All About IDEA Public Colleges
Based in 1998, IDEA Public Colleges has reworked from a small faculty with 150 college students in Texas to turn into the fastest-growing community of tuition-free, Okay-12 public constitution colleges in the US. Their mission is to ship 100% of their graduates to varsity, providing a high-quality faculty preparatory curriculum to their college students.
As we speak, IDEA Public Colleges serves greater than 88,000 college students in 143 colleges throughout Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Ohio. With over 12,000 employees members, IDEA has been acknowledged as a “Nice Place to Work” and acquired nationwide rankings on The Washington Put up and U.S. Information & World Report’s Prime Excessive Colleges lists.
The IDEA Public Colleges L&D staff
- Richel Raich-Cantu, Director of Expertise Improvement and Innovation
- Johnathon Kruger, Dean of Educational Preparation Packages
- Liz Jackson, Senior Director of Educational Management Packages
The Challenges
IDEA Public Colleges continues to develop quickly, and yearly they onboard between 1000 to 1300 new academics and co-teachers. To maintain up with the demand for high-quality instruction (and a rising variety of college students and employees), their worker coaching must be rolled out rapidly and constantly in a number of geographic areas throughout the US.
However previous to 360 Studying, IDEA Public Colleges have been delivering most of their worker coaching in individual, and getting new hires up to the mark throughout all of the totally different areas was taking quite a lot of time and sources. Due to this, IDEA had main challenges with:
- Constantly and effectively onboarding new academics at totally different occasions all through the tutorial faculty 12 months, with out sacrificing high quality or engagement within the studying expertise.
- Creating at-scale developmental and compliance coaching applications which can be standardized, updated, and interactive—even when performed remotely and asynchronously.
“Earlier than 360Learning, having to develop all of these totally different studying experiences for various areas led to a scarcity of high quality management, and we could not make sure that the facilitators have been correctly skilled.” – Johnathon Kruger, Dean of Educational Preparation Packages
Because of this difficult and oftentimes complicated system, IDEA additionally discovered that:
- Academics and learners weren’t participating with IDEA’s previous LMS platform.
- It was arduous to trace studying outcomes and troublesome to maintain observe of compliance necessities.
“Up to now, we would have to attend and do onboarding coaching each three months or each six months all year long to catch up our new hires.” – Liz Jackson, Senior Director of Educational Management Packages
IDEA Public Colleges knew they wanted to get sooner at creating and distributing versatile coaching supplies that gave their rising employees the important information and abilities to do their jobs properly and help their college students to succeed in increased.
However they have been scuffling with processes that did not scale and a heavy reliance on in-person coaching.
One thing needed to change.
The Answer: 360Learning’s Complete Studying Platform
“The primary coaching I used to be introduced on to IDEA to run was our New Instructor Institute coaching. With COVID, we needed to transfer that coaching just about to the 360Learning platform. We saved over half 1,000,000 {dollars} versus doing it in individual.” — Richel Raich-Cantu, Director of Expertise Improvement and Innovation
Listed below are 3 methods the 360Learning platform has reworked IDEA Public Colleges’ Studying and Improvement processes—and helped them obtain large price financial savings whereas driving even higher coaching outcomes for academics and employees.
1. Empowering Extra Than 200 SMEs To Create Participating Content material
“We’ve got greater than 200 lively contributors (inner Topic Matter Consultants) on our platform serving to us create high-quality studying experiences for our staff.” – Johnathon Kruger
As a result of IDEA Public Colleges’ trainings are so complicated and huge, they want a lot of specialists to assist academics get the information and abilities required to achieve success within the classroom.
Leveraging the ability of peer-driven upskilling, IDEA Public Colleges has created design requirements that allow their 200+ Topic Matter Consultants to create actually participating programs and studying supplies. In-course collaboration and suggestions has additionally enabled SMEs to considerably velocity up course creation—and studying content material can now be accessed on-line concurrently by all their employees.
Johnathon explains, “360Learning permits our Topic Matter Consultants to create programs in actual time and to make sure that all our academics are getting the information and abilities that they want.” These programs cowl tender and arduous abilities, in addition to necessary compliance coaching.
“This has been extremely necessary for us,” explains Richel. “For instance, in 2019, which is the final time we did this new instructor coaching initially of the 12 months in individual, we solely had 12 totally different tracks that academics would be a part of primarily based on what content material they taught.”
