Sydney, Australia – Using a cutting edge responsive design to provide a turnkey learning solution, the Birch Learning Platform eLearning catalogue delivers a perfect experience for everyone across all devices.  Featuring, media, interactions, workplace scenarios, bookmarking and knowledge checks.  Kept up to date with the latest legislative changes to ensure your organisation meets its compliance requirements.

A Perfect Experience for Everyone

Built using Articulate Rise or Articulate Storyline, means we can easily contextualise the content to include your organisations logo, policies, procedures, videos, images and weblinks.  Designed and developed by our awarded winning team and widely used by government and organisations.

Birch Learning Platform combines online learning with talent management so that compliance training can be linked directly to employee performance.

• Monitor and assess each individual’s progress as well as your team.
• Reduce the risk of non-compliance by monitoring training levels and maintaining accurate records as evidence of compliance
• Alerts inform training managers (as well as team members) when goals require renewal. 
• Show your team members exactly which course they need to take in order to maintain their compliance, allow them to obtain permission or to register in the course they need from their Dashboard.

The courses are available to Birch clients at no additional cost. Administrators can easily register learners to any courses they need to complete.

The current titles include:

Compliance Collection

• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Work Health & Safety 
• Diversity
• Conduct & Ethics
• IT Security Essentials
• Privacy Awareness
• Workplace Bullying and Harassment

Business Collection

• Work Priorities
• Operational Plans
• Workplace Relationships
• Show Leadership
• Team Effectiveness
• Manage Work Health and Safety
• Customer Service Management
• Continuous Improvement
• Workplace Learning
• Project Management
• Manage innovation and continuous improvement
• Delivering Successful Presentations
• Provide Coaching and Motivation
• Conflict Management
• Give and Receive Feedback
• Effective Communication
• Master eLearning Course

We encourage suggestions from our Birch Community on topics clients require. 

Need more content? Rapid Course^™ is the eLearning industry’s first customisable off-the-shelf content marketplace, built in the award-winning Articulate^®.  With 13 categories and 81 courses (and growing), we’re sure you’ll find what you need. What makes Rapid Course™ unique is that when you buy a course, the download includes the Articulate source files, so you can quickly customise the course for your needs! Find out more about Rapid Course here.

For more information please download the Birch Learning Platform Brochure or contact us. 

Sydney, Australia – B Online Learning are pleased to announce we have won the LearnX Platinum Award for Best eLearning Adoption with SA Water.

Due to the transient and often field-based nature of many areas of SA Water, the ability of staff to physically attend face to face training sessions is sometimes difficult. SA Water was keen to make training more accessible through improved visibility of employee training completion, making materials more consistent and offering less time-consuming and effective training packages.

B Online Learning met this criteria because of the flexibility and adaptability of the systems used for both content development and learning management.

Articulate Storyline was used to develop the eLearning course content to provide highly interactive and engaging courses using both linear and non-linear concept development methodologies.  It allowed for templates to be easily created and updated to provide a more visually dynamic but consistent approach to content appearance and functionality. For SA Water, this took the form of interchangeable content colour schemes that represent SA Water’s training categories:

• work health & safety
• compliance
• leadership
• technology
• technical and water quality
• professional development

This approach provided the users with greater focus on the training outcomes through consistent application of interactivity and through the colour scheme changes. These elements kept the users informed of the nature of the subject and the expectation for their involvement, allowing their focus to narrow down to the actual content.

We were also able to take advantage of some other easily incorporated eLearning elements to give the content a dynamic visual appeal, this helped to create a contemporary, interactive and immersive learning experience, which included:

• the use of layers to display objects progressively as well as using triggers and conditions that make things happen based on other events
• the selective use of images, video files, audio files and links to websites
• the inclusion of animated software simulations – to demonstrate the use of IT systems
• the inclusion of real life scenarios to reinforce learning in a context that is relevant to the specific audience for the course.

B Online is also the Certified Training Partner for Articulate products exclusively in Australia and New Zealand and we use those products exclusively in our solutions team to build top quality eLearning courses. A few members of the SA Water team completed our training so they can maintain their own courses moving forward.

Our LMS provided a robust, highly scalable system offering extensive functionality as well as its very user friendly interface and virtually unlimited configurability.  Some of the key features configured to support the key LMS criteria initially included:

• the automation of user record creation
• flexibility in defining and applying user structures
• easy management of training records
• the ability to use both standardised and self-built reports
• the ability for the LMS to allocate training to learners utilising both automated logic and manual interventions.

