Learning Provider Insights
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
ACCA is the global body for professional accountants. Its aim is to offer business-relevant, first-choice qualifications to people of application, ability and ambition around the world who seek a rewarding career in accountancy, finance and management. It also helps businesses to grow by developing their finance capability and enhancing their brand reputation.Moreover, ACCA provides renowned finance and accountancy qualifications for any organisation in any sector. And with 92 offices and over 400 examination centers worldwide, it has the greatest capability to deliver qualifications and professional development of any accountancy body. It will work with you to deliver flexible, accessible, cost effective training at any level.
International
Glagow,
GB
www.accaglobal.com
Success achieved
A free online conference to support 370 tutors and learning providers in 50 countries to better train professional accountants.
- Website
- https://www.accaglobal.com/uk/en/learning-provider.html
- Project dates
- March 2018 – January 2019
Project team
- Sally Jones, Professional Education Manager
- Cheryl McLauchlan, Delivery Coordinator
- Michelle Martin, Delivery Coordinator
- Maiki Lynch, Qualification Education Liaison Manager
- Robyn Lorimer, Marketing Campaign Manager
Tools & Systems
- Webinar, conference and presentation software – supplied and hosted by ON24. Included delivery of presentations in live and pre-recorded format, videos and Powerpoint presentations, live question and answer, polls questions, networking area, resources centre, surveys and registration page.
- Google Drive – to share and store project documents, including a project timeline
- Skype - Regular calls with ON24, strategic learning partners and universities
Introduction
Following substantial changes to the ACCA qualification, the Learning Provider Insights event was designed to provide immediate feedback and insight on:
- The first exam session of the new Strategic Professional exams in September 2018
- The implementation and adoption of the Ethics & Professional Skills module, and
- The ongoing journey for moving our exams to Computer-Based exams
The target audience for the event was anyone teaching the ACCA qualification, particularly those who taught to the September 2018 exam session, and those who would be teaching to the December 2018 session and onwards.
Discovery
Ahead of the first sitting of the new Strategic Professional exams in September 2018, we developed a range of learning provider resources to prepare tutors to deliver high quality tuition to students. This included several exam-focused webinars, technical articles and our Train the Trainer workshops - a face-to-face event focussing on specific exams or teaching techniques, delivered over the course of 18 months around the globe by our tutor experts. During the programme, we received feedback and request to continue to offer market-led tuition support on these qualification changes, as well as timely feedback on the September exams, including on student performance. In addition to learning provider feedback, there was desire within ACCA to continue to be transparent with our learning partners on the exam content, particularly as the qualification changes included extensive changes to the syllabus and format of the exams.
Our Train the Trainer workshops shared ACCA examining team insights on the qualification and provided specific and deliverable teaching tips and techniques from our tutor experts. We recognised the need to use a similar approach of combining technical expertise with an understanding of teaching techniques in a virtual format, so that we could reach a large number of tutors and learning providers quickly and efficiently after the September exams were sat and results were released. The content included a combination of examining team feedback on the exams, as well as a range of teaching examples and experiences from global learning providers.
We consulted with a range of global external learning providers, market-facing ACCA staff, our examining team and tutor experts to create a virtual event. We used learnings from previous successful ACCA virtual conferences and tips from ON24 on how to drive and secure engagement in a virtual environment. The format included both on demand and timed sessions to maximize live and post-event attendance, recognising that not all our global learning providers would be able to attend a specific time for a session.
Objectives
Our overall objective was for ACCA to provide learning providers and tutors with timely feedback on the September 2018 exams and recent qualification changes, and equip them with insights to continue to best support their students going forward – with a focus on considering new and different ways to support given the enhancements made to the Ethics & Professional Skills module and Strategic Business Leader exam.
Timeline
- March 2018: Research
- April 2018: Gather & refine requirements, event proposal and approval
- May 2018: Identify and engage with potential suppliers and strategic learning partners
- June – October 2018: Set-up event, invitations and marketing, training for presenter and partners
- November 2018: Live event
- December 2018: close event and move content to our tutor Education Hub portal
- Januany 2019 onwards: continue to monitor engagement and feedback of relevant content on our tutor Education Hub portal
Activities
Researching the requirements for an event required consultation with a number of stakeholders, including our tutor experts who delivered our Train the Trainer workshops, as well as the attendees for these events. All types of feedback on the workshops were considered as was feedback from other tutor and student learning support over the past 18 months. A range of people within ACCA were consulted with to create a draft agenda that suited both the existing and future needs of learning providers, as well as covering future updates to the ACCA qualification which were not yet publically known. The people consulted included our market-facing teams who work with our global learning providers, students, members and employers; our examining team who write and mark the exams; our marketing teams; and senior management who are involved in creating and implementing ACCA’s strategy and objectives. This agenda included webinars with live presentations, pre-recorded videos, live polls, and live question and answer sessions. Pre-recording content enabled us to provide different media to keep tutors engaged in webinars, as well as allowing us to film our well-known and respected Executive team.
