 2025, which might impact the leadership and operations of departments cross the institution.
- The onboarding process includes the introduction of tables of organization containing names and pictures of the department leadership. They were expecting organizational changes wich must be reflected in the content presented to new employees.
- Employees work in a hybrid, remote/in person setting; they are expectd to reserve workstations for the days/times when they are expected in the office. For that purpose, they use a software tool (Planon) to locate and reserve workstations in the office.
My Approach to the Project
First things first: the most important aspect of this project was defining which courses have priority. It was decided that the Onboarding and introductory courses are the most important to update, as the new NYU Langone Suffolk employees will need them. The current curricula and organization of courses also needed updating, so the curricula organization and eLearning development of the onboarding courses were delivered concurrently. We also decided to have "transitional" webinars, that is, the department will continue with the live classes and webinars while the courses are in development. The offering of each live course or webinar will end as soon as the eLearning version of the new course is published in the LMS. The project stakeholders and directors of each area of the department were responsible for providing me with the most recent and updated information.
For the user experience, it was decided that the main delivery medium will be desktop and laptop computers. That means that the courses development should be desktop and laptop friendly; responsiveness is secondary in this case. However, the course must provide basic accessibility features and closed captioning. I created templates for the introductory video of each course, consistent with the brand refresh design guidelines of NYU Langone. I also designed basic slides for content consistency, using basic design principles for multimedia learning.
The advantages of this approach are:
- Effective project management. Using the same ID approach provides a solid foundation and reduces redundancies in the eLearning development process.
- A consistent, polished, professional look and feel that follows the organization's design guidelines.
- The implementation of the NYU Langone new design guidelines provides consistency in the visuals for each course, simplifying the visual design of the courses.
- Presenting the information online save the time and efforts used in webinars and in-person sessions. The online learning courses can also be retaken and used as reference for future use.
Below are from selected courses.
The visual and graphic design of the course follows the design guidelines for NYU Langone Health's branding, as per their brand refreshing guidelines of 2025.
The visual and graphic design of the course make the use of photoshopped slide backgrounds of the organization offices and facilities, providing learners an engaging and relatable visual context.
The old and tired "At the end of this course, you will be able to..." phrase was replaced with measurable outcomes that highlight the expected actions that learners can take as result of the onboarding process. I decided to replace the objectives with desired outcomes (after several meetings with the stakeholders) to let them know that the onboarding process should contribute to the better and stronger functioning of their department. Furthermore, the stated "objectives", though some not optimally worded, reflected the expected outcomes, as they don't focus on the learning process, but in the expected functions that learners will be exercising after the learning event.
To be client-oriented, I used the same type of illustrations that they used in the live presentation for the eLearning version of the courses. However, I improved the visual design and added low-level interaction to avoid passive reading when learners participate in the asynchronous, self-paced version of the onboarding event.
To help sustain learners’ attention on key information, the original list of items in this slide was converted into a simple interactive exercise. It was redesigned as an interactive exercise with the intend of increasing retention and to provide an interface that is as simple and efficient as possible to use.