Introducing the New NovoEd Experience

Today we’re unveiling what is, in my opinion, the most exciting update to the NovoEd product in our company’s history. For the last year, we have been hard at work redesigning our learner experience from the ground up. Starting from the barebones, we questioned all our assumptions about who our learners are, what our learners need, and what makes for a great learning experience.

We talked to learners from all over the world across different types of offerings, worked with a dozen of our customers, analyzed our usage data, and tested our ideas again and again. This past summer we launched our beta program and meticulously collected feedback and iterated on it. What we’ve come up with is as exciting as it is revolutionary and our early adopters have said just about the same:

“NovoEd has been a fantastic partner as we grow our online learning programs. We are delighted to be a strategic partner early in the process. It’s clear that NovoEd is designing with today’s learner in mind.”

Suzanne Gibbs Howard
Dean and Managing Director of IDEO U

 

We’re beyond excited to introduce this new version of our product, designed with a focus on a modern, mobile UI, a more effective and experiential approach to learning, and social capabilities to drive engagement.

Make it easy to learn on mobile devices

Our learners are busy professionals and part of being busy means always being on-the-go: going from the office to home, to the airport, to that other city. Learning doesn’t stop just because you’re not at your laptop so we wanted our new learner experience to do the same.

With this release, we’ve designed and built for mobile first. We’ve greatly optimized our mobile and tablet experiences so that no matter what device you access NovoEd from you are sure to have a great experience.

This includes submitting a video assignment from your tablet at home, joining in discussions as you commute, working with your team while waiting to catch a flight, or even recording a video from your phone and uploading it for feedback from your group. Anything you could do on desktop, you can now do seamlessly on any other device as well.

Make learning fit into the busy lives of our learners

Our goal is to make every moment spent on the NovoEd platform efficient and effective. Between meetings, projects, and day-to-day activities, there are often limited opportunities for learning.  We want learners to be able to pick up where they left off and immediately know what’s next.

With this new version of NovoEd, we are releasing a learner dashboard as the new homepage for users when they login.

This sleek dashboard contains lists of the learner’s to-dos across their courses, bookmarks where they are in each course, and acts as a portfolio for their work and submissions.

Another new feature is our learner toolbar which provides single click access to the courses the learner is taking and quick navigation to their teams and groups. This vertical bar stays pinned to the screen at all times, making it easy for the learner to navigate anywhere. It also consolidates all course announcements, notifications, and messages.

With this release, we have redesigned our navigational structure with a strong eye towards saving time and clicks. This helps learners navigate efficiently through the NovoEd platform.

At every turn, this structure will help learners: 

• Know what’s next, all the time. Our new lecture pages feature forward and backward navigation to easily step through course materials and content.
• View content in consumable chunks.
• Know where they are, and move around seamlessly. Our portable content structure stays with learners on all activities so they know where they are and can move on with one click.

Foster vibrant communities to engage learners

Social has long been the heart of the NovoEd learning experience. In this release we are making small communities more accessible, bringing them within the context of learning to spark collaboration.

Learners will be able to:

• Engage in in-depth discussions across learning activities. Discussions can now happen almost anywhere on our learning platform.
• Know who has been active recently. From first logging to commenting in discussions, learners can find out who is participating in their collaboration spaces.
• Discover what’s trending. Social content like discussions and submissions are more readily surfaced for relevance and meaning.
• Take the online offline or vice versa. Our team workspace features a revamped meeting feature that incorporates RSVPs and other updates to make it even easier to collaborate in person or online.

Tell me more!

You can read more in our press release here.

We’d love to show you a full demo or get you enrolled in one of our beta programs.  Please fill out the form at the bottom of the page or contact us at sales@novoed.com.

How do I get on board?

For those already on NovoEd, this is still the learning platform that you know and love with easier navigation, mobile compatibility, and modern aesthetics. Our Customer Success team will be in touch with you in early January with step-by-step instructions to adopt the next experience. We’ve made the transition seamless, and you can decide when you want to adopt.

If you’re new to NovoEd, welcome and you’re in for a treat! This new learning experience is unlike any you’ve seen before and is sure to delight you and your learners.  If you’d like to get in touch with us, fill out the form at the bottom of the page or contact us at sales@novoed.com.

We’ll see you in the new year with a new look for our product. Please let us know if you have any questions and we look forward to talking again soon.

Albert Hwang
Product Manager

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