1. Eduson-2015. What’s New?

The last six months have been a period of great change and improvements for us. We’ve worked very hard on designing our courses and system functions, and introduced a lot of cool features. New kinds of courses and formats have been introduced, and we’ve improved the quality of the sound and pictures, and expanded our course library, which has give us better statistics... the list is endless.

Let’s start with the course library. Right now we’ve got more than 1000 videos in the catalogue and all courses are presented in 5 formats: large video courses, mini courses, business cases, animated presentations and lectures on business English. Each format helps the user to complete a specific task.

For example, the 3 hour video course, which is made up of 5-10 video lectures, delves deeply into the topic and gives users qualitative theory, examples of relvant cases of companies from US and worldwide as well as practical methods. Just imagine: on average over 3 hours an employee goes through 18 short tests. Multiple repetitions ensure that the knowledge stays in their heads for a long time.

Mini courses: this is like “first aid” for employees. In 10-15 minutes the user squeezes in the most important information on the topic and specific skills that they can immediately apply to their daily work.

For comparison, the large video course entitled “General Management” offers a wide knowledge base that a manager needs to guide the company, and the mini course called “How to Give Critiscism to a Colleague” offers specific guidance on how to constructively and effectively convey criticism to an employee, which also contains a file with recommendations for further steps that should be taken.

Business cases: this is our new and perhaps most engaging format. This format combines a classical “Harvard” business case with an interactive game simulator. The employee needs to work out how to extricate themselves from a difficult situation, consult with the virtual senior management and resolve arguments with problem clients. The users have a go, make mistakes, use tips from the “consultant” and generally learn on the job just like in real life. The business cases do an excellent job at honing people’s skills: how to conduct effective meetings, sales, public speaking and many more.

2. More Interaction and Engagement

The level of engagement is what distinguishes a good course from an average one. Even the most informative course can be useless if the user falls asleep within 5 minutes. By the way, Eduson’s courses have the highest degree of engagement: up to 87% of those who begin learning receive at least 1 diploma (in comparison to the standard rate of 3-7%) and up to 23% of users receive 10 or more diplomas. What do we do to get these kinds of results?

First, we use interactivity and gameification. Interactive videos are one of the main new things that we’ve introduced. This super effective aspect of our courses compensates for the main disadvantage in e-learning, which is a lack of feedback. We have created an interactive simulator with a lecturer which doesn’t just give the employee points for the correct answer, but also gives them comments about why the answer is incorrect, and which parts of the course they should look at to correct their mistakes. The simulations of real situations bridge the gap between theory and practice and show visually where and how you can apply the new knowledge.

This means that our courses are the closest thing to face-to-face contact, thanks to our unique testing system and the opportunity to look over lectures again, which sometimes exceeds them in terms of quality. And finally, the game format is simply more interesting for users to learn with.

The second secret of engagement is the plot. Everyone sometimes feels that they want to be the hero of an action movie. So why can’t you use that in training? The scenarios that we’ve come up with turn the training into a real adventure and prepare the employee for real life work situations.

Once an employee sorted out a conflict with a virtual “colleague,” he will not experience any stress when there are conflicts in the office or in production. It will be easier for him to cope with emotions and choose the right way to behave in that situation.

Third, the audio-visual component is very important. From a technical perspective, it’s used by default in the most contemporary equipment. From an emotional perspective, the courses are voiced over by professional actors whose voices are recognisable from films, such as the heroes of “Game of Thrones”.

Recently, we added voice-overs to our dialogue trainers, and now it’s a fully-fledged simulator so you can communicate live with clients, colleagues and subordinates. I really recommend the lively dialogue that you get with it.

3. Only Quality Content

A lot of people ask us how we manage to get celebrities such as Ichak Azides or Paul King from the Wharton Business School for our movie clips. We don’t think this question is necessary; the authors of Eduson’s courses can only be the experts in their field. This approach helps us to attract professionals: Scott Page from INSEAD, John Sturtevant from Harvard, Jeremy Josse the head of KPMG in New York, and many more.

Moreover, our team of analysts independently collect additional qualitative materials, adding to the interesting cases and using the actual figures from practicing US and international companies.

For example, to create the 20 minute business case entitled “How to collect debts from clients” Eduson’s authors used up to 30 sources, beginning with textbooks and professional literature, and finishing with company financial reports and interviews with lawyers and entrepreneurs. Clearly, the concentration of useful information in this course is simply off the scale.

4. A Convenient Format and LMS

Now clients can study our courses in 2 ways: using our LMS directly from Eduson’s website, or in SCORM format, when you download the courses onto the corporate LMS.

Our online LMS has been personally designed by Eduson, and has taken the weaknesses in other systems into account. Now it’s not just an interface for taking courses; it’s an analytical tool (we call it the “Eye of Sauron”), a way of motivating employees with ratings and wish lists, a convenient personal account where any function is accessible with a couple of clicks, and many more. We receive feedback from our clients and constantly work to improve our system functions.

Now Eduson’s clients can create courses by themselves with a convenient free course editor. Videos, presentations and additional materials can all be uploaded with ease to the editor and turn into a ready-to-take online course.

5. Relevant Course Topics

Each week, we put out 5-7 new courses so, our clients get constantly updated library with fresh material.

Our course content is lively, and changes as the business world changes. We are constantly updating the course content and adding fresh practices and examples to it. We have recently improved the course content on sales, management and conducting presentations.

A very popular course package has been prepared for this year, which focuses on doing business in a crisis. Moreover, we’ve strengthened our course section on corporate finances, administration and management, as the difficult economic situation has demanded these competencies even from ordinary managers.

The courses which increase an employee's personal efficiency are always very popular. From amongst the new ones, I recommend looking at the new courses on time management, business emails and conducting meetings.

6. What Lies Ahead?

We hope to develop and improve our interactiveness, gameification, quality content and contemporary technology forever. More interesting, better quality, more true to life.

Soon there will be courses in our library on current topics, from effective debt collection to setting up a call center. And of course, ones that everyone needs such as sales, negotiation and time management.

The interactive simulators and videos are definitely worth going onto our course catalogue for in the near future. Sign up to our newsletters to find out about all our new products. I promise you’ll never be bored!