Below you can follow along with a conversation we had with Adam Pond, the Co-Founder and Director of Model Teaching.

Moving A Professional Development Program Online

Model Teaching started offering professional development to teachers and schools way back in 2003, with their parent company, Action Potential Learning. Then, after spending years hiring tutors, training teachers, and doing lots of training on campus, they decided to move training materials online. This meant that Model Teaching needed an eLearning platform to distribute and manage their online courses.

“When we realized what we needed to do, we knew that we need a platform to do it. Like I said, to take all of our training materials and put them online so we can distribute them more widely.” - Adam Pond

So like any company looking for a new solution, Model Teaching went to Google for answers — that’s where they came across Academy Of Mine.

While speaking with Model Teaching, here are some of the features they said that they were looking for in an eLearning platform:

• Flexible eCommerce.
• Integrates with WordPress.
• Learner reporting and administration.
• Affordable pricing.
• User-friendly Interfaces and Dashboards.
• Ability to customize.
• Supported by a company with great customer support.

By moving training courses online, Model Teaching would be able to more efficiently distribute professional training to their customers.

“We did in-person live training before, but that limits us in the ability to offer training both widely to larger audiences and to do it more effectively, efficiently, and passively. So that's why we decided to move everything online.” - Adam P.

Avoiding The Cookie-Cutter LMSs On The Market

Since Model Teaching offers training to such a specific segment in the K-12 market, to stand out from the competition they really wanted to focus on quality vs. quantity with their courses.

“Teachers are extremely busy, so if they're going to sit down and actually spend some time training, it's going to have to be clear, it's going to have to be seamless, it's going to have to be an enjoyable experience." - Adam P.

Adam shared with us, that a lot of the LMSs he compared to Academy Of Mine were one-size-fits-all solutions that seemed limited in customization. We can relate to this feedback since a lot of customers enjoy the Academy Of Mine platform because it’s robust and highly customizable. Coming back to Model Teaching, they understood that they wanted an LMS with a lot of features, and software that could be customized to match their business.

“I did some software trials with different platforms, some of the bigger ones out there, the big name ones, and they were just very cookie cutter.” - Adam P.

Additionally, Model Teaching wanted a platform that was user-friendly and easy to jump right into and take courses. Some LMS platforms have many features and are well-rounded, but navigating the system can be complicated.

“A lot of our customers are older, not as tech savvy, older teachers that are retired but want to maintain their license, and I think they appreciate the ease and simplicity of the platform.” - Adam P.

Developing Training With A Robust Learning Management System

When it comes to creating courses, some of the specific features Model Teaching wanted were certificate generation, the ability to create group assignments and discussion boards, create quizzes, and more. They also needed a platform, that was reliable and could solve their complex needs.

Listen to Adam describe the complex solutions Academy Of Mine has brought them!

“The reliability and robustness of it's really great too. The software works, there are not a lot of bugs, it's reliable, customers don't get frustrated, things work well, it's fast.” - Adam P.

On top of finding an LMS that would allow Model Teaching to develop and deliver professional development to their K-12 audience online, they also wanted to grow the business (and reach more teachers, schools, and school districts). To do that, Model Teaching needed to integrate its WordPress site with Academy Of Mine LMS.

“One thing they were able to do is to customize, is basically a communication system through our main WordPress website and the LMS, so people can actually go ahead and shop our cart menu. And then all that data take is taken over to the LMS where they can do the checkout and then take the courses in that system.” - Adam P.

Streamlining Training Administration For K-12 Schools

When selling courses to an academic audience, such as teachers, schools, and school districts, being able to smoothly administrate courses and then report on platform usage and student progress is important.

Here are some of the administrative tasks that Model Teaching has been able to do with Academy Of Mine:

• Create administrator accounts for schools and principals to help them monitor their teachers’ activity in training courses.
• Integrate the LMS with WordPress to make purchasing courses easy for teachers.
• Reporting on the activity that teachers have completed in courses.
• Provide approved pro-development courses in different states across the country.
• Support five university partnerships with custom training courses.
• Maintain entire school districts across the country with continuing education.

“All of our customers find the software very easy to use. It's really fast, which is nice because a lot of our teachers are in a hurry and they're trying to get the content as fast as possible." - Adam P.

How Model Teaching uses AOM

Delivering courses and online training to an audience looks different for every customer, that’s why our LMS is a good choice for many different use cases.

In Model Teaching’s case, there was an emphasis on eCommerce and finding an LMS that would support their business as it grew.

“They're helping us sell our courses, honestly, that's at the very broad level. They're helping us grow.” - Adam P.

Adam mentioned many times, over our 45-minute call with him, how much being able to customize the LMS has been a blessing.

Model Teaching has only done 1-2 major customizations to his LMS, one of those being the WordPress Integration, which has helped him grow his business significantly.

“Sure. I mean in terms of the business growth. I mean, we've pretty much doubled every year for the last four years and I want to keep that going.” - Adam P.

The Importance Of Customer Support With A SaaS LMS

When talking with Model Teaching, they talked about three things they loved about Academy Of Mine: - Robustness of the platform - Option to customize the LMS - Outstanding customer support.

“One of the reasons we stuck with AOM is because I just trust them. They're just really good with customer service, and super responsive." - Adam P.

Since Academy Of Mine was founded, in 2014, customer support has been a huge focus for us. We understand that fires occur in business all of the time; we prioritize responding to customers quickly, and just overall helping our customers succeed every step of the way. It’s pretty sad to say how many times we’ve heard customers complain about the poor customer support they’ve received from other LMS providers.

If you’re looking for an LMS company that will not only provides you with great software but also can support you as an eLearning partner, then look no further. In fact, just this year we hired and created a department specifically for instruction design — to help customers develop effective and engaging courses. In addition to instructional design, we also have some other eLearning services that we offer to customers using our LMS.

The Results Model Teaching Found With Academy Of Mine

In conclusion, Model Teaching faced several challenges while growing its training business, but Academy Of Mine helped them move its established training programs online by providing a reliable and customizable LMS.

As a result, Model Teaching was able to market and manage professional development courses efficiently, and they experienced huge growth. Model Teaching wanted an LMS that could be tailored to their needs and was easy to use for teachers who may not be tech-savvy, and Academy Of Mine was the perfect solution for them. Overall, AOM helped Model Teaching streamline their training experiences for teachers and schools, and now they’re able to grow their business and train customers more easily.

“AOM has allowed us to customize the software specifically to fit our goals, and make it kind of just really fit closely to how our business operates, and do it cost-effectively.” - Adam P.