Each of us has something to learn from others, and something to teach in return. ~ St. Augustine
Great content leads to a great user experience. And a great user experience leads to an engaged learner experience. We tackled content in the first half of this year, now the question becomes: how do we get learners to engage with the content - and each other - within the platform?
THE Q3 BIG THING | COMMUNITY
Community. It’s in the Intellum platform’s DNA; a built-in community of learners consuming content and sharing achievements. In Q3, we’re leveraging that community by integrating social engagement more seamlessly into the learning environment.
Why it’s a big deal: Putting community directly into the learning environment invites learners to stay longer, interact more. Peer-to-peer learning occurs when they are able to seek out others who have successfully completed an Activity or Path; and because it’s all done within the platform, you can gauge the effectiveness of your content, and the engagement level of your learners, by simply listening to the activity within your community.
Learning Gets Social | Tribe Chat
What if you could bring a social component to the learning environment without the distraction and security issues of social media? Welcome to Tribe and Tribe Chat.
Launched just a few years ago, Tribe is the invitation-only, social media app that gives your learners a better way to communicate and collaborate, while still supporting your broader learning initiatives. You control what information and which conversations learners can access; learners are empowered to share topics of interest and bump or comment on posts they like.
In Q3, we’re bringing that collaborative, community-based learning into the Intellum platform. Introducing Tribe Chat, available not only in both the Tribe web and mobile apps, but also embedded directly in Exceed to allow your learners to chat directly with peers...directly in the learning environment.
When you enable Tribe, you have the option to enable Tribe Chat, giving your learners the ability to:
- Reach out to a peer for a 1:1 chat or start a group conversation
- Participate in a conversation about a specific learning activity
- Add a wide-range of reactions to a message
All without ever leaving the platform.
Tribe Chat offers several options that let you meet learners where they are - in and out of Exceed. Simply choose your chat experience to determine when and how learners are able to interact:
User-initiated chat: Users can chat 1:1 with other users, and create group chats with 3 or more participants (Admins can enable or disable user-initiated chat)
Admin-initiated chat: Admins can create group chat experiences tied to specific initiatives or teams
- Add “Open Chat” button to any Page in Exceed for instant, real-time learner engagement and collaboration
- Introduce a dedicated chat room to any group, function area, team or audience segment
- Easily create tokenized links that drop a user directly into a specific group chat and can be shared anywhere
Why it’s a big deal for learners: We’re making it easier for learners to access social learning tools that encourage them to share ideas and additional content, such as videos and links, that may help others following the same curriculum. Notifications alert them to new content, messages or mentions, drawing them back into the application...and back into the platform. A seamless transition between desktop and mobile means learners can take their conversation - and their learning - on the go.
Why it's a big deal for Admins: Analytics like frequency of visits and most popular hashtag or post give you valuable insights into the social learning taking place in your environment. Follow the Tribe Chats to see what topics your learners are talking about and which content they’re interacting with. Then put those insights into action to build an even better, more effective learning experience.
The Case for Tribe: After introducing Tribe, a large retail client recognized a significant improvement in learner engagement. Among all users, Tribe users have 69% more enrollments than non-Tribe users.
When you’re ready to bring social learning and collaboration to your learning community, your Account Strategist will explain the details of adding Tribe and Tribe Chat, help you develop a plan and identify metrics to measure levels of engagement.
Game On | Level Team Challenges
Level brings learning full circle and makes it fun. It combines positive gamification elements like badges and certifications, to help learners develop successful habits. Admins can assign value to specific Activities or actions in Exceed and Tribe, and learners earn Experience Points (XP) and badges for completing those pre-defined activities. Learners can track their own progress, as well as compete with peers via the leaderboard.
In Q3, we’re taking Level to the next level with Team Challenges. New group functionality lets Admins create a team of users who can compete together to achieve a goal. Features include:
Team-specific leaderboards
Group or invitation-based challenges
Set organization or department-specific metrics to drive engagement
Using Level Team Challenges, you can create friendly competition between regional or departmental teams to track their progress against goals like product sales or support ticket resolution. Level collects data from Exceed and Tribe, and lets you pull in data from third-party sites like Salesforce, GitHub and your CRM tool, to give you and your learners a more complete picture of performance.
