In today’s world, pulling employees together into a classroom for training is often not feasible. Whether your concerns are the travel costs incurred in bringing the employees together, the lack of training room availability, concerns about the risk of viral transmission, lack of being able to coordinate everyone’s schedules, or the inability to pull an entire team away from their work simultaneously, sometimes classroom training is just not feasible.
Procept can address these concerns with our e-learning offerings. Via e-learning, your staff can either participate from their desks (or even from home) avoiding travel costs and room availability issues; and with some e-learning, students can take the training at their own pace, when it best fits their own individual schedules, greatly reducing the impact on business operations from having them away for training. Procept provides a range of flexible e-learning options to accommodate your business needs.
Procept does e-learning in two different ways: we have instructor-led online learning (sometimes called “synchronous learning”) where an instructor is facilitating the course for multiple students and we have self-paced online learning (sometimes called “asynchronous learning”) where a student interacts with some courseware – this could be a website or installed software.
Procept has extensive experience designing, developing and delivering e-learning to public and private-sector organizations and to the general public. In fact, some of our team members have won international awards for interactive training design and development. By working with Procept, you are getting proven capabilities and reliable solutions to your e-learning needs.
Our history of self-paced (asynchronous) online learning stems from a rich background in preparing computer-based training (CBT) since the early 1990s using technologies such as CD-ROMs, laser-discs, digital video on DVDs, and custom-developed software. As mentioned earlier, some of our e-learning designers and developers have won international awards for their work in this area. Several of our team members have PhDs or Masters degrees in adult learning, specifically focused on computer-based training.
With our deep expertise in instructional design, we know that not every course aligns well with online delivery so we have made the investment to adjust a number of our courses to this alternate delivery mode, creating new student interactions that work with individual remote learners, rather than in-class groups.
SCORM is a portable e-learning format where the courseware can be shared between multiple learning management systems (LMSes). Such courses are generally highly-interactive experiences with games, exploratory diagrams, and other “clickable” interactions. They also tend to have built-in knowledge assessments (quizzes) to assess individual learner progress.
Procept has been developing custom SCORM modules for its own training offerings, as well as courses for numerous clients including Toronto Community Housing, Cole Engineering, Dalhousie University, and the City of Toronto.
These are simulations where learners interact with a mockup of a real online system in a guided format, teaching them how to use such systems to complete work activities. For example, everything from how to log in to the system through to processing a new service request to generating reports. These simulations are not just telling students how to do an activity but also showing them and then letting them try it out themselves in a controlled environment.
Procept designers have won international awards for their system simulation learning software starting with Teranet's POLARIS system back in the early 1990s. Since then, Procept subsidiaries have developed simulation training for Canadian and U.S. intelligence agencies, a nuclear operator and a pharmaceutical company.
Many of our self-directed e-learning modules are video based due to the rapid development and low cost of this mode of self-directed training. There are two flavors of video-based training: (1) video recordings of instructors at the front of a classroom teaching the course with multiple camera angles and close-ups of slides as they refer to them in their presentation, and (2) recordings of webinars where the focus is on the content, not the instructor (see example in Figure 4). The first flavor (video recordings of a live instructor) are the most popular with participants, as the multiple camera angles switching back and forth plus the close ups of the slides make the video more interesting to watch for the students, avoiding monotony that can sometimes be experienced with the second (content only) flavor. Procept’s instructional designers work closely with our instructors to create interest even in these pre-recorded sessions. Many have accompanying supplemental workbooks with worksheets, case studies, quizzes and other activities to support the on-screen components, and some have online quizzes to accompany the videos to assess knowledge and to introduce interactivity into the learning.
Procept has created many courses using video-based learning, including ones it sells directly to the public on topics as varied as EPC Project Management, Agile Requirements Analysis, and Dealing with Difficult Employees, as well as custom courses for organizations such as a course on procurement policies and procedures for Ontario's Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation and a course on job role responsibilities under a new set of procedures for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).
These courses are focused on “learning by doing” and generally combine short online videos followed by offline activities such as filling in worksheets or forms, completing case study activities, performing analyses, etc. where students put the learning into immediate practice. After the activity is completed, a follow-up video explains what a correct result should look like and would discuss common errors, etc. Students would then be able to assess their own work to see how they performed. This process would be repeated, topic by topic.
PProcept can host the self-directed learning courseware on our own learning management system (LMS), provide it to clients to host on their own LMS, or we can even create modules that can run on a client intranet, independent of an LMS for those clients who do not have one. We can even create a white-labeled LMS instance that can be customized with client logos and tie them in with single sign-on to client intranets.