SkillBuilder Update!

Let's Talk About What's New at SkillBuilder^®!

Message from Sarah

As summer comes to an end, and we all wonder how it's gone so fast and we're already "back to school", I'm excited to share with you what the SkillBuilder^® Team has been working on over the last few months and what we're looking forward to this fall.

The summer months have allowed for further innovation on the course development side and provided an opportunity to continue to evolve SkillBuilder^® LMS, all while we work closely with our exceptional customers to build and support their learning initiatives.

We have also recently launched two new campaigns; our Partnership Program, which provides an opportunity to partner with us to deliver quality learning solutions while expanding your own service offerings and revenues, and SkillBuilder^® Concierge Services, which allows you to pass on that cumbersome end-user support (how do I reset my password!?) to our SkillBuilder^® experts (they're wonderful!). Our team is standing by to customize, optimize and support your learning ecosystem to ensure your learning program succeeds.

Over the next few months, as the leaves start to fall and everything pumpkin spice begins to fill our feeds, what I'm looking forward to most is leveraging the great work our Team is doing to help you achieve your goals through innovative learning and development. Where excited to continue collaborating with you, addressing unique challenges, and supporting learning everywhere.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out. As always, your input, as well as your trust in us, helps us to better understand, meet and exceed your expectations.

Best,

Sarah Flesher, Ph.D.
President
BaseCorp Learning Systems

What can you expect in this issue?

SkillBuilder^® LMS What's New

New Exam Features

In addition to the new exam bank functionality we introduced you to last quarter, you now have the ability to schedule exam sessions. This feature allows you to select date(s), offer in-person or online sessions, assign a proctor, allow (or not) self-enrollment, and manage attendees.

Custom Page Enhancements

One of the cool things you can do in SkillBuilder^® LMS is create custom pages, whether a personalized home/landing page, marketing pages to sell your courses, or information/resource pages specific to your organization. This functionality has been updated to support external .css, inline styles, basic javaScript and JQuery.

Take a peek at how Tourism HR Canada has taken advantage of these enhancements and, while you're there, take a look at some of their courseware!

Data Export Updates

We understand the importance of being able to pull comprehensive people person and completion data from the LMS. Whereas a data export used to provide all data from the beginning of time in a downloadable .csv file, now you can specify a specific date range.

Visit our website to view all Release Notes.

Industry Trends

Learner want to be engaged in their training - of course, this is nothing new (in fact it's a challenge eLearning Developers have struggled with for years!), but what is new is the toolkit we can bring to this issue.

To truly engage the learner, a course must, first, make the training relevant to their on-the-job duties and, second, allow them to see themselves in the training. When we write a stroryboard for a course, we like to include scenarios that we build with help from subject matter experts. We avoid generalities and include enough detail that a learner taking the course will immediately see the value in the information being conveyed. Think less "A customer approaches, looking upset. How do you respond?" and more "Nate works in the service department of XYZ, where he handles calls from tenants and the general public. He gets a call one afternoon from Paula, who is upset that she saw some suspicious teenagers loitering outside the shopping centre XYZ manages. What should Nate say?". Then, our in-house graphics design team illustrates these scenarios to include imagery of people wearing the right uniform for the company (if necessary) and scenes and backgrounds that are both recognizable and don't distract from the content (the last thing you want in a video that represents an outdoor scene in Saskatchewan is a towering mountain range!)

By centering the learner and focusing on what they will find valuable, our team is designing learning resources that will keep them engaged and increase their retention of the subject matter at hand! We're talking about this on our blog - check out some of our recent posts:

Employee Spotlight

Meet our two fabulous Summer Co-op Students: Alex Flewwelling and Yaaqoob Choulli! Although they are both returning to their studies at the University of Alberta this fall, it's been amazing to see them thrive with the SkillBuilder^® Team.

Alex, a fourth-year computer engineering student and Yaaqoob, a third-year computer engineering student, have been working on our SkilllBuilder^® LMS Angular Project, that is updating the front-end look and feel of our application. When they aren't working at SkillBuilder^® or focusing on their studies, Alex enjoys playing video games (oh, and he used to be a competitive artistic gymnast!) and Yaqoob is managing Catiture, his own business where he designs, build and markets cat trees for feline lovers.

We wish both Alex and Yaaqoob all the best back at school this September!