An update on some items we’ve been working on here at Careers Unlimited to try to support course providers during this time.
Our goal has always been to help prospective students find the right courses for them. In these already turbulent and changeable times for the education sector, this global pandemic has led to unprecedented levels of uncertainty. None of us really know when society, the economy and life in general will return to normal; will it be weeks or months? In the new ‘normal’, planning for and predicting the future is tough. We’re all going to have to be more agile and flexible than ever before. We will also need to gather as much information and data as we can to inform our decisions and avoid costly mistakes.
Myself and my team at Careers Unlimited have been working remotely at our kitchen tables, sofas, spare bedrooms etc over thet past few days, to come up with ways we can work with the sector to help drive business during these difficult times. We are committed to help you, as a valued client and supporter of our business, and do whatever we can to support you through these times. We’re all in this together. Given that all colleges are closed at this time, we know there is a rapid movement to online courses in many of your organisations.
These are some of the things we are working on in the background during this time:
1. Increasing the number of online courses available on our websites at this time and the visibility of and ease of access to the online course search function on our websites Courses.ie, Nightcoures.com, Postgrad.ie, Corporatetraining.ie & Whichcollege.ie.
2. We are launching a brand new online portal – Onlinecampus.ie – to join our suite of websites. Onlinecampus.ie will provide a single point of access to all the online courses listed on our courses network and become a national portal for all courses online in Ireland. We’ll also be expanding the new site in the coming weeks to provide an exciting range of services and helpful supports for both course providers and prospective students for a world that will involve more online learning than ever before. We’ve been working on this at a swift pace over the past two weeks and it is now live on beta launch.
As a valued client, there will be no extra charge to include your listings on the new Onlinecampus.ie and you do not have to do anything – we will automatically add your courses, college listings and information as part of our subscription. We’ll be marketing the new site across radio, social and digital in the coming weeks.
3. We are working hard to understand the impact that COVID-19 will have on learning in the coming months – how are learning priorities changing? What is most important to learners during this time? When will course-seekers return to enrolling on courses and will the usual enrolment trends change into the early summer months after the Stay At Home period is over?
To gather more information, we’ve released a survey in April – ‘Learning & The Covid-19 Effect’. This was emailed to almost 50,000 Irish people on our mailing lists and publicised on our website network and will give us useful data about current attitudes to learning and course enrolments preferences in the current environment. The results from the survey will help us adapt to focus on what’s important to you as a course provider during this time, as well as providing industry data for those working in learning and development. I’ve included the survey link below and I would appreciate if you could share the survey out via your own social channels so that we may get as large a sample as possible. We potentially could follow up with further surveys to the same group with any further questions we may collectively have over the coming weeks.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HR9BNG9
I’ll send around the results of the first survey in a report at the end of next week – hopefully it will include useful data on how the market is changing and how we all can rise to meet this challenge.
Meanwhile, if you are running, or intending to run, online courses or distance learning of any description, please send us on as much information as you have and we will publish it on the new Onlinecampus.ie and distribute the news on our mailing lists. Also, if you have any insights on current and future trends, please feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Meanwhile, stay safe and remain positive! 🙂
Regards
Kevin Branigan
Managing Director
Careers Unlimited
