Case Study: We’ve Created Our Industry’s First Online Learning Center

Gerry Egan is the Executive Director & CEO of the National Equipment Finance Association (NEFA). NEFA is not-for-profit trade association, headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, in the United States. Its members are involved in various aspects of the commercial equipment finance business and are spread throughout the US and Canada. NEFA provides networking and educational opportunities for its members in support of NEFA’s core value of Community, Education and Professionalism.

Challenge

We have traditionally conducted education classes at conferences and at specially organized educational events around the country several times each year. In order to be able to reach more members, more often, with more content and to appeal on a going-forward basis to future members used to doing things online, we decided to create our industry’s first online learning center as a repository for community-created educational programs.

Solution

I searched online for various ways we could create content ourselves and found iSpring while trying out several other programs. I found iSpring Suite easy to use, and the few times I needed help I found the support responsive and effective. I learned the most simply by watching many of the short tutorials on iSpring’s YouTube channel, as well as some of the recorded webinars. I chose iSpring because it was simple to use and was practically priced.

The Result

Alone, I created 4 courses ranging in length from 20 minutes to over an hour within a few days of downloading iSpring. Those were to demonstrate the capabilities of our LMS to our Board and some influential members. I found the process simple and intuitive. We’re now just moving into an active program to get our members to create PowerPoint lessons to send to us for ‘dressing up’ and using iSpring to convert them to full-blown SCORM courses.

Recommendations

I would recommend iSpring to anyone looking for a quick and inexpensive way to capture experience and knowledge for sharing through online training courses. I would especially recommend it to smaller organizations who can’t have a full-time course developer, because anyone with a working knowledge of MS PowerPoint can quickly become proficient with iSpring Suite.