What is a Virtual Campus and how can it help your business?
In this blog article, we’re going to explore what the Virtual Campus is, what is propelling businesses to shift to eLearning, and how a Virtual Campus can benefit your business in making the transition to eLearning.
To best guide you through this, the article will explore these topics in the following order:
- An overview of “what” the Virtual Campus is
- How the Virtual Campus fits into eLearning and Blended-Learning solutions
- What is driving organizations to shift to eLearning for learning and training development
- How a Virtual Campus can help your organization transform the way training is delivered and join the shift to eLearning
What is a Virtual Campus?
A Virtual Campus is the simplest, most efficient way to launch an eLearning institute. It is your learning content management system (LCMS), and admin tool all in one. Suitable whether you are a training company looking to extend your brand by selling online courses, or a private organization looking to establish your own internal corporate university.
We’ve worked with private organizations who were looking to establish a system to train and develop their employees, with their own LMS and learning content. On the other hand, we’ve worked with businesses looking to launch their own eLearning institutes to start selling eLearning courses. With these businesses, we worked to create a Virtual Campus where customers can purchase courses and take them through the institute.
This short video below shows an example of a Virtual Campus we created:
How does the Virtual Campus fit into eLearning and Blended-Learning Solutions?
As noted above, the Virtual Campus is essentially an eLearning institute. As the trend towards eLearning (rather than traditional education methods) grows, the need for organizations to incorporate eLearning into their training and education strategy does too.
Given an increasing gap between the skills employers want, and the skills employees have, training and talent management has once again become a hot topic in business today. In fact, addressing talent, and talent management, is essential for businesses to compete and succeed.
With training and education becoming pivotal to business success, organizations need to find the best way to offer training, and are gravitating toward eLearning and Blended-Learning solutions. The Virtual Campus can facilitate large scale eLearning and Blended-Learning strategies.
What is driving the shift to eLearning?
Over the next five years, the worldwide eLearning market is expected to exceed US $240 billion (docebo). 41% of Fortune 500 companies have already introduced eLearning into their training strategies. (tlsasalestraining) Some of the main reasons organizations are shifting from traditional training methods to eLearning are:
- Cost-Efficient – Organizations can provide eLearning at a lower cost than traditional, classroom training methods. They save money on materials, trainers, and travel expenses. For example, when IBM switched from traditional to online training, they could deliver five times the amount of training for 1/3 of the cost (trainingindustry)
- Boosting Productivity – Businesses are recognizing a skills gap in the workplace and are turning to eLearning to bridge this gap. Companies that use eLearning see a significant boost in employee productivity and motivation. According to Sh!ft, every $1.00 spent on eLearning results in $30 in productivity, and 42% of companies say eLearning has resulted in increased revenues.
- Increased flexibility – eLearning is highly flexible, allowing learners to access material 24 hours a day. So, as long as users have an Internet accessible device, they can learn anytime, anywhere. This is especially beneficial for businesses training employees, as employees can learn on their own time, and spend less time away from their jobs.
- Mobile Compatible – Being compatible on mobile devices gives eLearning a huge advantage. The use of mobile devices continues to grow, with 87% of millennials claiming their smartphones never leave their side (docebo). This means that employees and students can access their materials on their devices, wherever they are, whenever they choose.
- Distance Learning – The past few years, there’s been an increased interest in distance learning, where individuals are seeking education without the cost and commitment of attending a physical institution. Many companies today also have a geographically dispersed workforce, and regardless of their locations, they should still receive the same training. With eLearning, remote employees can take the training regardless of their location and time zone.
- Interactive and Engaging – As eLearning matures, there are more tools and options available to administrators to customize and animate courses into interactive eLearning. Authoring tools that are available in eLearning allow anyone, even without IT experience, to create engaging pieces of eLearning material for the end user. Our Virtual Campus has powerful authoring tools and a pagebuilder that allows you to edit the content, add audio, video, recordings, animations, and rebrand as your own.
In a time where employee training and education are critical to business success, these factors are encouraging organizations to shift to an eLearning or Blended-Learning solution to train and educate their employees.
As a training content company, we had to adapt to this shift to eLearning. We started out as an instructor-led courseware company, creating soft skills and computer skills training manuals for organizations to train their employees. This type of training is still used, and we still sell those products.
However, we also saw the demand for eLearning and we began developing our eLearning products back in 2008, and have continued to grow and refine our eLearning.
So… How can the Virtual Campus help your organization transform the way training is delivered and join the shift to eLearning?
If you made it this far, you already have an idea of what the Virtual Campus is, how it fits into the scope of eLearning, and why eLearning is a great solution for your employee training and education.
The Virtual Campus is your LCMS that is branded as your own, accessible through your website, and equipped with a front-end course catalogue. eCommerce is available should you choose to sell courses.
The LCMS is where you have the power to create a unique, online learning experience for your employees or your customers. The LCMS transforms the way your training is delivered. It has powerful authoring tools that allow you to edit the courses, whether it be text, adding in audio, videos, questions, recordings, or even games.
In addition, the LCMS also includes direct-to-eLearning conversion technology and the course compiler. Direct-to-eLearning conversion technology gives you the power to convert existing courses (Word or PPT documents) into an eLearning course in seconds, that you can later edit. The course compiler allows you to merge sections of different courses to create a unique course.
If you’re not only looking for a LCMS, but also need course content, the Virtual Campus comes loaded with over 800 business skills and computer skills eLearning courses. That’s a pretty extensive catalogue to get your training in motion.
To sum up, we have seen the way the Virtual Campus has helped organizations launch a complete, branded eLearning institute, and believe it is a great solution for other organizations to consider as they join the shift to eLearning.
To learn more about the Virtual Campus solution, ask questions, or try a free trial, see here: https://pages.velsoft.com/virtual-Campus/
Sources Used:
https://www.docebo.com/elearning-market-trends-report-2017-2021/
https://www.tlsasalestraining.com/content/how-elearning-can-increase-productivity
