What makes OpusVi different? An interview with Chief Product Officer Kurt Hayes

Great people are every organization’s greatest asset. This is something that OpusVi truly believes in — we are, after all, a workforce development company in the health space, and it doesn’t get more people-oriented than healthcare. Also within our company, we work with passionate and talented individuals to bring OpusVi’s vision of Transforming the Healthcare Workforce of the Future to life. One of these talented individuals is our Chief Product Officer Kurt Hayes. Kurt has over 15 years of experience in instructional design and holds a master’s degree in Adult Education and Distance Learning. Before joining OpusVi, he has been working to push the field of online learning forward by leveraging advancements in design thinking, technology, and learning science. He has led American and international initiatives spanning all levels of higher education and workforce development.

Kurt started working at OpusVi more by chance than by design. “I was working for a company that specialized in helping clients advance their online learning experiences. I was actually planning on working with OpusVi, not for OpusVi,” he explains. “But when OpusVi’s CEO Andrew Malley fully explained the idea and mission behind the company, it became very clear how I could help propel an incredibly important and worthwhile initiative forward.”

 

A worthwhile mission

“Healthcare is incredibly human — if we can strengthen the abilities of the people that work in healthcare, then we know we’re doing something that can positively affect an industry that touches all of us,” says Kurt. “That’s why I joined OpusVi. As to my own professional development, it was the perfect opportunity to create meaningful experiences in an industry that really needs solutions, deliver exceptional education at scale, and have incredible partners and knowledgeable subject matter experts behind the learning content.”

 

A new standard for online learning

Kurt also sees working at OpusVi as an opportunity to establish a new standard for online learning that goes beyond providing access to online programs — it has to be about the learning experience, outcomes, and impact.

“Given everything we know today, it’s our duty to design impactful learning experiences that are aligned to industry,” says Kurt. “Apart from having high-quality learning content that meets industry needs, we also have to deliver that content in a way learners love. This means offering high-fidelity learning content and using technology to assist the brain’s ability to retain information. It means replacing term papers with hands-on projects that impact the real world. We get expertise from thought leaders that can share real experiences and provide access to academic institutions from which graduates will proudly proclaim their accomplishments. That’s how we move online learning into a new era.”

 

576 hours of learning content have already been created

Considering that all the foundations had to be laid down, an impressive number of programs has been launched in OpusVi’s first year of operation: Six certificate and two degree programs are currently available to students — that’s approximately 576 hours of learning content that is customized for healthcare professionals.

“But it’s not only about quantity. We want to affect positive change within each of the participants and give them tools to make an impact in their healthcare organizations. True learning can not be equated with attendance and grades — we are measuring with impact instead.”

 

Big plans for 2020

With a tight production schedule, an even more impressive 24 certificates and short courses as well as 12 degree programs are scheduled to launch in 2020. Moving forward, Kurt’s vision is to further refine OpusVi’s learning experiences by continuing to listen to students and dial into their needs as well as the healthcare industry’s needs.

“This means expanding our portfolio. We are also working to deliver our content with a skills-based blockchain infrastructure that can easily adapt to the needs of the healthcare workforce and drastically reduce the costs associated with workforce development: Rather than selling education as big packages, we are organizing it in a way that it can be tapped into, assembled, and reassembled in ways that we can’t even imagine yet. We need to do this to keep up with the constant innovation and changing nature of the healthcare workforce. We need to be able to deliver a rapid response to skill and knowledge gaps that we don’t even know exist right now. In a nutshell: We want to be prepared to meet the needs of our customers — and to truly transform the healthcare workforce of the future.”