Podcast 83: Inside Modern Continuing Education Systems

EPISODE 83: Modern Continuing Education Systems

Troy Tolle, CTO at DigitalChalk

Nearly two years have passed since this podcast focused on continuing education. During that time, a lot has changed. That’s why I’m looking forward to catching up with today’s guest, Troy Tolle, Co-Founder and CTO at DigitalChalk.

Troy is a learning technology pioneer who’s been pushing continuing education boundaries for more than 20 years. This means he’s in an ideal position to discuss key issues, opportunities and trends.

So join us as we compare notes about what’s hot and what’s ahead for continuing education systems on this episode of The Talented Learning Show…

Modern Continuing Education Systems — KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The continuing education world is tough. The market is highly competitive. And selling this kind of instructional content requires sophisticated tools for marketing, ecommerce, credit management, content development, reporting and more. As you can imagine, buyer and learner expectations are sky high.

• As continuing education continues to shift from classrooms to online settings, the nature of content is shifting as well. Video is playing an increasingly prominent role. And innovative video technology is helping providers improve the learning experience, as well as business outcomes.

• Artificial intelligence is radically improving continuing education systems. For example, intelligent “course factory” tools help content providers stay ahead of constant regulatory changes, so they can grow their businesses far more efficiently and effectively.

Modern Continuing Education Systems — Q&A HIGHLIGHTS

For listeners who aren’t familiar with DigitalChalk, please tell us about it…

Sure. DigitalChalk is a learning management system designed for continuing education. We also serve corporations that do internal training.

The story began nearly two decades ago when I was teaching at North Carolina State University. Early on, I started using my computer science degree to build software. And for one project, I built a learning management-type platform. That was before specialized continuing education systems existed.

I loved that challenge because it brought together everything I enjoy — multimedia, education and technology. And I was itching to start a business. So, when the people who funded the project came back and asked me to write a business plan, we launched DigitalChalk.

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Cool. I’ve met multiple entrepreneurs who decided to build their own LMS when they couldn’t find anything available that met their needs. So, tell us more about continuing education systems landscape.

The market has changed a lot since we started. At that time, most continuing education was based on in-person classroom training. But now, much more often, it’s offered online.

How do you define continuing education?

This space is about jobs that require some sort of licensure or certification on a continual basis. Think of industries like accounting, finance or insurance. Real estate is also big because real estate professionals need to get certified every year.

In addition, professional development usually goes along with it. This includes companies with extended enterprise reach.

Think about manufacturers who sell their products through third parties. People in those third-party organizations need to service their products effectively. So, they need to train and certify people who work on their equipment.

Right. So, continuing education systems must support for-profit training companies, as well as professional and trade associations?

Yes, absolutely. Think of medical associations, dental associations — all those with certifying bodies. And many more want to make money by selling certifications, as well.

So, we also serve others who want to sell this training online. And they can credential people through the state or an authorized professional body.

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What are the biggest challenges these organizations face in selling content? How do continuing education systems help?

It varies by organization. But I’d say there are four key issues:

1. Meeting regulatory requirements

Some industries require proof that a learner has been online, consuming the right content for a specific number of hours. They must prove they are the person who’s supposed to be certified. Meeting those regulatory requirements and understanding how to report back into the various regulating bodies is a big challenge.

2. Marketing and branding

These organizations are excellent at creating and delivering certification content. But they’re not always good at packaging the content or getting the word out. They sometimes struggle with email marketing platform integration and sharing their message with the people they want to reach.

3. Attracting modern learners

Continuing education providers are used to classroom training, where people register for a conference and sit down at a live session. But today, people prefer to use a smartphone. So how do you deliver that type of learning content quickly to someone who’s on the go? How do you quickly get a quiz in front of them to make sure you validate their learning?

4. Managing integrations

Every certifying body is different. Each has different platforms for onboarding and communication. Different tools for tracking learners and their status. All of these integrations can be overwhelming to manage.

