is a global provider of international day schools and boarding schools. There are currently 77 Nord Anglia schools worldwide. Joanna Lay is the Assistant Director of Nord Anglia University and Online Learning and is quoted throughout this case study.
+27
NPS
Wholesome
global learning culture
Stronger
staff retention and acquisition
FINDING THE RIGHT PLATFORM FOR SOCIAL LEARNING
For international school provider Nord Anglia Education, the most important priority is always their students’ education and development. Every decision the leadership team makes aims to help their students excel academically.
For this reason, Nord Anglia strives to offer the best learning opportunities for their staff: better professional development for teachers means a better education for their students.
For a long time, Nord Anglia used Moodle, an opensource learning management system, for all staff training education.
But they quickly realized that they were outgrowing the platform. As Joanna Lay, Nord Anglia’s Assistant Director for Online Learning explains, they needed to find a solution that could fit more to their needs: “The Moodle platform just wasn’t serving our purposes anymore,” she says. “We knew that if we wanted to offer more to our learners, we needed to move on to another platform.” The Nord Anglia learning team put together a wish list of all the features they needed to create a better learner experience for their teachers.
Moodle could only fulfill about half of that list. They were missing several key features, including better options for personalization: “We knew it would make a big difference to be able to give people different learning journeys and to be able to really focus on the skills that they wanted to learn,” Joanna says. Moodle could only fulfill about half of that list. They were missing several key features, including better options for personalization: Nord Anglia also wanted to prioritize building connections between their teaching, and nonteaching, staff spread across the globe, which Moodle didn’t really allow them to do.
“We have 77 schools, as well as regional and local offices. And it can be very easy for an individual in one school to feel quite lonely,” Joanna says. “A school might have only one drama teacher or one librarian, but actually there are 77 librarians and 77 drama teachers across the organization. We wanted to offer opportunities for them to connect with each other.”
Nord Anglia needed to switch to a platform designed for social learning, that allowed staff around the world to connect and learn from each other. With the right platform, Nord Anglia could promote a stronger learning culture within their organization.
“A school might have only one drama teacher or one librarian, but actually there are 77 librarians and 77 drama teachers across the organization. We wanted to offer opportunities for them to connect with each other.”
A FEATURE-RICH LMS THAT PROMOTES A STRONG LEARNING CULTURE
When Nord Anglia began looking for a more powerful LMS with better personalization options, they quickly found that Docebo checked all the items on their wish list.
Joanna and her team used Docebo to create Nord Anglia University (NAU), a Docebo-powered LMS with Nord Anglia’s own branding.
The platform makes it possible to create different learner paths and gives individual schools and teachers more flexibility to choose the lessons that matter to them, when they need them. “It allows people to adapt their profile, to serve them up something slightly different,” Joanna says. “But the most impactful personalization is that it allows us to offer them customized learning paths based on what they need.”
Nord Anglia has a big intake of new staff before each school year starts. With Docebo, Joanna can offer those staff members a customized welcome experience. “Thanks to Docebo, our new staff gets a personalized starter experience, which guides them through the training that they need to be part of the organization,” Joanna explains. “At the same time, our more experienced staff are able to choose learning plans which suit their school or personal needs.”
Using Docebo also allows Nord Anglia to create channels for different topics. Staff can use the channels and forums to talk with their counterparts all over the world, exchange resources, and participate in their learning community.
“It’s a tool that makes geographic distances feel a bit smaller,” Joanna says. Another key component of the Docebo Learning Suite for Nord Anglia has been Discover, Coach, & Share, which empowers learners to discover content and share their own. Discover, Coach & Share facilitates social learning.
“With Discover, Coach & Share, any learner can add their own content,” Joanna says. “We have schools that are adding their own ideas, creating their own trainings and videos. It’s all learner-driven, and that makes a really big difference for us.”
Finally, Joanna and her team use Shape to automatically create content. This feature has been especially useful for news and announcements within the LMS, she says.
“We find that people are quite happy to watch a 30-second presentation [made with Shape],” she says. “Whereas if we just write text, they
“Any learner can add their own content…We have schools that are adding their own ideas, creating their own trainings and videos. It’s all learner-driven, and that makes a really big difference for us.”
Since switching to Docebo, Nord Anglia University has seen improvements in staff engagement and learning experience.
The number of sessions on the platform has increased, and their Net Promoter Score has gone up 27 points.
“Before switching to Docebo, people weren’t entirely happy with the way the old site worked,” Joanna says. “After the switch, we saw quite a significant improvement in NPS. People are happier with the platform.”
Using the platform has helped Nord Anglia promote a learning culture at their schools, and being able to show their commitment to staff development has been great for employee retention and talent acquisition. Talented teachers want to work at schools that value their professional development and foster a strong learning culture.
“We are invested in people and in their development. There’s a very honest desire from the organization to develop people, to grow talent and to retain talent in the organization as well,” Joanna says.
Most of all, Docebo helps staff become better at their jobs–and that means better outcomes for their students.
“Everything we do as a department goes back to improving student outcomes. So it’s fundamental that everything we do with Nord Anglia University makes our staff better, so they can make our student experiences better. Everything is about that student experience.”
“Before switching to Docebo, people weren’t entirely happy with the way the old site worked. After the switch, we saw quite a significant improvement in NPS. People are happier with the platform.”