Russian Railways Corporate University (Websoft HCM (formerly WebTutor))

2024: Redesign the training portal: why do it, how to do it and how to stop

Ivan Bulavkin, Russian Railways Corporate University

Context

The main task of our corporate university is to teach the leaders of the holding. We have an educational program, we issue certificates, that is, in fact, we are an educational institution. This means that we must fulfill all formal requirements, obtain licenses, undergo inspections, keep records and form curricula. And at the same time they must be flexible, modern and interesting.

A little numbers: we have about 160,000 students, a year we have about 68,000 courses, there are more than 1,400 pieces of content in the database.

The team of the center of remote educational technologies: 10 people who are engaged in the creation of courses and an educational portal.

We use many tools, but the main core of our educational system is, Websoft HCM we try to ensure that all educational activities are on the educational portal. Web software

What are you faced with?

There were three different portals at the same time, there was no integral system with an understandable development plan.

They performed business requests, but each time they used temporary and/or custom tools that complicated system administration and increased risk during updates.

People in everyday life use many services, see how web design is developing, becoming more and more understandable and accessible. We started using our portal a few years ago, and it was already necessary to make it more attractive and modern.

What portals were before the redesign?

1. Educational portal: people come to it when they are sent to study at the Corporate University.

What functions were there:

• Personal account of the listener, in which he can edit his data.
• Separately, the "My Achievements" block is displayed: how many courses, tests the student passed, what rating, if the program provides a rating.
• Education documents (appear 10 days after graduation).
• Individual development plan.
• Self-assessment on corporate competencies.
• peer2-peer tasks - with mutual verification.
• Full-time programs translated into online format.

Traditionally, we had face-to-face programs that were formed specifically for specific tasks, for example, personnel reserve programs. After covid, we moved all this online, and we have complex programs on the portal that have different trajectories, ratings, IPR, and self-esteem. These are rather complex programs from a methodological point of view, but they were urgently translated into an online format, as a result, many temporary solutions appeared - "crutches."

2. Open portal

• With the transition to online, a large number of open courses appeared on popular topics: how to work under stress, how to organize remote work, and so on. After some time, we realized that for this there should be not some block on the training portal, but we need to make a separate open training portal and provide free access to it to all employees.
• The company has subsidiaries, we also provided them with access to this open portal.
• There is a whole ecosystem that deals with quantum technologies, and on the open portal we also began to post courses on quantum technologies.

3. English portal: we also conduct training for foreigners, we had programs in English, then the open courses were translated into English - and this is the third portal.

The solution is a single portal with an understandable structure. We decided that it was time to put things in order and go into a redesign.

What did you do? Project milestones

1. Analyze and define goals. We describe the current and desired state of the system, evaluate labor costs. Understandable documentation is very important, especially when everything is as difficult as we had. If it is not (and most often it is not), then the time for analyzing the current state of the system must be laid down with a margin in order to adequately describe how everything works.
2. Design and develop a new architecture. Frontend and backend architecture development.
3. Design graphic design. We think over and create a design. Note that the more people who agree on this graphic part, the longer this story will continue. What did we do? They did a small survey in two groups, showed several design formats. Won two options. We took the best from each of them and continued to work in short iterations: on Monday the designer sends several versions of the page, we look, agree, gather inside the department and "twist." By next Monday, the designer is drawing another page. And so in almost a month we did the whole design.
4. Layout of portal pages, testing.
5. Moving to the product. We update the portal, combine our three previous portals and launch in a new design.

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Фото: WebSoft

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Фото: WebSoft

Results

As a result:

• A single portal with an understandable structure and a plan for further development
• Simplify administration
• Convenient and understandable use for employees

What will happen after the launch of the new design and our recommendations:

• Wait for an influx of requests. It is very difficult to finish the redesign.
• Documentation. Detailed documentation is the thing that should be mandatory in the SOW, because this is a whole big serious stage.

2012: Creation of a distance learning system

The autonomous non-profit organization Corporate University of Russian Railways is an educational center within the holding. RUSSIAN RAILWAY Its main task is to create an effective system of additional corporate business formations management of Russian Railways in accordance with the requirements of the Railway Development Strategy transport until 2030.

The students of ANO "Corporate University of JSCo Russian Railways" are the middle and senior managers of JSCo Russian Railways. In the course of training, such tasks as systematic and systematic development of managers, the formation of unified approaches to management activities, the formation of effective management teams, etc. are solved. The training uses the most modern methods, evaluates according to the model of corporate competencies, and uses individual development programs.

As part of the introduction of innovative training methods at the ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways," a decision was made to create a distance learning system (RES) with the following functionality:

• conducting distance learning using specially designed electronic courses;
• testing of students;
• placement of information materials for training, including specially developed electronic textbooks;
• conducting webinars and organizing project work of students.

The Russian Railways Corporate University already had a working educational portal based on the WebSphere solution from IBM, so the RES had to be fully integrated with it. All training and testing of users was to be carried out directly on the pages of the internal portal.

