News story

Best of DemoFest 2017 Showcases Award Winning Learning in Action

Ottawa, CanadaLearning NewsdominKnow

dominKnow Learning System customers well represented with “Best of Show” and “Best Mobile Solution” awards at Learning Solutions 2017.

dominKnow customer Megan Torrance of TorranceLearning recieves Best of Show Award at DemoFest 2017
dominKnow customer Megan Torrance of TorranceLearning recieves Best of Show Award at DemoFest 2017 

Ottawa, Canada, April 18, 2017 – Like a science fair, Learning Solutions’ DemoFest is an annual showcase of technology-based learning and performance support projects — with a strong focus on the results they produce. This year two dominKnow customers, TorranceLearning and Nielsen, came away tops in their class.

TorranceLearning won “Best in Show” for an eLearning course they developed for Vitamin Angels, a public charity that helps at-risk populations in need, while Nielsen and their Talent Engagement and Development group won “Best Mobile Solution” for their approach to “Everywhere Learning”.

No internet? No browser? No problem.

Vitamin Angels provides vitamin A and deworming to 52 million beneficiaries through its network of 1,000 NGOs in nearly 60 countries around the world. Until recently, Vitamin Angels relied on in-person instructor-led training to educate health care providers. With an ever-increasing need to help vulnerable populations around the world, however, Vitamin Angels needed a way to scale their training efforts.

This would seem to be an obvious opportunity for eLearning, as the training need is consistent, repeatable, trackable, and scalable. There’s a catch though. Vitamin Angels’ NGO partners often operate in the most remote of areas, far from internet access or modern computers. While mobile phones are becoming more and more commonplace around the world, they are less available in these isolated communities — especially among field-level service providers.

The solution? A USB key that holds a web server, browser, LMS-lite admin interface, and the eLearning itself that is distributed to the field workers for remote training. Once reconnected to the internet, the USB key sends xAPI statements to a centralized system for recording and tracking purposes.

TorranceLearning used the dominKnow Platform to create the training content. “We chose dominKnow as our development tool because its cloud-based SaaS system allows for easy collaboration and sharing of media across multiple languages and modules,” says Megan Torrance, Chief Energy Officer at TorranceLearning. “Additionally, the dominKnow suite of tools offers powerful and flexible support of Experience API (xAPI), a new technology standard in the eLearning industry that allows for the lightweight tracking of offline activity like this. We’re now looking to expand our use of dominKnow platform technologies.”

According to Torrance, initial post-training competency evaluations show that results from the eLearning training combined with practice, are comparable to results from the instructor led training combined with practice — allowing Vitamin Angels to scale with confidence. Vitamin Angels anticipates reaching at least 6,000 health care providers in just the first year using the new program.

More information about TorranceLearning’s Vitamin Angels project is available.

This exceptional achievement represents back to back “Best of Show” awards for this ground-breaking digital learning company.

Everywhere Learning

Nielsen’s Talent Engagement and Development group is responsible for creating HR learning programs for associates around the world. When they noticed a significant shift in the demographics of their target audience towards a younger population, they realized they needed a mobile learning strategy to continue to connect with their learners.

In various “Voice of the Customer” sessions they discovered that users wanted to choose the device they used to access content — and they wanted to choose when they accessed it. Because of this the team decided to create a design strategy for “Everywhere Learning.”

To demonstrate the strategy, the Talent Engagement and Development group took an existing course (Effective Interviewing) and redesigned it to be an engaging experience on all devices — no matter the type or size. The course lends itself to mobile deployment as it uses an extensive amount of video, and focuses on a single skill in a time-based framework.

The new design was specifically targeted to the shifting expectations of associates — with simple scrolling features and self-paced learning in mind. The format was changed to a scroll down, parallax layout to create a more engaging experience on multiple platforms. As a result, learning on any device is engaging and easy-to-navigate.

The redesign learning was created in the dominKnow Platform and took full advantage of its multi-platform, single-source, true responsive authoring approach.

More about these and other award-winning projects from this year’s DemoFest, is available via Learning Solution’s “Best of DemoFest” webinar on Wednesday, April 19 at 10:00 AM PT. Registration for the complimentary webinar is avaiiable via the eLearning Guide website.