We worked with our market-facing teams to select global strategic learning partners that demonstrated high engagement in our Train the Trainer workshops, our other learning support and most importantly - showed a commitment and proven record of delivering high quality tuition. We worked these strategic learning partners to identify challenges and opportunities in teaching students the new qualification, so that their insights could be shared and built upon by learning providers and tutors attending the event.
The building and set-up on the virtual event were shared between ON24 and ACCA’s Delivery Coordinators. A project plan was devised between ACCA and ON24 to ensure key milestones were scheduled and adhered to including mapping of the virtual conference environment, setting up the registration page, training of speakers presenting live or pre-recording, creating individual webcasts from the agenda, building and uploading the content in the resources centre and devising virtual booths based on the individual needs of our two academic partners.
The virtual booths comprised a selection of brochures and marketing materials both in a variety of formats including video, and live scheduled chats where tutors could interact with speakers from the two universities.
There was also an ACCA virtual booth where tutors attending live could ask questions of ACCA staff, watch a video on how to access and gain the most from the tutor Education Hub portal and complete a survey on future learning support. A resources centre provided tutors with access to the presentations, supporting information including past exams, and new exam resources created specifically for the event.
Replicating the expectations and value of a face-to-face conference was important to us so we provided learning providers and tutors with a space in which to network with each other. The networking lounge enabled live tutors to engage in group chats with others who were there as well as private message each other. Within each live webinar, tutors could ask questions of the presenters. These were managed by the presenters and staff, and could be pushed to the audience at any time during the webinars, so that all tutors could see both the question and hear the answer given by the presenter. Other than the ability to ask questions live and network, all content and functionality within the event remained accessible for all tutors who registered up until the end of 2018. At this point, the relevant webinars were made accessible to learning providers and tutors via our tutor Education Hub portal.
Innovation
Moving from a face-to-face event to a virtual one has exceeded our expectations in terms of reach and accessibility. Our learning partners are spread around the globe and range from large universities and private colleges to small start-ups in emerging economies and even individual tutors. Being able to give everyone the same opportunity to access the highest quality content either live or on-demand and at no cost has been a very valuable innovation in the way we support our vital network of learning providers and individual tutors.
Marketing
Promotion of the event was focussed at individual tutors using an email campaign aimed at highlighting the technical information that would be covered in the event, the virtual and accessible nature, and the value it would bring to teaching and students. In addition to individually targeting tutors we created virtual invites for our markets to distribute directly to their learning provider and tutors contacts, as well as using a LinkedIn campaign.
Once individuals had registered for the event they were sent a reminder the week before and the day of the event starting. All those that registered, including those that were unable to attend live, were sent an email reminding them that they could listen back to the webinars on demand.
Challenges
Traditionally our learning partners have been supported with face-to-face conferences and events, with webinars only being utilized in recent years. This was the first event delivered digitally on this scale for our learning partners, therefore challenges including ensuring tutors registered for the event and then engaged with the content once they attended. We created marquees throughout the environment to help ensure easy navigation for tutors and to advertise live virtual booth chats and webinars when they were about to begin. We sent reminder emails to those who registered as well as those on our tutor mailing lists, to encourage further engagement in the content after the event took place.
Achievements
Our primary objective was to provide transparency around the qualification changes and support learning providers and tutors to deliver high quality tuition. We saw 250 live attendees, and a further 120 tutors accessing all of the exam content on demand after the event finished. All the webinars were recorded and made available to our 40,000+ learning providers, administrators and tutors via our tutor Education Hub portal. Over 50% of attendees are accessed our resources centre, and we saw a 13% return rate to the event.
Targets & Statistics
- 250 live attendees
- 120 additional tutors on demand
- 13% return rate
- Access to webinars made available to 40,000+ tutors and support staff
Financials
The event required a 5 figure investment in the platform technology. No external consultancy resource was needed to support the event and external presenters used the opportunity to leverage their organisation’s offerings, so provided their presentations for free.
The event, does not generate direct, financial return on investment however supporting learning providers to provide high quality tuition, helps increase our student exam pass rates and ultimately our membership numbers. ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) is the global body for professional accountants, and we support our 208,000 members and 503,000 students in 179 countries, helping them to develop successful careers in accounting and business, with the skills required by employers.
What would we do differently?
We’d provide more direct advice and support for tutors on how to engage with and get the most from the virtual environment, as accessing ACCA resources in this format is new to many tutors. We’d work create more functionality including polls and investigate using gamification within the networking area to drive engagement.
Advice
Consider the time zones of your audience and using different tools to keep them motivated and engaged with the content you are presenting them with.
Feedback & Testimonials
“Thanks to all in ACCA who were involved in developing and delivering these sessions, I have found it hugely beneficial in the delivery of my courses. Hopefully this will be a more regular occurrence.”
“Just wanted to thank you for running this event. I really like the way you've taken a different approach and built a series of engaging and useful sessions.”
“The flexibility of the event was also welcomed. Not only is it easier when there is no travel but it meant teaching timetables could be adhered to.”
