DPG (Developing People Globally) Case Study

Working together, Virtual College built on DPG’s trusted approach – using case studies to explain theoretical or practical content – with Kolb’s experiential learning theory to create an innovative learning strategy inspired by an earlier project. This concept was a central 'business district', where learners were employed by an HR consultancy and 'visited' different businesses across the district, each with unique HR challenges. This idea would enable their learners to access authentic scenarios where they could apply information they had absorbed during their learning journey. Furthermore, to ensure the material was pitched at the right level for a CIPD-accredited, Level 5 qualification, Virtual College worked very closely with DPG’s subject matter experts to ensure they fully understood the course’s educational content.

The learning solution

Developing People Globally (DPG) and Virtual College partnered to take DPG’s Level 5, CIPD-accredited Human Resources Management course fully online to increase DPG’s market share while maintaining their reputation for high quality training. This innovative online-only qualification features a central business district where users learn through applying their knowledge to help individual businesses, from retailers to restaurants. The course, launched in October 2016, now has over 500 enrolled learners, a significantly increased profit margin, a withdrawal rate of just 2% (compared to 23% for the blended option) and 97% of learners recommending the course to others.

Through working together, DPG and Virtual College developed the concept of a virtual ‘business district’ with an HR consultancy at its heart. Learners were ‘employed’ by the HR consultancy and supported each business in the district – including retail, manufacturing and restaurant businesses – with their unique HR challenges. This strategy helped them gain foundation-level HR knowledge and then encouraged them to apply it directly to diverse, real life examples from across multiple industries. In turn, this developed their transferable skills and allowed every learner to solve business challenges even if they didn’t currently work with that type of business.

The technical solution

An online-only technological solution was chosen to fulfil DPG’s requirements and ensure costs were reduced, and it was designed to reflect the high-quality learning experience participants of the blended learning course would normally receive. Virtual College developed a set of characters in a naturalistic, professional look and feel who guided learners through the in-depth content, including business owners and HR colleagues who presented learners with challenges to complete. Characters were designed to reflect the real world of work, with a diverse mix of genders and ethnicities. The overall design was engaging and visually appealing without being distracting or inappropriate.

Each module of the Level 5 qualification is linked to a different business in the district, which allows participants to consistently learn then apply theory to a range of real life situations. The modules use interactivity to keep learners active and consolidate learning, with tactics like drag-and-drop and ‘find the missing word’ as part of the learning experience. All information is communicated in bite-sized chunks, and learners can choose to look at further resources – such as glossaries and independent activities – or continue with core content. Each module is completed through a formative scenario-based assessment where learners gain feedback on answers, and a final summative assessment to test consolidated knowledge.

Alongside the learning content experienced in the ‘business district’, learners are able to attend monthly webinars to discuss specific assessments and their assignments. These are delivered in the evening, to fit with the course’s flexible approach, and recorded so they can be accessed by those unable to attend live. Learners are also able to participate in webinars of different cohorts – those further on or further behind in the course – to help enhance or refresh their own knowledge.

Participants in the course can also access DPG Community, a social platform with over 6,000 members where learners and HR professionals share resources, answer each other’s questions and discuss content from the course. The course also has an experienced and invaluable Personal Online Consultant Facilitator, Gary Norris, who learners can access via email, text, phone, via DPG Community or in webinars for detailed individual support.

The implementation

In developing and rolling out this course with DPG, Virtual College took their trusted partnership approach and spent time fully understanding DPG’s business, learner and project management requirements. Working closely with stakeholders, the project team at Virtual College created a clear scope with specific KPIs to keep the work on schedule and to brief, then split the project into manageable chunks so it could be handled most effectively by their content development and project management teams. This included regular liaison with DPG subject matter experts to make sure the learning content was communicated at the right level for this higher education qualification.

As part of the project’s promotion, Virtual College and DPG:

• Scripted and created a promotional video which was shared on YouTube
• Hosted a joint webinar on formative assessments at the Learning Technologies exhibition 2017, which is freely available online
• Ran a joint webinar on converting classroom-based qualifications into e-learning, available on the Virtual College website

DPG also run social media hashtag campaigns for the course, and the virtual owner of the business district’s HR consultancy has her own Twitter account.

One specific challenge DPG faced was receiving CIPD approval for the online-only option of this course before it was launched. Virtual College supported DPG in gaining this accreditation during the development of the project by producing a detailed learning strategy and using this to help CIPD understand what the final outcome would contain.