Michigan Virtual won a Silver Brandon Hall Group Excellence Award for Best Learning Team for the organization’s work in developing Michigan LearnPort, Michigan’s leading online portal for K-12 educators.
Michigan teachers, administrators and other staff use the portal to earn recertification credits and take compliance and professional development (PD) courses. Michigan LearnPort offers more than 1,000 high-quality online courses and recorded over 30,000-course enrollments in the last fiscal year.
Underpinning Michigan LearnPort is a software product provided by Meridian Knowledge Solutions called the Meridian Global LMS. This software links people to courses, documents, data, instructors and other learners at any time from a desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile device.
“Our goals are to harness the Internet to consolidate PD resources, offer teachers a new way of learning and create efficiencies for the K-12 community,” said Jamey Fitzpatrick, President and CEO of Michigan Virtual.
This award underscores the validity and the value of these goals and highlights this meaningful innovation in K-12 education in Michigan.
“We’re pleased to know an industry leader like Brandon Hall Group recognizes the positive impact and multiple benefits of Michigan LearnPort,” Fitzpatrick said.
“Michigan Virtual and Meridian won this award because the combined team developed a system that for nine years has elegantly solved a tough problem: Enable teachers to improve how they do their jobs without taking time away from students,” said Rachel (Ashkin) Cooke, COO of Brandon Hall Group. “With Michigan LearnPort, Michigan Virtual and Meridian have given educators a way to collaborate online, share best practices, comply with government regulations and do it all at a pace and time of their choosing.”
“This award is a punctuation mark on nearly a decade of work by our two teams to constantly refine the technology, marketing and content – to name just a few things – needed to attract a loyal following of tens of thousands of teachers, administrators and staff year after year,” said John Leh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Meridian. “Since Michigan Virtual launched Michigan LearnPort, thousands of teachers have taken hundreds of courses on topics ranging from Algebra to mastering online learning – many of these courses are free.”
“By regularly promoting the benefits of Michigan LearnPort, we’ve seen adoption grow by the tens of thousands. Along with that, enrollments in compliance courses have soared,” said David Myers, Vice President for Educational Programs and Outreach at Michigan Virtual. Offering online compliance courses offers more time for school-based professional development that focuses on subject matter issues and school improvement related topics.
One example of how Michigan LearnPort has boosted compliance rates and benefitted teachers and students is the partnership with the Michigan Transition Outcomes Project, or MI-TOP. MI-TOP works to implement effective transition practices across Michigan to ensure all students are prepared for education, work, and life after secondary schooling is done. Michigan Virtual developed and launched in Michigan LearnPort an online course for Michigan teachers to learn about easier transition planning and completion of required associated forms. This step, along with other tactics, brought compliance with MI-TOP from just under 40 percent to 100 percent in one year. The partnership continues; a fourth course in the transition series will be in the catalog this winter.
