Awarding organisations are working hard to support their learners and centres throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Providing real value is the key to emerging from this unprecedented period ready to focus on recovery and growth.
We have assembled a checklist of questions that summarise our advice to this sector. It should help you to uncover every opportunity to help your learners and centres.
Have you clearly communicated the status of their exams to your learners?
Communicate with learners directly to update them on the status of exams, outline any potential changes to the way they are provided and share rescheduled dates. Ensure that this message is consistent and shared on all applicable channels including centre portals, learner portals, direct email, corporate websites, letters and text messages. If you are awarding grades based upon predicted performance, show how this is calculated. Video content is especially useful in providing clear explanation. If you provide qualifications through centres, provide them with this information to distribute to learners.
Have you established what support your learners need right now?
Ask learners what extra information or support they need for their scheduled exams. Send out surveys and create polls to understand other value-added services you can offer learners. For example, can you provide online conferencing training courses, extra tuition workshops or relevant online webinars? Keep in regular contact with centres to understand how they are coping with the pandemic. If they are located in different countries, they may have different needs so work with them to help support their learners.
Have you correctly segmented your communications?
The information you share with centres needs to be appropriate to their needs and there may be an opportunity to group similar communication messaging. For example, by geography if they’re located in different parts of the world. For learners, segmentation may be more closely based on the exam they are taking. So group the information you provide on exam status and other value-added activities you can offer.
Are you signposting all government support programmes?
The variety of government and industry-specific support available should be signposted clearly on the homepage of your website. Consider creating a content hub within your website’s news section to collate all the important and helpful resources around COVID-19.
Are you working closely with partners and sponsors ?
Restricted budgets and reduced staff limit the value you can provide to your learners. Working more closely with your partners, sponsors or industry experts may be a way to maintain your standards by delivering assessments or similar activities online.
Are you finding innovative ways to engage learners and centres?
Use interactive webinars and one-to-one video calls to keep in regular contact with centres. Upload key information to your central portal to provide guidance for centres and information that you’d like them to share with learners. People spend over 90% of the time on their phone using apps so if you have this facility, use notifications from your app to drive learners to engage with you. Update them on key exam information and market other relevant products.
This article is part of our 20 page free e-book, how awarding organisations can drive learner engagement and diversify qualification experience
Learn how to:
- Improve the value you are providing to learners and centres.
- Diversify your qualification approach to protect revenue.
- Vary communication styles with centres and learners to drive engagement.
- Ensure that your productivity levels remain high.
Download this free e-book now to discover actionable strategies and practical advice.
