ASSET: Empower Teachers through a Hybrid Certification Curriculum and ePortfolio

Selection and Implementation of CN

Dr. Jay Arthur Director of the ASSET Program, was introduced to CN by Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) staff in 2021. At that time, CN had been chosen as the Learning Management System (LMS) for a separate program funded by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE).

The implementation of CN with ASSET was a swift and smooth experience. It took approximately one month from the initial client kick-off meeting to the platform's first cohort of learners being welcomed. Dr. Arthur shared the detailed program syllabus, which helped the CN team gain a deeper understanding of the learning objectives, topics, assessment plans, and overall timeline. Based on the syllabus, the team delivered custom training, specifically addressing ASSET’s needs.

Before and during the platform launch, the CN team provided assistance to ASSET in three primary ways.

1. The CN learning expert created a series of Getting Started activities in the course, which included the program syllabus, netiquette guidelines, a self-introduction post, a background poll, and an introduction to CN ePortfolio. These initial activities set a foundation for the development of a robust learning community and gave Dr. Arthur the most relevant ideas on how to utilize various unique features to engage learners.
2. The CN technical staff imported the first cohort of learners and enrolled them in the course two days before the new member onboarding day.
3. The CN helpdesk team stood by the ASSET new member onboarding session to provide technical support to end users.

These services effectively ensured the success of the platform's adoption. All of the ASSET users were able to easily access the platform and dive into conversations with their peers. In the CN course, they formed a trusted and closely knitted online learning community while pursuing their license together.

Dr. Arthur was able to easily add more resources (e.g., Zoom session recordings, guest speaker PowerPoints, and documents) and learning activities (e.g., monthly knowledge check quizzes) to the course. He built the content month by month during the first year, and when the program reached its second year, he was able to easily copy the first course and added enhancements such as monthly ePortfolio assignments with detailed instructions and assessment rubrics.

The CN LMS and ePortfolio streamlined ASSET’s learning and development processes significantly. Dr. Jay Arthur expressed immense satisfaction, stating, “The organization of the CN system allows me to keep my focus on bringing the highest quality speakers and educators to our program. I know that once I post or load something for our course, it’s going to work as expected, reliably”. The platform's reliability and seamless operation have empowered ASSET to concentrate on providing top-notch educational experiences.

Summary and Conclusion

The ASSET program demonstrates the success of leveraging social LMS and ePortfolio to offer hybrid learning experiences through a government-funded teacher training and licensing program. Their experience shed light on how similar institutions and programs could adopt technology platforms like CN to complement their synchronous delivery and drive learner engagement and outcomes.

Built upon a solid curriculum and sound instructional strategies, a program can quickly and successfully deploy CN to host synchronous session recordings and additional learning resources. In addition, engaging social discussions can be organized to allow learners to communicate with each other asynchronously and form a lively online learning community. When it comes to assessment, the various CN quiz question types support both knowledge checks as well as authentic assessment through users’ lifelong CN ePortfolios.

In addition to diverse user engagement and assessment features, the CN team always goes above and beyond to support each client to meet their needs and timelines. Dr. Jay Arthur spoke highly of the services he had received, advocating CN’s support, “The customer service and responsiveness have been better than any product I’ve probably used over the years as an educator. Every time I made a suggestion, I felt both heard and validated by the staff supporting our project. In all instances, they were either able to make a quick add for us or were able to describe a workaround that was more than sufficient and easy to do. Again, I can’t say enough nice things about the team. From start to finish of the project implementation, I’ve felt very supported and folks have been very timely in responding, which is important in supporting 200 learners at a time.”