Solving the problem

After considering various options, the WebTutor product of WebSoft was chosen as the basis for building a RES in ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways." The standard modules included in it have all the necessary functionality. In addition, WebTutor implements an API - an interface with which RES can be integrated with an arbitrary website (regardless of the CMS on which it runs), portal or information system.

During the project implementation, first of all, a terms of reference was drawn up, which described all the functions expected from RES, technical characteristics and requirements for integration with the existing portal.

The project consisted of two stages. The first was held from June to December 2011. During it, the main part of the functionality related to distance learning, testing and the electronic library was implemented.

The second phase of the project was implemented from September to December 2013. In it, the possibility of holding webinars on the educational portal was added to the existing functionality.

To ensure the implementation of the necessary functionality on the part of the WebTutor system, the following modules were used:

• "Personnel and organizational structure" - for maintaining lists of students and teachers of the corporate university;
• "Portal management" - for the organization of the RES training portal;
• "Distance learning" - for students to study electronic courses and summarize the results of training;
• "Testing" - for testing listeners;
• "Electronic Library" - to ensure access for students to information materials, including special electronic textbooks and books;
• "Virtual class" - for webinars.

The standard capabilities of these modules fully meet all RES requirements for functionality. Therefore, their refinement within the framework of the project was not required.

For integration with the internal training portal, the API was used - the software interface provided by the WebTutor system. The exchange of information between the internal portal and the WebTutor system is carried out using the SOAP protocol. To do this, use the following API functions:

• activation of courses and tests;
• Obtaining lists of active courses and tests
• obtaining lists of courses and tests available to the user;
• obtaining available surveys;
• obtaining books from the electronic library;
• creation of webinars;
• getting a list of webinar users;
• and so on.

WebTutor web templates were built into the web interface of the Russian Railways training portal so that for the user the solution looks like a single portal. At the same time, due to the flexibility of configuring the portal and WebTutor web templates, no change in the WebTutor program code was required. "This is important, since the need to refine the source code always leads to an increase in the time and cost of the project, as well as a significant increase in the risk of errors." Pavel Kovalev, Deputy CEO of WebSoft, notes. "The integration technology we use allows users of the Russian Railways training portal to work with the standard tools of the WebTutor system so that they do not perform the transition between the sections of the training portal and the distance learning system, but work in a single information space."

During the implementation of the project, there was a need to organize access to RES not only from the internal network of ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways," but also from the Internet. This feature provides remote access for students to training courses, tests and informational materials directly from their workplaces.

To solve this problem, a separate site was developed at the Corporate University of Russian Railways, open for access from anywhere in the world. The RES integrated into the portal also has two "entry points" - from the local network of Russian Railways from the pages of the internal portal and via the Internet using its own training portal.

An external learning portal is a fully functional site that implements a wide range of capabilities. Some of them, of course, relate to distance learning. In particular, one can note the passage of electronic courses and tests and the study of educational literature in electronic form via the Internet. However, in addition to them, there are many other useful services on the portal.

For example, in the Press Center section, you can follow the news of the Corporate University of Russian Railways, get acquainted with official press releases and publications about it in the media. Photo and video galleries are also located here. No less interesting is the section "Communication." In it you can find the blog of the director of the university N.V. Steblyansky, forums, ask a question of interest to one of the experts. And, of course, a large amount of information about the organization and its activities is posted on the portal.

An interesting feature of this site is bilingualism. Data on it is presented not only in Russian, but also in English. And the visitor can switch between them and view them in the most convenient form.

Alyona Zaytseva, Deputy Director of the Russian Railways Corporate University for Knowledge Management and Commercial Work, tells about the results of the project: "The functionality that has appeared on our educational portal thanks to integration with the distance learning system is very important for the implementation of advanced training programs for Russian Railways managers undergoing training at the Corporate University. Passing electronic training courses and tests has already become an integral part of our educational process, most of our training programs are held in a remote format. And the possibility of holding webinars further expands the range of our capabilities in terms of timely reporting of knowledge and the latest educational materials to our students. The electronic library deserves special mention, access to which we provided to all students through RES WebTutor. Now an extensive collection of business literature is available for reading on the portal online to all employees of Russian Railways undergoing training at the Corporate University, which allows them to gain even more in-depth knowledge in the areas of training they need. "

It is noteworthy that most of the time in the implementation of the project was required for organizational measures (formation of the necessary documentation, coordination of exchange protocols, etc.), testing and commissioning. Net development time was 2 weeks.

Only two specialists were involved in the work. One from WebSoft, the other from the developer of the internal and external portal ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways."

Results

During the implementation of the project, RES was implemented, the functionality of which fully meets the requirements of ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways."

The work took a very short time (for a system of such complexity), and the technical part of the project was implemented by only two specialists. This was made possible by two reasons: the standard capabilities of the used WebTutor modules are sufficient to implement all the requirements for the RES functionality; WebTutor has an integration platform with its own API and SOAP support.

As a result, today students of ANO "Corporate University of Russian Railways" can remotely read electronic textbooks, take electronic courses and tests, participate in webinars. And teachers received at their disposal a modern tool that can increase the efficiency and speed of training.