“Everyone has their own learning path, which is why we believe in adaptive learning”
Why did NIBE-SVV choose to focus on online learning and what can we learn from it?
In the past couple of years, NIBE-SVV has strongly committed to online learning. As always, hard work pays off: the ecourses are well-formed, adaptive and comprehensive. Why has NIBE-SVV chosen to focus on e-learning, and what can we learn from this? Let’s visit NIBE-SVV and find out ourselves.
1. Marin, we’re having coffee because you have a fantastic story to tell about online learning. How did that story begin?
It all started with my internal application for training manager. I got the job and, with it, all the courses on assurances plus the request: can you update this? Oh, and, could you do so within 9 months?
2. What kinds of courses were those?
It was a huge portfolio, mostly focussed on people in financial services. The courses ranged from introductory courses to more complicated and substantive ones.
3. Where do you begin when ‘updating the portfolio’?
I didn’t know that exactly either. Changing our courses was crucial to meet the demand for online learning. In some cases, an online PDF file was all we had. We had some brief courses in the aNewSpring environment but nothing elaborate.
We needed to compose a vision: where do we want to stand as NIBE-SVV? Our courses were substantive but not appealing. We wanted to show how much fun learning can be. Enjoyable, not complex; and, above all, we wanted people to know you can follow a training at your own pace. With this goal in mind, we began the tough task of improving our online presence.
4. That doesn’t sound easy. What kinds of problems did you run into?
We wanted a vision on online learning. What do we want to do with it? Will it overshadow our classroom courses? What can we even produce in an online environment? (also take a look at our learning center)
We’d discussed the possibilities of improving the combination of our online and offline courses once before. Studies show both online and offline learning have an important place in the world of training and education. Both are optional, either separate or as a combination of the two.
We began to investigate how we could improve our online courses since we had the most to gain in this area. We came a long way; nowadays, we even have one or several tutors to assist participants in our online programs.
You can even see a shift in the preferred choice of our students. Five years ago, the classroom courses were most popular but, nowadays, the majority of our students choose an online course. Nearly 91% of our sign-ups are for our online programs.
Employers also increasingly value our online learning environments. It’s flexible, constantly accessible and available everywhere. Our evaluations also demonstrate this.
“Online and offline learning both have a place in the training market. You can use it separately or sometimes a combination of the two is very strong”
5. What kinds of practical issues did you encounter when creating e-learning programmes?
We lacked knowledge on where to start with online learning. I’d seen this go wrong many times before because people generally don’t think it through and then run aground later on. We were also concerned with the dependence of an online course. A teacher can offer guidance in our classroom training sessions. Even if the learning material isn’t enough, a good teacher can compensate that. With an online course, you’re completely reliant on the product. In other words, the product should be nearly perfect in order for the course to work. We had some trouble with this in the beginning. Our students started with online courses and had no trainer to help them when they ran into problems.
When you make online learning courses, you need to create a consistent product. You can’t just randomly launch something. When customers return for a second course, it needs to be in line with the first one. They need consistency in their experiences. It’s hard to create an online learning environment. As your Customer Success colleague, Stefan, mentioned, you really need to think things through.
6. When did you decide to work with aNewSpring?
We already used aNewSpring within NIBE-SVV for the question banks of some of our programs. That’s why I looked into what else we could do with the aNewSpring platform. After a training with Stefan van Tol from aNewSpring, there turned out to be numerous possibilities supported by the platform. To achieve something amazing, however, takes a lot of time and effort, no matter what platform you use.
The back end of aNewSpring is intuitive and the front end (designed for the participant) is very intuitive. This led me to believe, rather quickly, that we could update our portfolio using the aNewSpring platform. The support page answered a lot of my questions, and the Customer Success team rapidly responds to all of my requests. That’s a pleasant way to work.
7. You’ve got a lot of training programs, varying from introductory lessons to complex financial courses. Are they all suitable for an online environment?
It’s possible, but the ways to do so differ. Introductory lessons should be easy to do online, especially when the MemoTrainer function in aNewSpring can help. The programs that aim more for practical skills require a different approach. We often use a blended approach for these kinds of courses (also see: “How to become a blended learning chef?”). Take our course Personal Damage with Severe Trauma. The check-ins become way more effective due to previous knowledge. You can also do an online follow-up after an actual (training) event, which makes the training effective for a longer time.
8. What are you most proud of?
We genuinely realised the update of the portfolio with our team. It was a tough task, but we now have an amazing online portfolio. Moreover, we substantially extended the databanks of our more elaborate courses. There were about 300 questions in there when we started, but this wasn’t nearly enough. Today, we have over 3000 questions and every one of them is linked to a learning objective to allow for ‘smart’ learning. That really is worth all the hard work!
9. To what extent have you been able to make the courses adaptive?
Some of the courses are partly adaptive at this point. During these courses, all participants have their own learning path and they only receive the materials that they need. That’s exactly why we believe in adaptive learning. We can set up the learning platform rather generically, but every student creates their own learning journey during their learning process. This allows them to learn in the most-effective way possible and results in the best possible preparation for a test.
To create adaptive learning programs, we needed to divide them the courses into logical modules and subjects. These subjects were specified into learning objectives to create a digital framework. We linked content to this framework, even at the most basic level of knowledge. When a student starts learning, the platform constantly measures the skill level of the student. This way, only the specific content gets selected that will best help the student.
10. If you could make a wish regarding the NIBE-SVV learning programs, what would it be?
I’d wish for all the courses to be adaptive. Previously made assignments should determine which modules are released next, or perhaps the students themselves should be able to skip the parts of the knowledge that they already know. These possibilities are already available in aNewSpring and some of our courses already use them, so it should be a matter of time and hard work before we can implement this in other programs as well.
More information about NIBE-SVV can be found on their website (Dutch). Do you also have an inspiring story about learning? Contact me through our contact form or mail me at corjan@anewspring.com.
Corjan Bast
Started asking ‘Why’ when he was three and never stopped asking, since.
On the wish-list to learn: playing the harmonica, Spanish
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