More specifically, we the LMS allowed for:

• automatically create or update SA Water user accounts regular data import from other SA Water Human Resource (HR) systems
• reporting within the LMS uses the SA Water organisation hierarchy as a standardised basis that allows for consistent report results and comparative review
• reporting within the LMS is geared towards course completions, including results and course renewal dates:
  • reporting options within the LMS included standard reports which were visible based on the report users roles and position in the hierarchy and also custom reports built by administrators
• use of course delivery structures that allow online course deployment via:
  • automated logic
  • manual allocation by SA Water LMS administrators
  • a user self-service model where specified courses were made available to users through a browse able catalogue structure.

When this project went live in SA Water, the feedback received was overwhelmingly positive.

“The biggest success has been the fact that it’s available upon request. Employees/Learners can really drive their own development and quench their own thirst for knowledge in a way that is historically unprecedented. Traditionally, they’ve had to wait, now it’s available on demand!”

For more information on our Learning Platform, Articulate eLearning content development or Certified Articulate Training please contact us to learn more.

Sydney, Australia – What a magnificent day it was as B Online Learning kicked off its Insight Conference to celebrate its 10 year birthday!

The client exclusive affair was held at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour, with a gorgeous backdrop of blue skies, water and sunshine.

With our valued partners in tow, we sat down for a great day discussing a whole raft of online learning and development opportunities including: building online communities, creating learning solutions, building learning eco-systems, setting goals and creating the right look and feel for any eLearning project.

It was also exciting to have eLearning ‘rockstars’ Tom Kuhlmann and David Anderson from Articulate, to share their knowledge and experience with a room eager for conversation and collaboration.

Great day to celebrate @bonlinelearning‘s 10-yr anniversary w/ @MattGuyan @tomkuhlmann @mattybee #bonline pic.twitter.com/3TJmfvAIx3

— David Anderson (@elearning) May 26, 2016

The day kicked off with our very own Ruth McElhone (Learning Director for B Online Learning) taking on MC duties to keep the day moving, and ensuring plenty of opportunities for questions and knowledge sharing. Ruth introduced our first speaker of the day was Tom Kuhlmann, Vice President, Articulate, sharing with us his experiences about How to Make Community Part of Your Training.

@ruthmcelhone kicking off the #bonline conference! With @tomkuhlmann and @Articulate pic.twitter.com/KlaOlIiBkt

— Matt Blackstock (@mattybee) May 26, 2016

Tom stressed that community is all about sharing, if you want to encourage it you need to share the knowledge. That’s one of the underlying reasons that the E-learning Heroes community works so well, whether it is sharing advice, examples or downloads.

Tom went on to discuss how community is also made up of two groups: Participators and Gleaners. Participators want a sense of belonging and connection. To provide that as a community manager you need to affirm, encourage, recognise and reward them. The Gleaners are after convenience; they want quick access to resources and information to help them solve a problem. As a Community Manager we need to make community easy for them to find things, self-serve as required, and get back to their day to day jobs; don’t expect them to hang around. If we can create an easy mechanism for the gleaners to find things, chances are they will be back, hang around and spread the word to others. Who knows? They may become participators or attract new participators for you. That’s how community grows!

Organisations tend to want to control communities @tomkuhlmann #bonline pic.twitter.com/9q7jKmjfPS

— Matthew Guyan (@MattGuyan) May 27, 2016

How to address both groups in the community @tomkuhlmann #bonline pic.twitter.com/McN5coXfWc

— Beck Verity (@bonlinelearning) May 26, 2016

Ruth had some great key messages for attendees during her talk. She kicked off with the statement that learning is NOT a onetime event. Learning needs to be reinforced through other channels. It’s more than an 8 hour workshop, or a 1 hour online module, you need an ecosystem that ensures that your learning environment is an interactive self – sustaining system. The ecosystem can be made up of talent management, performance support, knowledge management, access to experts, social networking & collaboration and structured learning.

Good start for developing a learning&performance ecosystem NB: One size doesn’t fit all-stay flexible! #bonline pic.twitter.com/SrxhdACXJb

— Matt Blackstock (@mattybee) May 27, 2016

The great news about an ecosystem is that you don’t necessarily need to have all six components! Even 2-3 of them if done well, are enough to establish a functional and efficient learning ecosystem. Ruth went on to give an example of an ecosystem by breaking down B Online Learning’s Master E-Learning Course, which embodies the concept of an ecosystem in its design.

Our Master #eLearning Course embodies the characteristics of a learning ecosystem @ruthmcelhone #bonline pic.twitter.com/iVGYwilfVy

— Beck Verity (@bonlinelearning) May 27, 2016

We then got really ‘hands on’, and conference participants created a design map for the VIVID Festival that was kicking off in Sydney that night!

