How has the market responded to virtual education?Īnalysis of our registration numbers here at Arlo show online learning is on the rise. For the training industry, we can count ourselves among the lucky ones – we have a viable option in webinar, to continue operating during these challenging times. In summary, what we’re seeing is that COVID-19 has completely changed the world as we know it, causing major disruption to many businesses. What they didn’t expect was that virtual teaching would draw registrations from USA and Europe – effectively expanding the business globally. The goal was to retain some of their existing registrations from the cancelled classroom courses and to keep their business operating through lockdown. Similarly, Safe Beginnings Canada switched their regular face-to-face courses to live webinars via Zoom within a week of the pandemic being declared. As a result, they saw a record number of registrations for their new live online webinar courses. They prioritized courses that give them the “most bang for our buck”, and also looked at their existing course materials to see what they could quickly and easily re-purpose for virtual education – for example, any existing videos or self-based materials. One Arlo customer, IRI Australia, traditionally offered face-to-face courses but was one of the savvy ones who worked quickly to move online. Paired with the ability to transfer registrants from a face-to-face to a webinar course and send automated emails and SMS advising of changes, Arlo customers were able to adapt quickly. The majority of these were face-to-face, but the Arlo training management system already had the ability to create webinars, set-up webinars from existing events, sell recorded webinars and deliver eLearning courses with partner integrations such as Learnbook. When COVID hit, Arlo had more than 40,000 courses scheduled in the system by their training provider customers.
Now, more than ever, training providers are offering webinar courses as an alternative to face-to-face.
The concept of webinars and blended learning to deliver training courses has been around for a while now, and many training providers have made a quick shift to these online learning options in order to continue operating during COVID-19 restrictions.