by Aubrey Mellos | Jun 17, 2015 | News
(Columbia, MD – June 15, 2015) CommPartners, a leader in online learning and events, is pleased to announce that it has been selected to provide its learning management system, Elevate LMS to Velvet Chainsaw Consulting (VCC) to support the evolution of its online education programs. A long-time collaborative partner with CommPartners, VCC is the premier consulting agency for face-to-face educational and networking events. CommPartners is thrilled to now also support VCC e-learning programs.
Velvet Chainsaw Consulting Managing Director Dave Lutz stated: “Velvet Chainsaw is extremely selective when it comes to partnerships. We only work with a few progressive companies who have similar vision and values for the industry we serve. We chose CommPartners as our social learning platform because they match these priorities and as important, provide the best learning environment for us to model highly engaging education experiences.”
Rich Finstein, CEO of CommPartners shared: “We are excited to support such an innovative company whose purpose is to help organizations evolve their onsite conferences and educational programming. Elevate embodies a progressive social learning model, integrating content from experts with peer ideas and experiences. This ties in nicely with Velvet Chainsaw’s approach to innovation in how learning occurs and how to increase participant engagement.”
VCC’s Elevate platform is set to launch later this summer.
About CommPartners
CommPartners is a leading provider of online education and event to the association community. The company‘s mission is focused on providing a well-planned and intelligent approach to sharing of knowledge, with a core focus on creating positive user experiences. Over 1,300 associations have selected CommPartners to manage their eLearning programs.
About Velvet Chainsaw
Velvet Chainsaw Consulting (VCC) is the leading choice for conference and trade show organizers interested in growing or transforming their major face-to-face events. VCC provides expert advice for designing premium education and networking experiences that result in increased loyalty and revenue. VCC is comprised of a team of industry experts who are change agents for where conferences and tradeshows need to evolve. Specifically, VCC specializes in: conference improvement, sponsorship growth, education differentiation, speaker improvement, general session design, and strategic facilitation.
To learn more about this new partnership, please contact Eve Finstein, at efinstein@commpartners.com
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by Aubrey Mellos | Jun 17, 2015 | Blog
There are so many AMS offerings available. Most of us know the companies serving the association community. Names like: Abila, Personify, iMIS, Aptify, Association Anywhere and Protech, to list a few. Why is integration with these systems and others so critical to the success of an association’s learning management system (LMS)? After all, AMS integration done well will go completely unnoticed by the end-user. It is, if you will, the “unsung hero” of learning management systems – and this is why we at CommPartners have worked to ensure that our Learning Platform, Elevate, can be integrated with any AMS. Though the benefits of integration are not necessarily seen, they are very much felt. Here are some of the benefits:
Personalization – Cutting Through the Noise
If a learner is signed in with appropriate credentials to your AMS through your website, they are signed into Elevate. AMS integration allows for seamless movement with the proper access and credentials. In Elevate, this means the user will be greeted by name and is provided designated content, pages, rates, and their history; all keyed on their member record.
Relevancy – Building a Unique Experience
Through integration, specific content is presented to a learner based on their member-role, position, location, etc. Integration also allows an admin to display specific pricing based on the user’s role (ex. member v. non-member, student, faculty, seniors). Automatic authentication also provides for an added level of security and privacy – relevant content can be created to display specifically to a user group, or limited to a specific role or status. Additionally, every user has a home dashboard, which allows him/her to easily track their work within Elevate.
Reporting – Made Easy
Finally, AMS integration provides for ease in reporting. Elevate provides 30+ unique reports admins can run to gather data and receive feedback on member and product activity. This information is available through Elevate’s API to be pulled by the AMS.
If you have questions regarding your specific AMS or how it can integrate with our learning management system, Elevate, please reach out to Eve Finstein at efinstein@commpartners.com.
By: Eve Finstein, Elevate Project Manager
by Aubrey Mellos | Jun 11, 2015 | Blog
“Social learning” is quite the buzzword today, isn’t it? With access to information on literally any topic, and the immediate thoughts and reactions of our friends, family, influencers, and favorite strangers all contained in a device we carry around in our back pocket – it’s a wonder we even need books anymore. (kidding of course, I’m still in the book fan club, (v. e-reader), but that’s for a different piece).
By its name, social learning may seem less important than instructional learning. The word social leads many to think “socialize,” which seems something best saved for Friday happy hour and not business. However, today’s online learning systems and social portals, like Higher Logic’s Connected Communities, are turning this whole notion on its head.
Certainly seeking insight from experts and thought leaders is important, particularly when one is looking to grow his or her knowledge base or understanding around a particular topic. However, in today’s dynamic economy, more and more it’s not what you know or do, but how you do it that can have the most substantial impact on organizational success. And this is an area where social learning can really shine.
For those of us who are not in the cognitive sciences field, it may interest you to know that social learning is a social science theory (and not just an excuse to waste a half-hour on Twitter). Social Learning Theory proposes that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context, it is based upon observation and the information extracted from these observations, in particular, observing behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors.
In the business world, social learning is involved in the development of best practices and new initiatives, innovations or methods. Here, successful plans come to life after looking at what others have done, or are doing, and evaluating the consequences of those schemes – they are rarely, if ever, created in a vacuum. In the world of online learning – which, overall, is mostly populated with instructional learning – adding methods for social learning can add a significant perk for your users by providing a way to embed the facts and figures from instructional learning into the real world.
At CommPartners, we are specifically seeking to meld instructional and social learning through a collaborative with Higher Logic’s Connected Communities. CommPartners’ LMS Platform, Elevate, now allows administrators to create RSS feeds for any products housed within it for display in an association’s Higher Logic platform. This collaboration seeks to facilitate social learning around and about other education pieces by embedding the instructional learning in a place where social learning is already taking place (as opposed to the other way around). In this way, members can engage in social learning and access related e-learning products concurrently. It’s not just discussions, it’s not just expert instruction, it’s both and much more.
Eve Finstein is an Elevate Project Manager with CommPartners. She can be reached at: efinstein@commpartners.com
