Present Well-being LLC logo.

Present Well-Being LLC uses interactive video for educator mental health training

Dr. Jennifer Clifden, Founder and CEO of Present Well-Being LLC, taught in a K-12 classroom before pursuing a career as a teacher educator. During her Ph.D. program, she studied the origins of well-being for human service professionals along with curriculum design and instruction. Around the same time, she began to envision a company that would provide professional learning services centered around the concepts of emotional and mental well-being for teachers. 

Today, Clifden provides consulting services for districts, delivering the Present Teacher Restoration Project, an eight-week program that combines her expertise in education, yoga, and meditation practices.

But only a few years ago, Clifden experienced challenges that were similar to those being faced by her clients. She found herself needing to transition to an online instruction model and reevaluate how best to deliver content. And with the growth of Present Well-Being LLC, Clifden also found herself in need of a learning management system (LMS) that would allow her to organize, protect, and distribute content in a sustainable way. 

So she turned to PlayPosit—a WeVideo product.

Objectives

Clifden spent summer 2020 transforming her in-person content into a format that would be easier to consume online, relying on best practices and research to condense a twenty-hour live training into a four-hour video-based course.

When Clifden was hired to provide mental health training for over 12,000 educators in Minnesota's Hennepin County, she had just two weeks to ensure that:

  • Curriculum was safeguarded

  • Multiple file types resided on one platform and within one space

  • Content was easily accessible for clients

  • Updates and content expansion would be possible (and easy)

  • LMS capabilities existed for organization and delivery 

Implementing PlayPosit

Upon meeting with the PlayPosit Team, Clifden was glad to receive assurances that she could deliver her program securely and successfully with a high level of support and service. 

Clifden was advised to use PlayPosit’s playlist application, as it afforded her the most control over not only the individual content but the format in which it was delivered.

With the assistance of one of PlayPosit's instructional designers, Clifden divided her training into digestible chunks, employing best practices for online and video-based learning. To do so, she divided her content into modules within the Present Teacher Restoration Project Playlist. Each module included: 

  • 10-minutes of yoga practice recorded with the assistance of a professional videographer

  • 10-minutes of educational training content with the assistance of a professional videographer

  • 10-minutes of professionally recorded guided meditation 

  • Supplemental materials such as worksheets and images

To ensure that the content was being consumed sustainably, Clifden implemented an eight-week release plan, with new modules released each week. However, in order for teachers to still benefit from the material if they joined the program late, she made materials available for a twelve-week window.

PlayPosit’s standalone nature allowed Clifden to provide access to her content via a safeguard access point on her website, ensuring that content was not only accessible exclusively by the intended audience, but also fully branded behind Present Well-Being LLC’s image. This allowed Clifden to compare valuable website traffic data to the data and analytics afforded to her via PlayPosit. 

Results

Clifden valued PlayPosit’s ability to embed interactions into her custom content, allowing her to implement pre- and post-content surveys, which gathered insights into the way that her content was being consumed by teachers. She then used this data to provide administrators with insight and analytics that informed the level of impact that her program was having.  

Teachers walked away from Clifden’s program with not only four continuing education hours, but a verifiable certificate to take with them no matter where they teach in the future. 

While the first iteration of Clifden’s new online format was simple, focusing on refining her approach and ensuring a quick turnaround, she still saw great success, allowing her to launch a second iteration of the Present Teacher Restoration Project for Hennepin County. 

By using PlayPosit, Clifden was able to easily make a new version of the program, allowing her to make changes and updates as needed.

Takeaways

As Dr. Clifden expands, she wishes to enhance her offerings and is exploring the possibility of using PlayPosit's audience response system for synchronous sessions, as well as launching individual courses for teachers wishing to pursue her program outside of their organization. 

Clifden envisions running multiple versions of her training simultaneously to fit the needs of different audiences.

Bring interactive video learning into your classroom, school, or district