As we speak, Richel and the staff have 94 distinctive studying tracks that serve the several types of content material and curriculum that academics want. Everybody’s distinctive studying wants are addressed, and coaching content material might be adjusted to match every learner’s schedule.
2. Implementing Distant Async Studying Throughout The Group
“360Learning has been a game-changer in serving to us execute trainings throughout so many alternative locations, throughout two totally different time zones, with 200 Topic Matter Consultants.” – Richel Raich-Cantu
Earlier than IDEA adopted 360Learning, they have been internet hosting the vast majority of their coaching classes in individual, together with a number of studying software program options. Reside trainings have been geographically restricted and will solely be held at sure occasions all year long—making it troublesome to onboard new academics with flexibility.
To make it much more difficult, their previous coaching software program wasn’t user-friendly, and every answer was used for various functions. This led to confusion for brand new employees, and likewise piled additional prices onto IDEA’s L&D funds.
With 360Learning, they have been capable of consolidate all their studying wants into one central platform and supply of reality. A streamlined course creation course of helped them design bite-sized, peer-driven studying that’s deliverable throughout totally different modalities.
IDEA learners now have historic entry to all programs which have been created, and may study remotely and asynchronously. This has additionally freed up time for individuals who sometimes would want to facilitate these trainings repeatedly.
“Now, our academics can entry new instructor coaching each for tradition and content material at any time,” provides Richel, “It is also actually useful for our principals to have the ability to concentrate on priorities. It is actually arduous to supply coaching in the course of the common faculty day as a result of our principals and campus leaders are so busy.”
3. Standardizing And Scaling Obligatory Trainings
As a nonprofit constitution faculty community that depends on public funding, Richel explains that “there are particular necessities from the federal authorities, state authorities, and native governments to make sure that we’re in compliance.”
360Learning allows IDEA Public Colleges to register and observe completion for necessary coaching on the platform, and situation employees members certificates to confirm profitable compliance coaching.
IDEA can maintain information of these certificates, and their academics may also proactively renew their certificates as proof that they’ve accomplished persevering with schooling that is particular to their roles.
By automating these routine duties, IDEA’s L&D staff saves quite a lot of effort and time—time they will put to make use of delivering formidable and thrilling studying experiences. For instance, of their Summer season Skilled Improvement Program, IDEA Public Colleges trains between 1200 to 1500 new academics directly.
With 360Learning, they will simply measure coaching completion charges and gauge how properly their learners are mastering the course content material. In consequence, Richel and her staff have a deeper and extra correct understanding of the effectiveness of their L&D initiatives and their coaching ROI.
The Outcomes: Elevated Learner Engagement, Higher Course Design, And Extra Versatile Worker Onboarding
“We made the swap to 360Learning as a result of the platform was a lot extra dynamic than the platform we have been utilizing beforehand.” – Richel Raich-Cantu
By equipping their Topic Matter Consultants with a strong L&D platform that leverages peer-driven upskilling and asynchronous coaching, the IDEA Public Colleges has pushed concrete outcomes and spectacular price financial savings throughout the group.
- $500,000 USD saved of their first 12 months by switching from in-person worker coaching to distant, async coaching with 360Learning.
- An enhance in learner engagement and the power to succeed in each single learner and establish their most popular studying experiences and modalities.
- New academics can entry full coaching applications, regardless of when within the 12 months they be a part of.
- Larger charges of job satisfaction and retention: IDEA noticed elevated efficiency, increased job satisfaction, and retention for academics who’re employed late or in the midst of the 12 months.
- Personalised studying tracks helped them develop from 12 content material tracks to 94 content material tracks for academics, because of knowledge that helped them differentiate particular person learner wants.
The Future For IDEA Public Colleges
Trying forward, Richel and her staff are persevering with to develop IDEA Public Colleges’ dedication to expert-driven studying and upskilling from inside. To take action, they’re going to proceed to make use of the 360Learning platform to leverage their community of Topic Matter Consultants in creating participating and personalised digital studying experiences for his or her staff and academics.
In the way forward for digital studying, this implies breaking studying sources down into bite-sized content material that learners can full at their comfort, and utilizing inner peer experience and suggestions to make new content material as related and impactful as doable.
Need to see related outcomes? Get a customized demo to learn how 360Learning might help your group obtain smarter and extra impactful L&D.

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Initially printed at 360learning.com.