Barnardo’s used one of their most blended solutions ever to equip 250 fundraisers with the knowledge, skills and confidence to use a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. Using Moodle, the charity’s information services (IS) learning and development team created a self-directed, extremely visual, personalised, six step learning pathway.
The project’s aim was to deliver a scalable solution, reducing time to achieve competency for new starters, minimising trainer delivery, and signposting the right people to the right resources at the right time.
Inspired by their experience of MOOCs, Barnardo’s IS learning and development team reworked its strategy to offer a flexible, blended learning solution requiring no face to face classroom delivery. Instead, a combination of learning technologies were used, including eLearning, live online classrooms and recordings, with helpful online resources just a click away. Business experts provided on the job coaching.
Learners had the flexibility to choose what they needed to learn based on their role, with weekly communications signposting them to relevant content. Fundraisers were also encouraged to use the social network tool Chatter. This proved powerful in boosting engagement, helping to foster a community to promote continuous learning and improved opportunities for knowledge sharing across the fundraising community.
Learner engagement began six weeks before the project went live achieving amazing results – even people outside of the department were intrigued and accessing the resources to find out more about the project!
- 93% of users started the training process
- 80% completed the essential eLearning
- 88% attended first virtual classroom
Delivering a fully blended and mainly self-directed solution via Moodle, as an alternative to the originally planned classroom approach, resulted in significant cost savings – estimated to be around £16k. The project has been such a success, the L&D team has used it as a blueprint to design a 100% self-directed learning solution for 10,000 IT users upgrading to Windows 7 and Office 2010.
Judges of the Charity Learning Awards 2014 loved the wide range of resources used and low cost solutions.
Martin Baker, founder and Chief Executive of the Charity Learning Consortium, was inspired: “This really is a 21st century learning solution – a fantastic example of how technology can transform traditional training with great results. The levels of engagement are outstanding, which is down to the smart work of Lisa and her team. This is a very well deserved award, and a great example for others to follow.”
Lisa Johnson, Barnardo’s Assistant Director Information Services Learning & Communication, shares her tips for learning technologies success:
- What lessons did you learn along the way?
- With a bit of creativity, you can use Moodle in a much more engaging way. Since developing the CRM solution we’ve also designed a 100% self-directed learning solution for 10,000 IT users, moving from Office 2003 to Office 2010. This contains a series of curated resources supplemented with custom ones.
- Moodle works really well on a mobile device – It’s time to add more mobile delivery to our agenda!
- Don’t think your team are invincible! I had a key trainer go off sick just weeks before go-live and this almost jeopardised our ability to deliver the requirements.
- What three things would you share with others?
- Look at what exists already – start as a curator not a developer.
- Keep stakeholders and business experts informed of the solution being developed and socialise them with it early on.
- Take time out to deeply explore the potential of the technologies available to you.
- What would you do differently next time?
- In hindsight we could have reduced the number of the team-specific resources, using similar content for multiple teams.
- Award badges for achievements.
- Assign more resources to speed up the development process and add in more contingency.
The Barnardo’s new CRM training solution:
With 19 teams using the system in different ways, content is mapped to 83 real business scenarios and includes:
- 212 videos/simulations
- 15 eLearning courses
- 73 PowerPoint movies
- 10 PDFs (business documentation and support model)
- Live virtual classrooms
- 85 on-demand WebEx recordings
- Consolidation exercises
- Links to a training system using automated daily roll-backs, allowing learners to apply their learning and practice as often as they like
- Curated links to recommended further learning
- Installation guides for plug-ins
About Barnardo’s
As one of the UK’s leading children’s charities, Barnardo’s works directly with over 200,000 children, young people and their families every year. We run over 900 vital services across the UK, including counselling for children who have been abused, fostering and adoption services, vocational training and disability inclusion groups.
Every Barnardo’s service is different but each believes in the potential in every child and young person, no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through.
About the Charity Learning Consortium:
Consortium members save twice as much money on L&D compared to non-members in the sector; are twice as likely to report positive changes in staff behaviour and almost three times more likely to report that using learning technologies has improved their organisation’s productivity.
More than 120 charities, housing associations and not for profits already benefit from collaborating with our unique organisation. To find out more please connect with us on twitter @charitylearning. We also love to chat, so do please give us a call on 08451 707 702