Challenge
Provide engaging content in a hybrid learning setting
The Property Council of Australia (“Property Council”) is an Australian member-based not-for-profit organisation representing property developers and owners. The Property Council provides powerful advocacy and offers multiple services to its member companies, including research and learning.
With the property industry being the biggest employer in Australia with more than 1.4 million employees, the Property Council has diverse and complex learning requirements for property industry professionals.
Through its Academy, the Property Council provides over 150 online and in-person classroom courses developed and delivered by more than 400 property industry experts to learners from 2,200 member companies nationally.
Prior to D2L Brightspace, The Property Council was partnering with another organisation to use its Learning Management System (LMS) and the Academy felt like they needed to have their own system.
An LMS was sought in 2020 to support the Academy’s COVID-driven digital transformation; one that could also integrate seamlessly with its new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
“Prior to implementing D2L Brightspace we were using a number of different platforms that did not integrate or talk to each other, it was really clunky and inefficient, and it did not provide a seamless user experience for our learners,” said Kelly Jones, director, Property Council Academy.
Before the pandemic, 98 per cent of Property Council courses were taught face to face, mostly in the Eastern States and the Academy only provided three self-paced courses. Like many organisations, when COVID hit, Property Council had to rapidly pivot to a 100 per cent virtual classroom delivery model.
Defining learner success was also a challenge for the Academy with the LMS they used before, as it was difficult to get a snapshot of a learner’s progress on each course, their engagement level, whether they had completed their assessments and if there were any gaps in their knowledge.
Solution
Deliver engaging content and increase revenue
Property Council selected D2L Brightspace at the end of 2020 and started its implementation in the first quarter of 2021. The key objective was for the new LMS to seamlessly manage the delivery of the Academy’s courses and to increase the number of courses being offered whilst also introducing a self-paced learning approach.
The goal was to enable the Academy to attract a much wider and more diverse audience from all around the country and regional Australia. This would enable Property Council to grow its revenue stream and at the same time drive cost efficiencies.
Once it was fully implemented by July 2021, D2L Brightspace was able to integrate with Property Council Academy’s virtual classroom platform, called ‘OnDemand’ and its new CRM platform.
Since implementing D2L Brightspace the Academy has reimagined its course delivery and can now provide digital learning experiences, which can be available anywhere, anytime and on any device. This has helped learners to be able to complete their courses in their own time and at their own pace.
Our members have found Brightspace to be very intuitive and user-friendly, easy to navigate and the way the content is delivered is engaging as it can incorporate video, interactive elements and gamification.
Kelly Jones, director Property Council Academy
Result
Promoting learner success
The OnDemand platform delivered via Brightspace helped to enable Academy participants to upload their assessments through Brightspace and then the educators can mark their work and provide feedback directly via Brightspace.
“Our members have found Brightspace to be very intuitive and user-friendly, easy to navigate and the way the content is delivered is engaging as it can incorporate video, interactive elements and gamification,” said Kelly Jones.
Property Council’s online courses cover specific technical property topics and leadership fundamentals and can now include dynamic content such as gamification and educational videos delivered by property-specific, specialised, and experienced subject matter experts.
Property Council educators can now run virtual classrooms and build hybrid content that can combine self-paced learning online with face-to-face classroom learning, as well as check the knowledge gained by its learners using multiple choice quizzes at the end of a course.
“We’ve had a great experience with the account manager and the entire team at D2L, who listen to our feedback and work with us to resolve any issues we may have,” said Kelly Jones. “We truly believe that our new D2L LMS will help us take Property Council Academy to the next level,” she continued.
