e-Learning development for leading
higher education institution

Our client is widely recognized as one of the nation's premiere institutions of higher education, research, and public service. Our client’s academic offerings span a broad range of fields and include 69 bachelors, 111 masters, and 75 doctoral degrees as well as professional degrees in dentistry, medicine, pharmacy, and law. Our client’s 3,000-member faculty and staff supports an enrollment of approximately 26,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries.

A special task force of our client’s Finance Division determined that there were over 400 campus administrative staff personnel dispersed throughout the university's colleges and departments who had responsibility for performing accounting and finance-related functions. However, most of these employees had little or no accounting background, and all were in need of training on our client’s financial systems, functions, processes, and procedures. Additionally, many of these administrative positions had relatively high turnover, resulting in a regular influx of new employees who also needed training.

With a large, decentralized learner group that was continually changing, the Finance Division needed a web-based training solution that was easily accessible, consistent, and readily available to all learners regardless of their location. Furthermore, they needed to be able to track and manage learner-training activity and provide consistent, supplemental Finance reference materials to all learners.

Working with members of the Finance Division and a special task force, Synaptis conducted an assessment to determine current user knowledge and specific training needs. A suite of three web-based training modules was developed to support their business application training needs -- an overview of the Finance Division functions and client financial systems and procedures, a basic introduction to university accounting policies and practices, and a more advanced course on the specific management of accounts and funds.

In addition, an extensive library of Job Aids and Reference Guides were created to supplement the web-based training courses and provide learners with critical procedural and policy information. Client learners access the web-based training courses via a link on the university network that takes them to the Synaptis Learning Center, which hosts the courses, provides on-going learner support, and supplies campus-wide learner tracking and reporting information.