Enhancing public health workforce development through targeted online certificates: Eleven years of lessons learned

The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health offers seven online certificates. Each offers four or five graduate courses that are targeted in a specific area of public health practice. Most of our certificate students are accomplished, mid-career professionals. However, as their careers develop, they find themselves in need of specific skills (management, continuity planning, informatics) or they wish to pursue a new field of study (clinical research, geographic information systems). Such a student population poses specific challenges for educators, since the student's primary goal is not just to learn, but to learn in a time- and cost-effective manner. Teaching these populations during the last twelve years has taught us that the “e” in “e-learning” stands for more than just effective education; it also stands for efficiency in that education. In response, we have optimized time allotted to learning tasks, selected more effective learning tools, designed more functional didactic interfaces, developed case studies that have immediate relevance to practice, and designed collaborative forums that promote knowledge through student cooperation, not competition. These experiences have also benefitted our traditional degree programs as well, as the lessons learned were generalized to all of our online programs and to blended classes for on campus students.