Founded in 2004, ProTrain is a training organization based out of Raleigh, North Carolina. ProTrain has partnered with over 100+ schools and universities across the United States to deliver in-person, live online and on-demand online training. Whether in the classroom or online, ProTrain is an affordable solution for “Education 2 Employment.” Firmly believing that learning is a lifelong commitment that can lead to a better future, ProTrain’s Personal Training Assessment Managers work with students throughout the entire learning process—before, during and after—to help foster a consistent, rewarding experience. ProTrain has over 1,000 users on its LMS, consisting of students, instructors and ProTrain staff, and offers three distinctive services for people to take courses and attain certifications that help jump-start their careers:
Connect ANYTIME. Online.
Connect LIVE. In Person.
Connect LIVE. Online.
Previously, ProTrain had a Moodle-based solution for only some of its courses but relied heavily on third-party course vendors to provide their own learning management system. Having so many different systems caused a great deal of lag time for the team to get students enrolled and untimely progress reports.
“These challenges were causing serious strains between us and our school partners and the state workforce counsellors,” said John Hopkins, Information Systems Manager at ProTrain. “It all translated to broken partnerships and lost potential business revenue, not to mention the loss of our reputation in the industry.”
Having many disparate systems also presented another dilemma for ProTrain; it was very difficult to gather analytics and provide timely information on student grades, both for instructors and students. This deficit was another contributing factor to the growing student dissatisfaction with ProTrain’s courses, and the company was desperate to find a better solution.
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How They Did It
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Eliminated many third-party vendors to have one central Moodle training hub for ProTrain’s 1,000 users
By having an integration with VitalSource to deliver eBooks immediately to students, ProTrain has been able to save a significant amount of money
Adopted Zoola Analytics to produce and schedule timely reports for partners and workforce counselors
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The Results
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Increased efficiency: By having a centralized location, increased staff efficiency for enrollments and reports and saved a significant amount of employee time spent with those tasks
In-depth analytics: Now have access to in-depth analytics for instructional designers to enhance courses for future students
Increased satisfaction: Overall, increased partner and student satisfaction with ProTrain courses and renewed confidence in the company to deliver quality learning programs.
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John and his team began the hunt for a new LMS, and their two most determining factors were cost and reporting/analytics. They evaluated several other learning management systems which were unique in their own way. But none of the vendors could offer the reporting functionality they required, and at a cost, they could afford.
While ProTrain conducted its search for a new LMS, Moodle was a main contender since they had already been using it for some courses. As the search continued, they started developing all of their own content inside Moodle to test it out and were becoming very comfortable working within the Moodle ecosystem. The group was pleased with the flexibility and ease of use the open-source platform provided. They decided to use Moodle as the central platform for all courses.
The team was equally impressed with the capabilities of Zoola Analytics that Lambda Solutions offered in their bundled package. The solution provides ProTrain with in-depth analytics that its instructional designers and teachers can use to enhance courses for future students.
Stated John, “With Moodle and Zoola Analytics, we have a perfect marriage of learning management technologies. Zoola provides us with all the reporting functionality that we need and integrates seamlessly with Moodle. It was a ‘no-brainer’ decision.”
“Zoola Analytics allows us to schedule and send progress reports in a timely manner to our partners and state workforce counselors. This is a huge value-added service that is setting us apart and has become an expectation in servicing clients.” - John Hopkins, Information Systems Manager, ProTrain
The Moodle LMS through Lambda Solutions has become the central learning hub for all of ProTrain’s 1,000 users to either take courses or manage them. The learning management system now also provides the ability, through Zoola Analytics, to provide timely reports to partners and state counsellors, which had previously become nearly impossible.
By eliminating third-party systems and having one centralized location for learning programs, ProTrain has been able to increase staff efficiency for enrollments and reports. This results in saving a significant amount of employee time previously spent on those tasks. These increases in efficiency had a pleasing domino effect that resulted in increased student and partner satisfaction with courses.
A significant, unexpected benefit with this setup came when ProTrain’s in-classroom business increased and they needed a method to log and report student grades. They are able to accomplish this with the new system and also provide in-classroom students with a portal to log into to view their grades as soon as their instructor posted them.
Another welcome benefit is all the integrations that Moodle provides. ProTrain has been able to save a significant amount of money by having an integration with VitalSource to deliver eBooks to students. The students get their required books as soon as they log into their course now instead of having to wait 5 to 7 days for the course books to be delivered to their doorstep.
Inside Zoola Analytics, ProTrain created a report that tracks students’ progress. These reports are scheduled and automatically sent to the student and the school partner or state workforce counselor every 30 days.
The other two reports that are very useful to ProTrain are the Quiz Statistics and the Quiz Question Summary report. These two reports are especially helpful to the instructional design team and instructors so that they can quickly identify lessons where students are having issues and make adjustments.
From an IT perspective, the setup and initial launch went very smoothly. Stated Hopkins, “The team at Lambda Solutions is very experienced and worked with us every step of the way to ensure that our site was properly configured before we launched it and started placing students into it.”
“We can’t say enough about the helpfulness of the entire Lambda Solutions staff. ProTrain can confidently endorse Lambda for its extreme professionalism and willingness to go above and beyond to help with its customers’ needs. The support team is always eager to help with any questions we may have,” continued Hopkins. “ProTrain would highly recommend Lambda Solutions to any school or business that is looking for ways to implement a comprehensive learning management system.”
"The primary goal we wanted to achieve was to have a central location to send all of our students, so that we could provide them with a consistent experience. We have accomplished this with Lambda Solutions. They provide the best LMS and reporting solution, with an affordable price and an unmatched quality of service." - John Hopkins, Information Systems Manager, ProTrain