Our last two events of the day, started with our expert Q&A panel made up of Tom Kuhlmann, John Kouzaba, Chris Rankin and Ben Saunders, B Online Learning’s own Solutions Manager. MC’d again by Ruth, our experts answered questions from the attendees about eLearning, learning solutions and their experiences.  The session also had a fantastic discussion around innovation, and what it means to our industry, its impacts and what changes we might possibly see over the next 3-5 years.

Expert Panel discussing #innovation Insight Conference @tomkuhlmann @SaundersBenji Chris Rankin @atgroundup #bonline pic.twitter.com/gA6wL6zJrb

— Beck Verity (@bonlinelearning) May 27, 2016

Our final session of the day was hosted by Ben Saunders and Belinda Wetenhall, eLearning Specialist & Trainer, Blackmores. Their presentation Blackmores – A Successful Learning Model Across Multiple Channels discussed how Blackmores implement and manage learning, across all four of their main learning channels. The presentation also discussed how they use the B Online Learning LMS to successfully manage multiple entry points for their learners, and provide a customised experience for each of their four primary audiences.

The key message that came out of the presentation was that to a user, the LMS should be simple, quick and easy to use.

How @Blackmores engages learners #bonline Insight Conference pic.twitter.com/OelwLT6vtF

— Beck Verity (@bonlinelearning) May 27, 2016

Belinda and Ben also shared with attendees the types of graphical reporting that can be pulled out of the LMS, with reports taken over multiple courses, time and by different groups of users, making the reporting extensive, but above all, easy!

That brought our Insight Conference to a close, with attendees discussing excitedly the opportunities and learnings the day had provided.

With the day itself coming to a close and the VIVID festival starting to kick in, the celebration was by no means over! Attendees and the team from B Online, moved onto The Terrace at the Australian National Maritime Museum to enjoy an opportunity to mingle and celebrate all that B Online has achieved over the past 10 years with the clients, team and partners that made it possible.

A BIG thank you to all our supporters who have been with us on this journey, and we look forward to continuing the journey with you as we move into our next ten years and beyond!

Happy 10^th Birthday B Online Learning!

Celebrating 10 amazing years of #Elearning success w/ @bonlinelearning pic.twitter.com/ZxmG5LdiGw

— David Anderson (@elearning) May 27, 2016

Sydney, Australia – Defence Housing Australia (DHA) with B Online Learning have won the PLATINUM LearnX Impact Award 2015 for Best New Technology Implementation – Deployment of a Hosted LMS.

DHA has more than 650 employees throughout Australia with 16 regional offices and four call centres. Prior to 2012 training was decentralised with minimal record keeping. DHA made a decision to create a centralised Learning and Development (L&D) team. Over two years DHA L&D has implemented more than 100 eLearning modules and many workshops and courses, particularly around building leadership capability and compliance. There was a need to be able to manage and track this training. Also their WHS team needed to provide training to more than 3,000 external contractors. This was not possible with the limited LMS DHA had.

Key LMS features DHA were looking for:

• Utility to upload and manage SCORM custom content without vendor assistance
• Capability to manage course registrations for all learning media types
• Ability for staff to enroll in a course
• Registration approval workflow
• Flexible extensive reporting accessible by L&D and managers
• Controlled access
• Integration with the HR system – Aurion

Watch Barry Moore from DHA present at LearnX 2015 here.

Barry Moore – Learning and Development Specialist

We previously managed training through spreadsheets and a basic LMS that could only manage eLearning, but this was limited in its capability. Hours of time and energy was spent producing reports that could not be regarded as accurate. Maintaining records was also very labour intensive. We had two full-time administration staff struggling to keep up with record keeping. Communication and engagement with managers and staff was always initiated by L&D with us having to spend a lot of time explaining what we had to offer and how it all links to staff professional development.

Being a new initiative in DHA our strategy early on was to improve engagement with the business and make training easily available to staff. Being able to customise banners, give it a DHA corporate look and tweak the user interface to make it simple for our staff to use was inline and supportive of our strategy.

For our external contractors we were able to manage the training to more than 3,000 contractors seamlessly. From DHA’s contractor management application, we are able to add contractor organisations into the LMS real time directly from the contractor management application, with no manual input at all. This was vital for contractors when creating their account to validate and to be assigned to these organisations for reporting purposes. After the contractor created their account with a simplified form, they are assigned their compliance training automatically and were able to access this training in the field.

This allowed DHA safety and project officers to check contractors’ compliance on the job. The process of managing this large group of learners involves no manual intervention at all, and is managed in the one instance of the LMS via communities allowing us to provide different business rules than we have for internal employees.

In the future, we will be able to target different types of learning activities based on trades through the LMS. For example any learning content that is based on electricity content, will be targeted to those contractor organisations who are electrical contractors.

