Trust-IT and COMMpla: creating the best tailored e-learning experiences for your organisation

E-learning, also known as online learning or electronic learning, is the delivery of educational material through digital resources, such as electronic technologies or media channels. Covid-19 and the digitalisation of the world have made e-learning even more the popular and have driven its adoption for staff training due to its intrinsic benefits.

E-learning’s benefits

E-learning training offers various benefits to the organisations that choose to adopt it to grow the skills of their staff. Here is a list of some of the most important benefits that e-learning could bring to your organisation’s training program:

• Flexibility: The first advantage of e-learning is its flexibility in terms of time and place. The learning content can be accessed online from anywhere and can be paused at any time to fit the trainees’ schedule. 
• Efficiency: E-learning courses are very short, usually divided into various chapters to allow the trainees to test their newly acquired knowledge on every single topic. Short courses are also easier to fit into the busy schedule of the employees being trained, given the reduced time needed to complete each chapter of a course.
• Low-Cost: An e-learning package can be reused as often as the user wishes without additional costs. Since e-learning usually allows a greater number of course participants at the same time, it is often less expensive than conventional learning offerings.
• Customisation: E-learning courses can be easily tailored to the organisation’s training needs in terms of topics, course content, media used (text. Images, videos, audio, etc.), quiz type (multiple choice, multiple answers, open answer, etc.) and completion time.

Figure 1 – Example of a SCORM e-learning lesson

Trust-IT and COMMpla: Moodle and SCORMs for your tailored e-learning experience

At Trust-IT and COMMpla, we often create e-learning courses for our clients. Our approach, usually follows the following steps:

1. The collaboration starts by gathering the client’s requirements to understand how we can create an e-learning experience tailored as closely as possible to the client’s needs. 
2. We then set up a Moodle platform that is aligned with the organisation’s visual identity, where the e-learning course will be uploaded and accessed by the trainees. In fact, Moodle is a free open source e-learning platform or Learning Management System (LMS) designed to help educators create effective online courses.
3. The last step is to create the e-elarning course in SCORM format. SCORM means Shareable Content Object Reference Model, it is an international standard for e-courses that is recognised by almost any Learning Management Service.

Figure 2 – Example of the HRB Moodle platform

By using SCORMs to create your tailored e-learning course, we get the following extra benefits:

• Saving progress: SCORM courses uploaded on the Moodle LMS allow students to save their progress so that they do not have to go through the whole course at once. A SCORM also lets the student resume a lesson directly from where they left it. 
• Trainees analytics: SCORM courses gives the trainer the ability to assess the student’s progress. The Moodle will have a dedicated section where the trainer will be able to see how many points a student has scored, which lessons they have accessed, completed, and more.
• Modularity and tailored course structure: In a SCORM course, training material consists of standalone units, or modules, which can be reused to create similiar courses within the same LMS, if needed. Another great feature of SCORM courses is that they give the trainer complete control over the rules for moving between the course modules and lessons, such as:
  • The trainees may need to complete the various lessons in a specific order to complete the course.
  • To complete a lesson, the trainees may need to visualise the lesson for a minimum amout of time set by the trainer.
  • To move to the next module, trainees may need to achieve a specific minimum score in a quiz set by the trainer.
• Certificate: At the end of the course, the trainees will be able to download a printable, pdf certificate customised with the trainee’s data and the organisation’s visual identity, to attest their participation in and completion of the course.

Figure 3 – Example of a SCORM quiz

Trust-IT Services and COMMpla: E-learning success stories

Throughout the years, we have provided various and diverse e-learning experiences for our clients, always tailoring the content and the various features of the courses to their needs. Here are some of the clients we have provided e-learning courses to:

• Associazione Categoria Brokers di assicurazione e riassicurazioni (ACB) – Trust-IT supported our subsidiary organisation, COMMpla, in developing a customised e-learning platform for the insurance brokers associated to ACB, which was connected to the institutional website of the association and to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for economic reporting of the participation in the courses. The customisation that we delivered specifically for ACB is a custom e-learning course workflow that includes lessons consisting of a link to various webinar recordings uploaded on an external platform that the user has to prove to have watched to progress through the course by clicking on regular appearing pop-ups during the recordings.
• Cyberwiser.eu – We delivered a custom e-learning course workflow for this European Commission funded project dedicated to the training of professionals in the field of cybersecurity. The course included lessons with links to external hands-on cybersecurity training on a cyber range platform, from which the Moodle retireved the score achieved by the trainees. We also developed a custom automation that allowed the trainees that completed specific courses to be automatically included in the Cybersecurity Professional Register (CyPR), also developed by Trust-IT. Students also had a dedicated workspace for their organisation, where the trainees could communicate with trainers and other trainees from their organisation, access various media files in a dedicated repository, and access the LMS Moodle with the various e-learning SCORM courses. 
• Common Dissemination Booster (CDB) and Horizon Results Booster (HRB) – The HRB, the follow-up project of the successful CDB, is the European Commission funded service that aims to provide a free and tangible contribution to the dissemination of the results and recommendations of research projects related to the European Commission Priority areas. We delivered a custom e-learning course workflow that includes a module where the trainees must upload an assignment (either in Word doc format or by submitting the assignment text directly on the platform). The trainer is able to check the status of the various assignments directly on the platform and through email notifications. Trainers are able to grade the various assignments and provide written feedback to the trainees. Similar to Cyberwiser, we have developed a workspace to allow interaction between trainer and trainees and allow trainees to access various media files and the various e-learning SCORM courses.

Are you looking for an IT partner who can satisfy your needs for a customised e-learning platform tailored to your organisation’s staff training needs?

Let's have a chat!

Article by

Luigi Colucci
Marketing Analyst