Global Consulting Firm Makes Their Most Popular In-Person Course Even Better Online, and Saves Money Doing It

The Challenge

This global consulting firm has a strong culture of “reaching down the ladder”, and an unwritten rule that if you don’t teach and share your knowledge to help others, it will be harder to make partner. Their facilitator skills development course was traditionally the firm’s highest-rated and most popular course, one that participants loved dearly. It taught the basics of teaching to associates who would then go out into the employee population and lead classrooms of their own.

But it was expensive and slow to deliver in person. A mandate was handed down: deliver it online, and use the online version to both train and provide just-in-time support for facilita- tors.

L&D was concerned about losing the impact of their most popular course with the shift from in-person to online, so they sought out Intrepid by VitalSource to be their online platform and course design partner.

The Solution

The course consists of a 2-week blended learning course delivered on the Intrepid platform, combining live webinars with a coach (“quick hit” feedback opportunities on short visual presentations), opportunities to “get to know your classmates” through social features, and lots and lots of video:

- Clips of an instructor demonstrating, for instance, how to draw a good flipchart or whiteboard

- “The Office”-style mockumentary scenario videos cut- ting back and forth between actors and actual employees demonstrating commmon things that can go wrong in the classroom (distractions, disrespect, disengagement) with expert commentary

Discussion forums are integrated with the videos, and peer-reviewed teachback video assignments bring together all the threads of the course for the learner within the Learn platform itself.

The Results

The results have been thrilling for the firm.

• Satisfaction rates consistent with the in-person course
• Students of those who took the online course scored their teachers 2 tenths of a percent higher than the ones who took the in-person version (4.33 to 4.66) – a great example of how smooth the transition from in-person to online turned out to be.
• Cost savings for both travel/instructor cost savings and massive opportunity cost savings

Thanks to the features and capabilities of the Intrepid platform, this firm is seeing seeing results they never expected – higher satisfaction and “job readiness” ratings, and people love the online version just as much as the in-person.