The results of a personalized learning case in the financial industry created by Welten and aNewSpring.

Due to the worldwide financial crisis, the Dutch government nailed down more regulations on financial institutes. One of these regulations denotes that permanent education is required. So 270,000 highly diverse people with different backgrounds and expertise must prove that they meet these new criteria. How do you train such a huge and heterogeneous group in an effective and engaging way? One of the required courses is the Act on Financial Supervision base course.

Our latest blog about platform updates already showed you the improvements for your learners. And by this post we would like to let you know the other developments!

Certificates

Another great addition to our platform are the certificates that will be available for learners in their course. You will be able to create an activity called ‘Certificate’ in the course template in which you can upload a PDF file developed by you. This way the learners’ data can be shown on the certificate.

Certificate checker

On the homepage of the aNewSpring platform a certificate checker can be added. With this checker the certificate can be checked for authenticity.

Twitter widget

In our new update you can add a Twitter widget to the dashboard. You can do so by selecting the option under the ‘Getting started’ tab.

To really remember something – and that’s what you want when taking a course – it should first be saved in your short term and after that in your long term memory. To make this happen there is one crucial factor: repetition.
Information in the short term memory will be saved for approximately 30 minutes and only by repetition it will -gradually- be taken into your long term memory.

Retention building

The aNewSpring platform takes both memories into account. Learning objectives in the platform have a building and a retention component. The building component matches the short term memory and the retention component the long term memory.
Within an adaptive block learning objectives will be addressed until the goal profile (= desired building) is reached. Parallel to ‘filling in’ the goal profile the learning objectives will be tested in the MemoTrainer, this way retention will be build.

It’s been over a week since my last post, so today I would like to show you two more principles you can use to create even better courses! First I want to discuss the comprehensive theorie of multimedia learning, since this theory relates to the following two principles. This theory assumes that:

•  All learners have seperate channels to take in audio and visual material, meaning: ears and eyes
•  Every channel has a limit of processing information at a certain moment
•  Learners use audio and visuals actively and are capable to connect them with each other

3. The modality principle

This principle states that spoken words are of great value to an e-learning course, because they are taken in better than printed words.

As an intern at aNewSpring I am busy with improving our contentbuilder. For my research I read a very interesting book: ‘e-Learning and the science of instruction: proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning’ by Clark & Mayer, which already came out some years ago but still holds information that can be applied today. The book describes 8 rules that should lead to successful elearning. And because those rules are not only useful for my research but maybe also for you I thought: why not share them? Today I tell you about the first two: the multimedia principle and the contiguity principle.

1. The multimedia principle

Based on comprehensive theories and proven research it is recommended to add text and graphics in elearning instead of just text, because users learn more because of this. A multimedia presentation with audio and pictures stimulates the verbal and pictural representation in our brain. This supports active learning, because images and (spoken) text are taken in and processed seperately.

On the 23rd of May our new update will be launched! This update will contain the following improvements, which will also influence the platform experience of your learners.

Dashboard

The homepage learners see when they are logged in will be extended with a dashboard. This dashboard will show information about a course, communication, different learners and learning activities. This way it will be more clear for a learner what is going on in the different courses that he or she is enrolled in.

All over the world there are organizations fighting passionately for a better world. Special are the ones that attack problems that seem almost impossible to beat. One of those organizations is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Improve opportunities to succeed in school

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (under the direction of the Microsoft top man, his wife and their friend Warren Buffett) works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life.

Non-avarage students are not accomodated

So the foundation is very involved with improving the life of U.S. citizens, and they see education as one of the ways to do this. But those educations after highschool often only match the wishes of average students, which means that a lot of people miss the chance at a better life, simply because they think they can’t handle college educations.

Nominating for the Best of Elearning! Awards is open again, and of course you can recommend aNewSpring as your favorite elearning product!
 

The exclusive users and readers choice awards

“In its 9th year, the Best of Elearning! Awards are the exclusive users and readers choice awards program for e-learning products and services, which means all nominations are user nominated and selected. In a recent survey, more than 85% of respondents have personally recommended an e-learning solution to a peer over the last 12 months. And, 61% agreed that award-recognition impacted their decision to consider or purchase from the vendor. The Elearning! Awards program formalizes this process by publishing the recommendations of e-learning users and honoring “Best-in-Class” solutions.”
 
You can nominate us in the following categories:

#1 – Best Learning Management System
#18 – Best Social Learning Solution
 

And here’s how to do so!

This webinar shows you how to use all new functionalities that were added to our platform last month. You get to see how you can handle course settings easier, how to organize your widgets and how you

Serious games & online learning: what do they mean for companies and organizations? The first issue of Serious New Learning Magazine gives you an introduction about this subject. You can also find a c

At aNewSpring we think the first platform update of the year is quite special. We hope that we, also this year, can live up to all your expectations! One of our ways to make sure we do are our updates

Our platform offers a lot of options, so it’s perfectly normal that you don’t know all our tricks. But we are very happy to help you with that! This blog shows you some handy tips that are especially