News story

Nimble Elearning expands Learning Design team to meet increased market demand for editable elearning

Stonehouse, GloucestershireLearning NewsNimble Elearning

The desire for editable “off-the-shelf” learning resources is growing fast. Nimble Elearning have expanded their Learning Design team to respond to this increased need.

Nimble Elearning Learning Design team: Shaena Hathway, Nicola Beach
Nimble Elearning Learning Design team: Shaena Hathway, Nicola Beach 

The word 'elearning' was coined back in 1998. That’s the year Google was launched. Twenty-two years later, the global elearning market size is now expected to reach $238 billion (£183 billion) by 2024, and packaged content delivery dominates the elearning market and continues to grow, according to the "E-learning Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2019-2024" report by ResearchAndMarkets.com. 

According to Neil Hyde, the company’s Managing Director, it came down to ‘creating and curating’ the Nimble library of online learning resources, as well as quickly responding to bespoke requirements. “We needed to find the right people who could respond to the needs of our customers as Learning Designers, but could also be proactive in identifying this need before they are even asked!".

Spearheading this new team is Nicola Beach. With an English Literature degree at Cardiff University Nicola kick-started her career at Ofsted by assisting with training and events, her high standard of work led to her elearning courses being distributed nationally. She swapped education for aerospace, where she helped create training for the UKMFTS programme at Lockheed Martin, acquiring project management skills and proofreading in the process.

Nicola is excited to develop this new and exciting venture. “I’m thrilled to bring my instructional design skills to this new team and look forward to producing courses that are of the highest quality.”

She’s joined by Shaena Hathway whose CV includes an MA in Strategic Marketing, developing digital campaigns for a broad client base that includes Sky, American Express, BHF and Samaritans. Shaena maintains, "Creatively, direct marketing is about persuading people to change their behaviour in an engaging and memorable way, inciting a measurable 'call to action'. I'm excited to combine this more commercial copywriting approach with academic learning theory to create fresh, compelling and transformative courses for Nimble.”

The diverse range of courses demanded by companies highlights why they prefer to use ‘ready-made’ materials. Three topical courses Nicola and Shaena recently helped to create illustrate this point:

Modern Slavery: This course looks at the extent of modern slavery in the UK, how to spot the signs of a victim, what to watch out for as an employer and how concerns can be reported to ensure that these vulnerable people are identified and supported.

Data Protection Essentials: This course has been updated to reference the UK’s departure from Europe. As the UK’s relationship with Europe continues to evolve, it is additionally important that organisations stay abreast of potential changes to data protection legislation. The course covers the aims and provisions of the UK’s existing data protection legislation and offers essential, practical advice on compliance, with extra tips on how to monitor changes to European data handling requirements.

Time Management: This course supports the workforce to be more effective in their time management. It explores the principles and practicalities of effective time management; providing techniques and coping mechanisms to make people more productive and efficient at work, and by default, everyday life.

Traditional training methods have changed with the introduction of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) technologies, and elearning is a beneficial solution that helps address budgetary and productivity-related concerns around training for many organisations.

Authoring all the learning resources needed – especially for SMEs – are cost and time restrictive. Therefore, using “off-the-shelf” elearning resources to deliver training helps address this issue, and Nimble have responded to this trend.

The full range of Nimble ready-made courses are available here: https://nimble-elearning.com/courses/