Professional associations like yours can be valuable resources when it comes to upskilling, training and career advancement. By providing courses and credentials that address evergreen and evolving skill needs for the industry or field you represent, you can attract both young workers and seasoned professionals who recognize the role that continuing education plays in their success.
Developing a flexible, personalized education program that weaves learning seamlessly into the membership experience can bring more members to your organization and encourage their ongoing participation. When your offerings are in sync with members’ personal and professional needs, it can positively impact member satisfaction—and your organization’s ROI.
Delivering Personalized Education With Limited Resources
Unfortunately, the administrative headaches that can come with developing standard training options like slide decks and in-person seminars can hold your association back from being able to scale and grow its education programs. Plus, without in-house design expertise or a reliable way to gain insight into members’ expectations, experiences may lack appeal and fail to keep learners engaged.
Scott Butler, executive director at Good Roads, recognized the need for a flexible online training option that enabled his organization to meet members’ personal and professional requirements.
“In the last 20 years, we’ve seen more change taking place in this space than in the previous two millennia,” says Butler. “To meet these new needs, our approach to learning had to evolve too. Putting our courses online would open them up to a much wider audience. The opportunity to learn at a self-directed pace from any location fundamentally changes the dynamics and financial considerations of training, making our educational offerings more accessible to all communities. This is especially important for smaller, resource-strapped municipalities and First Nations.”
D2L Brightspace: A Central Hub for Members to Maximize Their Professional Training
To make the transition, Good Roads chose Brightspace as the foundation of its educational program.
“We were new to the online learning game and so we needed somebody to work in lockstep with us,” Butler says. “D2L came with the expertise and the capacity to refine our thinking, give us a plan of action for implementation, and then allow us to connect with our existing processes and products in a way that would be efficient.”
Built to be an end-to-end training solution, Brightspace enables you to create a personalized learning experience that puts each learner’s training information front and center. As soon as they log in, participants can see widgets that display:
- a list of all current course and credential enrollments
- relevant announcements from instructors
- new course content, unread discussions and assignments they need to submit
- upcoming or recently passed assignment due dates and deadlines
The Activity Feed also helps keep learners up to date with messages, assignments, materials and other relevant resources. Polling features allow instructors to gauge members’ experiences and provide additional support as needed, while the CPD tracker empowers members to take control of their own continuing education credits.
Creator+: Develop Better Courses Faster Without Coding Experience
You want to be able to deliver the best learning experiences for your members. Technology should help you do that, not get in your way.
As an add-on for the core Brightspace platform, D2L’s Creator+ helps you create meaningful content that sticks with:
- built-in authoring tools like an HTML editor and video capture app that are accessible and let you edit on the fly
- ready-made interactive elements that enhance the learning experience and support tangible skills development
- customizable content templates with universal branding options that are engaging, interactive, effective and modernized
- time-saving automated workflows that help you develop better courses more quickly
These tools enable you to quickly develop engaging courses, empowering anyone to be a creator.
Learning Services and Technical Support: Create an Optimized Training Experience
Time is only one challenge in creating personalized training for members. Many organizations lack in-house instructional design expertise, which can make it difficult to provide content that connects with members.
D2L’s Learning Services come alongside your team to help you plan, design and implement a successful training program. Equipped with extensive knowledge of Brightspace, our experts can support you wherever you are in your journey—whether building courses from scratch or helping upgrade ones you’ve already created. We’re here to help you develop the educational experience you envision and that members want.
Your organization also has the option to connect with optimization experts, including:
- Technical Account Managers (TAMs) who work directly with organizations to offer expert technical guidance, implement new features and optimize Brightspace for maximum ROI
- Learning Administration Managers (LAMs) who provide part- or full-time administrative support to assist with configuration, address technical issues and ensure your Brightspace environment is always up to date
This support was just what educational director Marv Funk and his team at Canada’s United Food and Commercial Workers Union needed to better serve the thousands of workers who make up the organization’s membership.
“Our previous LMS provider was only able to offer limited support, which was holding us back,” he explains. “The service we receive from D2L couldn’t be more different. We have a dedicated customer success manager and a technical account manager who stay in regular contact and always help us make changes very quickly and efficiently.”
Course Distribution: Make Training Available Beyond Your Organization
No matter how easy it is to create, high-quality course content can only benefit members—and your organization—if it’s discoverable. We can help you solve this dilemma with Course Publisher, Course Merchant and Discover, three powerful tools for licensing and distribution.
Course Publisher enables your organization to:
- share content with one LMS or many
- publish courses and update content in real time
- safeguard your association’s intellectual property
- easily turn off access when licenses expire
- gain valuable insights through detailed tracking
The Discover tool empowers learners to drive their own experiences—searching for and self-enrolling in the courses that are most relevant to them.
The Course Merchant storefront opens new opportunities to widen your reach beyond your membership. Sophisticated e-commerce capabilities, flexible payment options and a seamless shopper-to-learner experience help you support a variety of career goals, tap into broader professional communities and increase awareness about the work your association does. Additional revenue from non-members can increase learning’s ROI, which reinforces the value of your organization’s education programs.
Performance+: Track Learner Engagement for Member Success
Determining how your efforts to support members and engage non-members have a measurable impact on organizational goals can be a challenge, with data coming in many formats and from various sources.
D2L’s Performance+ add-on for Brightspace delivers real-time analytics that track:
- courses with the most signups and most frequent access
- the amount of time learners spend in courses
- whether learners are successfully completing course assignments
- how many courses each learner signs up for and completes over time
These insights highlight the courses, credentials and learning paths that resonate with members, generate the most revenue for your association and have the greatest impact overall. Data on individual learner performance reveals areas where you may need to improve course content to maintain engagement and encourage continued learning. This helps you make strategic decisions about how to iterate and improve your learning programs over time.
Transform Your Approach to Professional Learning Through Personalization
Providing personalized learning experiences that support career advancement turns your association into a hub for members. With D2L’s tools and support, you can easily create courses, expand access to training and visualize your program’s impact.
Instead of losing members because you lack the resources and insight to meet their educational needs, you can develop relevant content that equips every learner with the skills they need for vocational success.
For Scott Butler and the Good Roads team, transitioning to Brightspace was the beginning of an ongoing evolution in the organization’s approach to training.
“Working with D2L to establish our e-learning presence has allowed us to connect with communities in ways that we’ve never been able to before, which is incredibly powerful,” Butler says. “We feel like we’re just on the cusp of a transformation that’s going to take learning to places we never dreamed. We’re excited to embark on that journey together with D2L.”
Need a better way to deliver the training your members want? Request a demo to discover how D2L can help.
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