BoatU.S. Foundation: Revitalizing their e-Learning Platform
The Boat U.S. Foundation is a non-profit organization whose primary mission involves education and public outreach in the area of boating safety and the environment. Their original e-Learning system was becoming obsolete and unable to keep up with their evolving requirements and industry standards.
Through the creative use of a new web-based authoring tool, a low-cost learning management system, and full utilization of SCORM functionality, the Boat U.S. Foundation was able to overhaul and modernize their e-Learning program…all on a budget they did not originally think possible.
Challenges:
Not only did Boat U.S. need to modernize their e-Learning platform, but another significant issue was related to their very popular Boating Safety course. In many states, this course is a requirement for all boaters and most states are dictating their own sets of requirements for the content and testing. These state-to-state variations were driving the necessity of developing multiple versions of the same course, one for each state, which would quickly become a significant effort to maintain.
After careful analysis of their evolving requirements, the Boat U.S. Foundation became increasingly concerned that the required complexity was going to necessitate a custom solution that would be expensive and time consuming to develop. Custom solutions would also mean they would no be able to easily update the course on their own without help from outside vendors.
Solutions:
After researching their options and meeting with several e-Learning development companies, an alternative approach began to emerge. According to Amanda Suttles, Boat U.S. Foundation Program Manager, “We were pleasantly surprised to find out that ICS Learning Group’s Inquisiq R3 Learning Management System, used in conjunction with Inquisiq Studio, their web-based e-Learning authoring system, was able to satisfy almost all of our requirements. The few that were not met were accomplished with a few key modifications and some ingenuity.”
The Inquisiq-based solution allows users to browse the course catalog and enroll in any available boating course. Registration and payment are handled by the system’s built-in, configurable registration forms, shopping cart, and e-commerce engine. Once registered, a user can access all their courses from their My Courses section. The My Courses section also lets users view and print any earned certificates, view their history, and stay current on their overall course status.
Ingenuity comes into play when a user launches the Boating Safety Course. The LMS then uses “SCORM launch data” to pass the user’s profile to the course for dynamic configuration, such as showing content specific to that user’s state requirements. This solution was ideal as it allows the development of a single course to satisfy the needs of users in all states and it would be relatively easy for BoatU.S. staff to update the course content as needed.
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