Why it’s a big deal: Level and Level Team Challenges are sort of like the “FitBit for your work life”, tracking and rewarding progress. They make learning fun and help nurture a more engaged community of users. Level is fully customizable, so you can create a points system, badges and tracking experience that fits your brand. More importantly, as part of the complete Intellum platform, you’re now able to make very specific correlations between learning content delivered through Exceed, reinforced socially through Tribe and measured via Level.
The Case for Level
Ready to make learning fun with the next level of gamification? Talk with your Account Strategist for details on adding Level to your platform, and customizing to fit your brand.
A Better Experience | Events
Many of our clients have told us they’re including more in-person training and live events as part of the curriculum, but using external platforms to manage and host them. Based on client feedback and their heightened use of this kind of training, we created a new, more relevant experience with a new, more relevant name: Sessions is now Events.
We elevated Events to a top-tier position in the platform, so all users can more clearly differentiate in-person learning from regular content. The new left navigation bar icon makes it easier to find in-person learning opportunities and easier for all users to access the Events page, a one-stop shop to create, find, enroll in and manage Events. We also improved and expanded functionality for learners, Facilitators and Admins alike:
Learners
View, filter and enroll in upcoming events
Join a waitlist for upcoming events
Review and manage event enrollments or enrollment requests
Request to join a waitlist for up to one Event if they’re already enrolled in another for the scheduled Activity
Facilitators
Create new events without requiring Admin assistance
View and manage existing events
Add and manage event resources (files, links or other associated materials)
Enroll participants and communicate, as needed, via letters or calendar invitations
Admins
Add Events icon to the left navigation bar
Enroll and manage participants
Convert an existing Activity to a Scheduled Activity
View and manage waitlists
Add Events to existing Activities
Add an Activity Facilitator
Add a web conference integration with one of the many supported web conferencing solutions (Adobe Connect, GoTo Webinar and more)
Why it’s a big deal: Events can sometimes be hard to find, so we’re helping Admins boost the importance of Events by bringing them to a top-tier level and making it easier for learners to find relevant events. Live events and in-person learning can now be more effectively managed within the Intellum platform, eliminating the need for external platforms.
THE Q3 OTHER THINGS | Accessibility and Data Visualization
Learning for All | Accessibility
Our goal is to be 100% ADA-compliant, ensuring the Intellum platform is available to all users. Following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), we recently completed an audit of the platform to identify areas for improvement. As part of our ongoing work to meet Level AA requirements, we are making the following changes:
Screen reader improvements for those with poor/no vision
Keyboard navigation improvements for those with physical issues
Implementing visual contrast for those with poor vision/color blindness
Implementing standards for animation, for those who have issues with seizures
For more information on WCAG standards, Level AA requirements or the W3C, visit these websites: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
and ADA Compliance: A vs. AA vs. AAA
Why it’s a big deal: Intellum is committed to building a learning platform that’s equally accessible to all users, regardless of physical limitation; and we are working toward certification in the near future. As your trusted partner, we’re also committed to ensuring that your learning environment complies with any legal requirements you may have.
Measuring Success | Data Visualization
Q3 sees the introduction of the long-awaited data visualization. Available in two standard templates, these reports include several key data points in a visually compelling format that help you understand and communicate the effectiveness of your learning initiatives. The best part? Standard formats are offered at no charge! Custom views are also available and your Account Strategist is ready to guide you through your options.
Learn more about Intellum’s approach to better data visualization in the No More Dashboards piece.
Why it’s a big deal: Your learning programs and metrics evolve; so should your report. Once developed, you can change or alter the template to reflect changes in your learning initiatives. We’ve also made them easy to share across the organization, so stakeholders can easily see your performance and progress against goals. And did we mention the standard templates are free?
Q3 Technical Documentation
You've read about the what and the why...now learn the how in this quarter's technical documentation. Find detailed technical information for all of this quarter’s new features and functionalities in the Q3 Release Documents Path.
Q3 Release | Documentation