Who are these regulatory or certifying bodies? Are they associated with the federal government? Are they global or local?

They can be all over the place. Some of these governing bodies are federal, but typically, they’re at the state level. And that’s complicated because every state has different rules and deals with the data differently.

So, how does a continuing education provider get registered as a certifying body? How do they prove they’re doing the right thing? It’s different for each industry. For example, in real estate, an international legal body called ARELLO reviews training content from local jurisdictions to make sure it follows very specific standards.

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Interesting. So, with content shifting online now, what does it look like? Powerpoint? Page turners? PDFs? Videos? All of these?

These days, there is some SCORM, AICC and xAPI learning package content. But I would say the vast majority now lean heavily on video.

When organizations transition online from a classroom environment, they typically start by uploading their PowerPoint files. Next, they build tests and surveys within the platform to verify learning. And then they tack on a certification.

This means they can deliver certification from within the platform — whether that’s through badging or sending a simple report to the governing body.

Again, I’ll use the real estate industry as an example. A Massachusetts company called us as soon as it became possible in that state for real estate classes to be delivered and certified online.

This company wanted to be a digital front-runner, but all they had was PowerPoint. So, for their first release, they uploaded those files, and we converted them into SCORM-based online learning.

Next, we helped them transition into what you see today, which is video synchronization with PowerPoint, and video is doing the teaching.

Yes, video is ubiquitous now. But when you started 20 years ago, it was very progressive. How are you continuing to innovate?

Video is particularly interesting to me. Back when I was completing my computer science degree, video was already big. But by 2006, YouTube was just getting started. People were only beginning to learn how to produce and manage online video.

So at that time, we wrote our own video streamers on video encoders. All of those tools are commonplace now. But they have changed the landscape of learning.

Absolutely…

And now we use video as an event source…

How does that work?

When you upload a video, we encode it many times. This makes it available on your mobile device, your tablet, your desktop, in high-speed environments or remotely. So, we’re encoding for wherever you may be and whatever device you’re using.

We also break down video to the timings. This means we can create transcripts and closed captioning that can be translated.

Plus, our technology looks at time codes within a video to analyze learner behaviors. For instance, we can tell you where learners tend to pause, rewind, fast forward or increase the video speed. This helps you understand where learners are falling off, so you can pinpoint where to improve content so it’s more engaging.

In addition, we drive synchronizations of slides and chapters. So really, we take an event-driven approach with video to enable all sorts of analytics in the platform.

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Cool. And for some certifications, it’s critical to confirm that the right person is engaging with video content. How do continuing education systems can handle this?

Yes. Sometimes you need to prove that someone taking online training has been sitting in place for a specific amount of time. You need to verify that they didn’t get up and walk away.

There are several ways to do that. Proctoring is one. Someone can sit in the same room or use a video camera to monitor activity.

But an easier way to make this work is through what we call checkpoints. Using a simple editor interface in our platform, an instructor can easily add these to a video.

For instance, at various points, you can ask questions about the content and verify that their answer is correct. Or you can ask for a password or some metadata about them that you know the system knows. This validates that the individual is present, without requiring someone to physically monitor their location.

Smart…

If the answer isn’t correct, you can automatically erase the person’s progress and reset the video to the beginning of whatever topic they missed. This helps people absorb all the material.

It also ensures that training isn’t just about butts in seats. It’s about reinforcing learning when it’s needed.

What’s more, it guarantees that if someone leaves and lets the video run, it will time out. When they return, they’ll have to start over. So, you can build consequences into content consumption.

Makes sense. So, you mentioned earlier that marketing and selling content is a key challenge. In your view, what kind of ecommerce tools are helpful…?

…For complete answers to this and more questions on continuing education systems, listen to the entire podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Amazon, or right here on our site.

Find Out More About DigitalChalk

How does this solution compare with other continuing education systems? Check my Hot Take Review on our YouTube channel…

Ready to Modernize Your Learning Platform?

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