eLearning success at WRVS
WRVS, the national charity aiming to 'Make Britain a great place to grow old', has scooped the Charity Learning Award for 'getting started or restarted on its eLearning journey'. WRVS impressed with its professional, focused approach to launching, evaluating and assessing the impact of its eLearning programme throughout the organisation.
ELearning within an organisation can definitely stall, and this
was certainly the case at the WRVS where it had lapsed for several years.
Keen to reach its 40,000 strong volunteer network and 2,500 staff
in the most cost effective L&D way possible, the charity
decided to take a fresh look at what eLearning could offer.
Pictured (L t R) are: Richard Bragg, Learning and Development
Partner, WRVS; Martin Baker, CEO and Founder, The Charity Learning
Consortium; Sharon Barwood, Head of Learning and Development,
WRVS
Richard Bragg, Learning & Development Partner at the WRVS
explains: "WRVS knows how important training and development is to
its staff and volunteers. It operates across Great Britain, so
eLearning offers a big saving for the charity while ensuring it
offers consistent, quality training - the L&D team can also
maintain good training records and provide opportunities for future
learning and growth."
A Training Needs Analysis identified key areas where eLearning
could help the organisation: initially induction and
compliance.
Partnering with The Charity Learning Consortium (CLC) for
hosting and support, eLearning was launched to the WRVS Cardiff
Office in August 2010. It was a great success and 50 people started
using eLearning on the day. After further field testing, the
eLearning programme was launched across the charity in January this
year using the CLC's Moodle platform.
The launch was supported by a thorough internal communications
plan to ensure everyone throughout the organisation knew what
eLearning offered and how to get started. The L&D team wrote to
all staff, gave presentations, promoted the training informally to
managers and provided a dedicated 'learning laptop' to each of its
10 regions.
Since January hundreds of different modules have been completed by
users at all levels, including volunteers, managers, senior
managers and trustees. Most importantly, the learners are using
eLearning and love it! Feedback has been resoundingly positive. The
L&D team is not sitting still: it's aiming for 80% of staff to
complete two mandatory compliance modules by March 2012. The team
continues to promote eLearning and is targeting areas of low take
up.
Martin Baker, CEO and founder of The Charity Learning Consortium
commented: "WRVS has taken a really robust approach to restarting
its eLearning journey to ensure that it is a success. The judges
were particularly impressed with the way that the L&D team has
set itself clear targets - so they will know what success will look
like for them - scheduling evaluation of learning as a vital part
of the ongoing eLearning process."
Top tips for successful eLearning implementation
From Richard Bragg, Learning & Development partner at
WRVS
1.Manage it as a professional project - developing and agreeing
the business case, working with stakeholders and communicating
throughout. While we identified key stakeholders, spending more
time at the start - clearly defining their needs and expectations -
would have saved time later on.
2.Be flexible and be prepared to adapt. We learnt to change tack
in order to achieve what we wanted. This has included rewriting our
first attempt at content, resolving technical issues, and
transferring to a Moodle platform.
3.Once you deliver the product, you have to work hard to get
people to use it. Almost all the work we have done on this has
reaped rewards, but you have to carry on doing this. Working with
line managers is particularly beneficial.