Virtual Classroom and Real-world Methology: The best of both worlds Case Study: vitero in use at the Salta Group
With about 3,000 employees and 5,000 docents, the Salta Group is the largest private educational institution in the Benelux. Besides its headquarters in Hilversum, the group consists of more than 25 organisations with a strategic focus on education and training – such as NCOI Opleidingen, LOI, NTI, de Baak, SkillsTown, Luzac and Tio. The Salta Group‘s mission is to enable lifelong development for everyone, regardless of age, stage of life, private situation or profession. Each year, more than 1 million people expand their knowledge and skills through one of Salta Group‘s trainers. More than 15,000 employers benefi t from the range of digital learning platforms and extensive expertise.
online teaching with vitero inspire.
From face-to-face to online in two days
With the fi rst Corona lockdown in mid-March 2020, face-to-face classes could no longer take place overnight, so they had to switch to online as quickly as possible. Fortunately, some of the trainers already had experience with vitero inspire and vitero‘s sales partner for the Benelux, Timo Bleeker from Blended Communication, was able to provide immediate support. Within two days, the digital learning environment was up and running, the docents were trained, and the students were participating in classes online.
A full-featured classroom environment
„We saw, especially at the beginning of the Corona pandemic, that many educational institutions in the Netherlands had diffi culties with online teaching. Too often, online tools were chosen that were good for online meetings but not for online teaching,“ said Tessel Jarigsma, director of Salta Group Professional Education. For Salta Group, the environment needed to offer signifi cantly more features than traditional video conferencing software. Through its research-based approach, vitero inspire enables both instructors and course participants to have the same learning experience as in a real classroom.
Use of the variety of collaboration tools for an interactive conduction to the online trainings.
Virtual Classroom as a standard offering
„We have our courses evaluated on a regular basis. Both docents and students are excited about the possibilities in vitero inspire. Docents notice that their students stay on task much better. The room is designed so that everyone is focused on the same medium, such as a presentation, PDF document, or video. The docent is still the presenter and decides what is shown, to whom it is shown and by whom,“ says Tessel Jarigsma. Due to the very positive feedback, it was quickly decided to offer vitero‘s Virtual Classroom as a permanent part of the product range. Students can choose to complete their training in face-to-face sessions, in virtual meetings or entirely via e-learning.
Active participation
According to Tessel Jarigsma, vitero inspire‘s multiple features allow for excellent interaction between instructors and students, as well as among students. „There are break-out rooms that the instructor can set up very easily for the purpose at hand.“ The audiovisual ambiance feature allows the room to be rearranged to fi t the situation. „The ability to create virtual learning spaces is incredibly useful for activating participants and keeping them engaged. It‘s a real win in terms of effectiveness.“
The best of both worlds
„Using vitero brings together two worlds: digital technology and didactics. My IT colleagues commend the reliability of the system; the on-prem servers run properly and updates are easy to install. Educational developers and docents give back that they can implement their methodologicaldidactic ideas in the best possible way,“ says Tessel Jarigsma.
Good cooperation and fl exible solution
Tessel Jarigsma emphasized: „As an organization we are happy about the good and reliable support and the partnership with vitero and Blended Communication. Finally – and this is what matters to us – our students and their employers are very happy with the new solution, which combines the benefits of face-to-face teaching with the location flexibility of online offerings.“
Further Case Studies
Well-known customers and partners from a wide variety of sectors and industries speak for the diversity of vitero inspire. The numerous possibilities of vitero are also evident from the variety of our application settings.