Case Study: IOPP

Platform selection and learning design for a global community

 

IOP Publishing (IOPP) is a subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, and is a scientific publisher providing impact, recognition and value for the scientific community. We supported them via learning platform selection and learning design expertise to help create a globally accessible training portal of on-demand content providing structured and consistent training for their external audience of academics.

A crucial element of technological and scientific development is peer review. However despite its importance, the majority of peer reviewers receive no training, and those that do often receive training that is fragmented, ad hoc, and of varying quality. 

IOPP contacted Learn Fox as they wanted to help researchers around the world to build their peer review competency online. The objective was to create the first such programme: to provide free, high-quality training to the physics community; to engage early career researchers with the IOPP brand; and to provide reviewer certification that will increase trust in the quality of physics peer review.  

Key objectives for the online training portal:

 

  • provide free, accessible training to a global community

  • deliver an engaging and interactive curriculum to build skills and confidence 

  • create an engaging and gamified accreditation system

  • create an ecosystem of training and accreditation tools

  • deliver modern training programmes via an online training portal and webinars 

  • future-proof the investment by ensuring the system is adaptable and agile to suit changing requirements and demands

The process

 

We worked with IOPP to evaluate the digital learning market and identify the right learning platform and content authoring tool to deliver their Peer Review Excellence curriculum to an external and global audience.

We developed their functional requirements from a series of user personas and user stories and prioritised these with key business stakeholders to create a robust and detailed set of requirements. With this we carried out a full market evaluation and vendor screening process to identify the most suitable learning platforms and authoring tools. This evaluation sought to find the most suitable digital learning ecosystem for IOPP encompassing LMS and LXP solutions, and platforms with in-built authoring tools (LCMS) versus external authoring tools with which to build out the curriculum. 

We needed to find IOPP a partner who understood their particular use case aimed at a global and external audience of academics and who could provide a platform that could allow participants to self-register for this free public facing content.

“Laura fully engaged with our technical requirements, and really understood what we were trying to achieve. Throughout the process of shortlisting and onboarding our software supplier she gave us crucial insights into the eLearning market and what we needed from our eLearning software.”

Laura Feetham | Reviewer Engagement Manager | IOPP

The final solution chosen by IOPP is a future proof digital learning ecosystem incorporating a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) to host their Peer Review training, a data driven campaign management tool to nudge and notify participants through the curriculum, a learning experience data analytics tool to visualise and analyse engagement, and a content authoring tool to build and maintain their proprietary content.

We also supported the  IOPP team with the learning design of the curriculum taking into account how the LXP platform itself could be optimised to enhance the learning experience and user journey through the content to route participants through to Trusted IOPP Reviewer Status. 

The resulting curriculum was created as modular bitesize learning assets built in Adapt Builder which enabled a consistent style to be applied and ensured optimum engagement and interactivity through the learning journey.

Outcomes

 

IOP Publishing has now launched a new state-of-the-art peer review elearning hub. The hub extends access to ‘Peer review excellence: IOP training and certification’, and is the world’s first peer review programme dedicated to the physical sciences. 

They now have a world class Peer Review offering for academics in the Physical Sciences. They are able to 

  • track engagement and drop offs

  • scale and grow their offer

  • fast track qualified participants to peer review editorial content

“We’re really proud of the final product. Within just two weeks, hundreds of physicists from around the world have signed up and started training, with a high percentage passing all of the assessments and graduating to our IOP Trusted Reviewer programme. Feedback from the researcher community has been glowing, and we hope that the site will serve the physical sciences community for years to come.”

Laura Feetham | Reviewer Engagement Manager | IOPP

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