LearningBuilder Academy is Heuristics’ annual user group, a gathering of staff, clients and members of the credentialing community interested in learning more about the platform. The conference is typically a two-day, in-person experience near our headquarters in Arlington, VA.
As with many events of 2020, this year’s academy was certainly unlike any before it. Due to health concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the choice was made to transition to a virtual event. While we missed the opportunity to chat over coffee and lunch with our colleagues, it was wonderful to connect via Zoom with our users, chatting about life, answering questions and sharing ideas.
If you were not able to attend any or all of our virtual event, fear not: recordings are now available on the learning plans of all who registered. These learning plans can be found on https://www.academy.learningbuilder.com, so be sure to head over and see everything that went down.
If you’re really just looking for a cliffnotes version, here is a rundown:
Wednesday, April 22nd
- Academy kicked off with a keynote presentation from Christopher Butcher, Heuristics Principal and CIO. This session focused on developing and evaluating organizational and credentialing program key performance indicators (KPIs), and what each mean for your organization. Christopher went in-depth on making the most of the data you already have, and using this data to make and manage changes to your program or organization.
- Following the keynote, Mallory Bucell and Scott Reed of Heuristics provided attendees with a live demonstration and overview of LearningBuilder’s new reporting engine, highlighting new capabilities and taking a look at example reports of key performance indicators introduced by Christopher. She stressed the importance of (and how to achieve) a data-driven credential, or how to interpret data in a way that allows you to improve your program.
Thursday, April 23rd
- On Thursday, we jumped into the new user experience with our presentation on LearningBuilder’s Next Generation Learning Plan (NGLP). Christopher shared with attendees the key usability concepts that shaped the design and development of the new look and feel of LearningBuilder, and walked us through a demonstration of enhancements made to the platform. He was also sure to highlight considerations that organizations should make when deciding whether or not to upgrade to the new user interface.
- Before breaking for lunch, we kept a favorite LearningBuilder Academy tradition alive, despite distance: customer advisory roundtables. This is a session in which customers have the opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions on several topics of their choice to the Heuristics team. We always come away with plenty of new ideas and suggestions from end users that helps our team shape our product with your needs top of mind. Interested in learning a bit more about what we chatted about? An overview of all roundtable conversations is now available on every attendee’s learning plan.
- The afternoon was comprised of several feature-based sessions, including highlights and demos of LearningBuilder’s assessment engine and employer payment functionality. Both of these sessions were delivered by LearningBuilder analysts who have extensive experience in implementing and tailoring these functionalities to meet specific client needs. This was reflected in each presentation as a wide variety of use cases and business rules were presented and demonstrated, and recommendations based on program size and structure were shared.
Friday, April 24th
- The final day of the conference focused on the future of the platform. It kicked off with a presentation from Seth, our VP of Product Development, as he walked attendees through the past year of development efforts and what is to come for LearningBuilder. This included exciting leaps forward such as record merging tools, integration possibilities, and data entry process overhauls. Perhaps the highlight of the presentation was an interactive demo of LearningBuilder’s new SMS messaging functionality, where attendees were able to turn on and interact with a beta version of text message notification delivery!
- The conference concluded with an exciting first: customers voted on which internally-funded feature would fall into our development pipeline next. After listening to seven proposed new features or enhancements, clients logged into LearningBuilder to cast their vote. The winner by a narrow margin was multiple file upload, allowing end users to upload more than one file at a time when bringing data into the system. Stay tuned for this feature to become available in a future release!
We are grateful for the opportunity to connect with our community from a distance. We abbreviated the schedule to accommodate a virtual event. Our traditional, interactive user training sessions will be delivered by analysts in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned for more details on LearningBuilder 101 and 201!
Thank you again to everyone who joined us for LearningBuilder Academy 2020! We are looking forward to socializing in person at future academies. If you are interested in reviewing sessions, recordings and presentation material are available on all academy learning plans.
