Good Clinical Practice
Building the Novartis Academy on Coursera and a certified course for clinical investigators
The challenge:
There is a lack of diversity in clinical trials which can have a catastrophic effect on the efficacy of medicines in underrepresented groups. In 2021 Novartis and the Novartis US Foundation announced the Beacon of Hope, their 10-year commitment to co-create programs that address health and education inequities and create greater diversity, equity, inclusion and trust across the research and development ecosystem.
We wanted to capitalize on our partnership with Massive Online Open Course provider Coursera, to support efforts to establish Centers of Excellence, training new principal investigators and trial managers, and improving the quality of clinical trials to meet the needs of patients served by historically black colleges and universities.
The solution:
We launched the Novartis Academy on Coursera with the course Introduction to Good Clinical Practice. This was part of a wider three course certified specialization. My role was to map Novartis’ existing content, design the course modules to appeal to the target audience, and ensure the learning objectives were aligned with the certification requirements.
This included instructional design, assessment design, the management of external vendors and support with the Novartis Academy partnership.
Results:
Over 13,000 enrollments to the first course ‘Introduction to Good Clinical Practice’ with an everage 4.7/5 rating
Over 22,000 enrollments to the Novartis Academy overall (to date)
