What did you do over Christmas?

by Alan Nelson

December is always a busy time for Nelson Croom. On the development side, clients often want projects completed before the end of the year, and on the user side, learning never seems to stop for the festive season.

In December, 3900 people logged into one of our courses, with over 2500 new registrations for courses. To put the level of activity this represents into context, the system recorded over 83,000 new answers to questions! That’s real engagement from real people.

As always, our CPD courses were busy as people used the service to comply with regimes that require a specified number of hours of professional development each year. Accountants were once again the most numerous group with over 100 registrations between Christmas and New Year.

Last year we had six Irish accountants register for a course on Christmas Day. This year the prize for earnestness (or perhaps for dysfunctional family life!) goes to the users of the British Library courses on Intellectual Property. Clearly the economic downturn has not dented the entrepreneurial zeal of two budding inventors who registered on the 25th.

Compliance was also on people’s minds. Over 250 people from one of the leading clearing banks completed a competition compliance course in the month.

These groups of learners all have very different motivations. At one extreme, those completing compliance courses do so because they have been told to. At the other extreme, the British library IP courses are used by people who are entirely self motivated. In between are the professionals completing their CPD. Their activity may peak at this time of year because of the requirements of their professional body, but their selection of particular courses is based entirely on professional interest.

What is common in all these cases, is that the anytime, anywhere provision of online learning enables people to achieve what they want to when it suits them – even if that is on Christmas Day! Set this alongside the extremely high levels of satisfaction reported in our recent survey and we can enter 2009 confident that we are providing a service of real value to professional communities.