Episode 27: Interview with Kathleen Brunton (Transcript)
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Announcer: SyberWorks podcast. Learn any time, any place.
Mary Kay Lofurno: Welcome to the next edition of the SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series, where we look at real world learning management system, implementations, and e-learning program roll-outs. SyberWorks specializes in custom e-learning solutions, learning management systems and e-learning development for corporation, governments and non-profits.
My name is Mary Kay Lofurno. I’m the Marketing Director here at SyberWorks, and your host today. In this edition, we are talking with Kathleen Brunton, Curriculum Developer for CUDL, about their use of the SyberWorks hosted LMS to provide employee training and cell training to the credit union industry.
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Mary Kay: And now we will talk with Kathleen Brunton, Curriculum Developer for CUDL.
Good afternoon, Kathleen. Thanks for coming to talk with us today.
Kathleen Brunton: Thank you for having me.
Mary Kay: Kathleen, can you tell us a little about yourself?
Kathleen: Yes. I work for CUDL and I have a background in training and design. I have been here for three years working as a curriculum developer and my main role here at the company is to research and develop our custom courses. We do develop in-house courses for our clients and also training materials for both our staff and clients. And we look to share best practice strategies for using our systems that we have and technology in the auto lending market.
Mary Kay: OK. Well, that’s a good start. Could you tell us a little bit more about CUDL, its products, services, and things like that?
Kathleen: Sure. CUDL is the nation’s leader in indirect and point of sale auto lending services for the credit union industry. And we develop custom applications for training and marketing programs, which help our credit unions achieve their auto lending goals.
Currently, we work with 700 credit union clients and that represents 20 million credit union members nationwide.
Mary Kay: Wow. All right, let’s get to it. Kathleen, can you describe the business factors that drove your company to investigate and ultimately purchase a hosted learning management system as an e-learning solution for your organization?
Kathleen: Sure. Well, we needed to have a solution where we could offer a custom catalog of courses for our internal staff and a separate catalog of courses for our clients. And we wanted to have each group be able to have tracking and reporting tools and also a method for creating individual training plans for their individual employees.
Mary Kay: OK, great. So, why did your company select the SyberWorks hosted LMS to create your training platform?
Kathleen: Well, we selected SyberWorks because you offered a platform that was very customizable. Your company was able to work with us and understand our unique needs. We have a very different platform than most and you guys were able to help us design a solution that met our criteria.
Mary Kay: OK. I understand that you actually have two campuses set up, one that is configured to CUDL employee training and the other is for clients with administrative rights to manage both. In regards to your system configuration, I know it can be done either way and as you mentioned previously, your company has different business lines and product offerings.
So I was wondering if you could talk about the business rationale for this configuration?
Kathleen: Sure. As I mentioned, we have two different client bases, our staff and our credit unions and we also have several different libraries of courses that we offer to each. So all of our internal training sessions for our staff, we record those and archive them on the learning management system. And then we also developed custom courses in-house and certification exams for our staff.
Our clients actually purchase a membership to utilize the campus and we have with us a separate campus for them. Then included there is a catalog of custom courses that we developed specifically for our credit union clients.
Additionally, we also work with a third party vendor and we purchase courses in a library that we sell to our clients on a per user basis, so they can purchase a catalog of additional courses to upgrade their membership.
Mary Kay: Who works with the SyberWorks hosted LMS in your company?
Kathleen: That would be me. I work with the system in all capacities, from setting up the initial hierarchy for each campus and create and manage all of the users and their roles. I work with the credit unions to get their user passwords and IDs setup, and work with all the different facets within the SyberWorks platform utilizing the different administrative functionality that is available there.
Mary Kay: Kathleen, can you share some of your internal instructional design processes that you go through every time you develop a course internally for CUDL?
Kathleen: Sure. Our courses are usually developed based on feedback from our clients. Typically, we will survey them several times throughout the year and get their feedback on what they’d like to have added to the catalog, and then we pick that topic and do some initial research, create an outline.
And then many times we will interview subject matter experts in the industry or other clients in order to gain best practice strategies that we can share and then we incorporate blended learning approach and on-demand content. We use a variety of multimedia functionality as well.
Mary Kay: Just so people can kind of get an idea, what types of course authoring tools are you using specifically to develop your training?
Kathleen: SWe use a variety of authoring tools. We use the SyberWorks WebAuthor to develop our custom courses. We also incorporate some multimedia. We use Flash and we record and enhance our recordings with Camtasia and also use some HTML coding.
Mary Kay: Can you tell us about your customer experience with SyberWorks, Kathleen?
Kathleen: Overall, I have had a very positive experience with SyberWorks. The support staff there has been very helpful and responsive to our needs and requests.
Mary Kay: OK, that's great. We are going to wrap up, but in terms of working with SyberWorks, is there anything else you would like to share?
Kathleen: We are just excited that we are up and running and fully functional. We are looking forward to incorporating some of the other functionality that SyberWorks offers, such as creating the job certification competencies and so forth.
Mary Kay: Well, hey, that sounds great. Kathleen, I know you are a busy lady, so I am going to let you go. Thanks for joining us today.
Kathleen: You are welcome. Thank you.
Mary Kay: This is Mary Kay Lofurno, Marketing Director at SyberWorks. Thank you for listening to our interview with Kathleen Brunton, Curriculum Developer for CUDL on the SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast Series. Talk with you next month!
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