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“What we wanted to do with the new library was create a seamless flow,” said Kevin O’Hare, education supervisor and instructional designer for IBAO. “We wanted to be able to manage things more directly, create things or change things as we need, and also allow the membership to – from our webpage to their profile page within the membership system – have it all interlink smoothly.”
All IBAO courses have been rebuilt for the launch of the new system and multimedia content has been added to enhance the learning experience with short videos, interactive elements, and redesigned learning materials. My IBAO Learning PATH is also highly accessible, so brokers can work on their courses anywhere and at any time.
“It doesn’t really matter the device or where they log in,” said O’Hare. “They don’t need a computer with particular software pre-installed within their browser. They can log in at home, if they need to go and take a couple of courses off-hours. They can start in one venue, like at their office, and then they can pick up on their iPad or their phone later.”
Video content embedded into the courses will include clips of instructors summarizing key points, animated characters depicting various scenarios, quizzes that test the user throughout, and other elements, such as gifs and photos. The goal was to make the material accessible to any type of learner, whether they’re a reader, or prefer auditory or visual learning, according to O’Hare. The system will then update brokers’ records for accreditation purposes to show that they’ve met their RIBO requirements.
Within the platform, IBAO is also offering a new travel health insurance prep course to help brokers diversify their offerings.
“One of the ideas of us being able to take ownership over the type of courses that we’ve created is [to] create something like this that’s got demand across the province for brokers interested in adding that component to their licence, and now we house it within the same place,” said O’Hare.
Improving the user experience and ensuring that brokers have the material they need at their fingertips, when they’re taking a course or are on the job and need to refer back to the material, is at the heart of IBAO’s approach to education.
“What we really want to do is create a uniform and engaging interactive learning component that our membership can access as they need, when they need, as opposed to, ‘I need it right now and I don’t need it after I’m done’,” said O’Hare. “When it becomes a hurdle at work, ‘I forgot about this, I thought I heard about this,’ they can go back to My IBAO Learning Path and review it, and they can start and stop wherever they want.”
