Educational technologies (Skyeng) (iSpring Online)

Skyeng is the largest online school of English in Eastern Europe. Young startups started the project four years ago. According to the results of the 2016th the profit of online school was 66 million rubles, and revenue — 330 million.

Today more than one thousand teachers from around the world remotely teach English in Skyeng. Half a year ago the company began to have deficiency of specialists — 120 teachers of English urgently were necessary.

The manager on training of teachers of Skyeng Anna Belan told how by means of iSpring of all in a month in the company prepared group of new "fighters".

The popularity of the project increased, and employees began not to be enough for us

Half a year ago to us many new pupils came — marketing department perfectly worked, and specialists who would train students in English online began not to be enough.

120 teachers who not only well taught language were required, but also were able to do it online.

Where to take them? Even if the supercool teacher came, he is not always skillful to work remotely. It is after all other format. As a result after several occupations with "beginner" students left.

Training of new teachers became vital for growth of school. The management set the task — to create six training courses and regularly "banish" on them beginners.

On a result the new employee had to know the principles of online training and also work in Vimbox. This cloud platform — our author's development, through it we teach English across all Eastern Europe.

At first we trained employees via Google Docs and mailings

We divided training into two stages.

The first stage — training of promising candidates. We took them on a training and pumped over.

At first candidates appeared a little, about ten. The volume of a training material was small too. Our managers just did abstracts in Google Docs and sent them to beginners and also sent "students" links to documents and video with useful information.

However after such "training" there were many questions. It was necessary to be engaged individually with everyone that took away a lot of time.

The second stage — training of new teachers. It is about those who passed a training and are admitted to staff. We developed the separate training program for them - it is a new portion of abstracts and video lectures.

Employees received all materials by mail. Minus: we could not control learning process, check, information is studied or not.

Make mailing with educational material on 200 people — not a problem. But how to understand, knowledge is acquired or not? We began to look for professional tools for distance learning. Colleagues gave the reference to iSpring. We tested month iSpring Suite and iSpring Online, and as a result understood is what is necessary.

We began to train for iSpring of teachers of school and the staff of other departments, and so delivered distance learning of employees on rails.

Now three of our managers train 200 English teachers a month. We have three ready rates for teachers, and in development — five more.

Why we selected iSpring

The company proposed the complete solution: in iSpring Suite we create rates, we load them into SDO iSpring Online and we provide training.

In iSpring Suite we most often use:

Tests. At our disposal 23 types of questions. On their basis it is possible to create different types of tests and to do on them automatic check. Dialogue exercise machines. It is excellent practice! They help to work skills of communication with the pupil. Through iSpring such dialogs can be brought closer to reality as much as possible. Video. It is possible to load video from the computer or YouTube, to make skrinkast or to write video maintenance via the webcam. It does homework more live. Great advantage: video is displayed directly on a slide.

In iSpring Online there takes place all training. What is pleasant, this system gives detailed statistics on each rate. At once it is visible who studied in excellent students, and it is time for whom to put the two.

Besides, if necessary it is possible to correct a rate. For example, we unloaded the report and we see — users are trained, but fail the test. For us it is a red bulb — means not enough information is aware or the test turned out very difficult. In that case we quickly edit a training.

Dialogue exercise machines help to model real situations

In dialogue exercise machines we use the scenario "Communication of the Teacher with the Pupil".

On a plot the pupil comes to the teacher with a certain question. The teacher has several answer options: correct allow to reach the end of dialog and to find out that is wanted by the student. Wrong — drive into the deadlock.

At the heart of each exercise machine – a real case. Thanks to dialogs of the teacher know how to behave in this or that situation.

To create the dialogue exercise machine, it is not obligatory to be the programmer. Interface of the editor very simple. Cool that in dialogue exercise machines there is a possibility of a methodical explanation: why it is necessary to make so why other option incorrect.

One more counter — characters can be sounded. We select the employee with a good voice and we do to the nachitki. As a result the excellent developing game turns out.

At first our teachers just played exercise machines: it was interesting to watch how emotions at characters change as the plot develops. We asked: "Why you several times underwent dialog?" It appeared, even explanations to the wrong answers were interesting to them. In the test hardly we would achieve such effect.

Technical support of iSpring very much patient

We often ask for the help in technical support of iSpring. They attentively handle each our issue and give useful tips.

And still: they have a smart base of articles! We were so glad when we received the link to "The knowledge base of iSpring". There are both text guides, and video lessons — by and large, answers to all questions.

With iSpring we train for a month of 200 new employees

Earlier in a month we trained 20 people, now — 200. Growth by 10 times.

Three rates are already collected, we train five more for release. Each of rates is a full-fledged interactive training. The structure looks so:

video lecture; several text slides with important information; video lecture; exercise machine; test. Training is provided by 5 managers-methodologists. And they, and beginners teachers delighted with such approach. By efficiency of iSpring there is nothing and to compare to Google Docs. We completely closed a question with staff shortage.