It has had an enormous impact on staff and the business. Staff now actively seek out training to improve their skills and knowledge. Managers are more engaged with L&D and the ability to view their staff’s achievement has increased their engagement with L&D. Managers and staff are now referring to the LMS for information when completing development plans as part of the performance development agreement process.

The fact that we could implement and track our compliance played a role in our WHS team gaining national accreditation.

It’s proved very cost effective. We have gone from two full-time administration staff to one. The one administrator not only managers the LMS but now has time to assist with eLearning development, increasing their skill set.

B Online Learning LMS has more capability than we need at our early stage of development as a centralised L&D department. We take comfort in the fact that as we grow and require more capability from our LMS, it can meet those needs.

Sydney, Australia – Australasian College of Sports and Exercise College with B Online Learning won a GOLD LearnX Impact Award for Best eLearning Adopter.

The Australasian College of Sports Physicians is the professional body representing Sport and Exercise physicians in both Australia and New Zealand. Training and employment in this field is restricted to fully qualified medical practitioners. The Australian Medical Council (AMC) sets the standards and accredits specialist medical colleges and in doing so makes suggestions in how a College may improve training. Specifically the AMC requested that the ACSP standardise training across geographical areas so that trainees in isolated areas had the same access to up to date information and high level specialist opinions as those in the major cities. In addition, the modules assist in increasing the depth and breadth of information easily accessible and available to the College’s membership and trainees, as the modules have the capability of containing large amounts of information, presented in an interesting and interactive way. Finally, the modules include formative assessments throughout the modules which are assessments “for learning” (rather than “of learning”) which has been shown to enhance recall and better embed the information.

“The Fellows, members and Registrars of the ACSP are a group of specialist doctors who are either training in the specialty of Sport and Exercise Medicine, or maintaining and enhancing their specialist knowledge. Completion of the Academic modules are compulsory for trainees. Completion of the Clinical Training Supervisor modules are compulsory for Fellows who train Registrars. Other modules are available for all to improve knowledge in specific areas. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and there has been significant uptake of all the modules by the membership.” Di Robinson, ACSP

The Academic Modules were designed to provide specific information in a prescribed learning area, at the level of a University one semester course. The information provided in the modules were aligned to the learning outcomes in the ACSP curriculum. The internal medicine modules cover topic areas of sport and exercise medicine which are harder to obtain experience and information in, during day to day practice. The performance criteria includes the uptake of the modules and the validity of the modules – did the content of the modules actually deliver the information required. The Clinical Training Supervisor Modules are to assist trainee supervisors in teaching methods, giving feedback, performing workplace based assessments and dealing with the difficult trainee. Performance criteria for these modules is not only uptake, but if supervisors felt their ability to train and work with their trainees had been enhanced.

ACSP required an LMS as well as eLearning content development. The chosen tools were BOL LMS and Articulate authoring tools.

Using Articulate authoring tools to build the 15 courses provided interactive and media rich eLearning courses, narrated by the SME’s (ie the specialist doctors for each topic), each with pre determined assessments, scenarios, case studies and resources to download. B Online Learning also used Articulate to load the videos into BOL DLP to enable SCORM reporting on students completion of viewing the videos.

Demonstrative videos were used to illustrate “how-to’s”- Fellows and Members should be familiar with the examination techniques featured in the videos which are provided for revision. In particular, trainees new to the specialty benefit from the expertise demonstrated in the videos. Each video is approximately 15 minutes. ACSP are hoping to continually add to their catalogue of learning with further development in the pipeline.

“The eLearning design has been a huge success and the project, thus far has exceeded the organisation’s performance criteria.” Di Robinson, ACSP

Supervisors have found they have been able to improve their teaching techniques and better communicate and give feedback to the trainees. The registrars have found that the teaching methods are improving as a result of these teaching modules and is more directed to their learning needs than past courses they have had to complete to achieve the same learning requirements, as the module was specifically designed for the ACSP.”

Previously the trainees had to find a course at a university that would suit their learning needs, but these courses were always suboptimal and did not always cover all the learning outcomes of the ACSP curriculum. Therefore, the registrars have saved time and money, and their performance has improved as they now have resources which are specifically designed for their learning needs.

“The project has been cost effective. We have had a very limited budget, but B Online Learning has worked within our budget and we have been able to extend our budget for more modules on the basis of the success, positive feedback and uptake of the initial modules.“ Di Robinson, ACSP

Technology has supported ACSP members learning as an information vehicle for exploring knowledge to support learning (accessing needed information, comparing perspectives, beliefs, and worldviews). It has provided authentic context by representing and simulating real situations, and contexts, for defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking. It has been an intellectual partner by allowing students to reflect on what they have learned and how they came to know it and supporting mindful thinking.

For further information on our digital learning development solutions click here.