LearnHero

LearnHero is a Dutch company that develops and builds digital learning solutions designed for each client organization, from a single e-learning course up to a full online academy. Its slogan is "laat helden groeien" (let heroes grow), and the home page sums up the offer as accessible, affordable and simple, with the goal of making learning fun and attractive for employees without much effort on the employer's side. LearnHero is part platform, part studio: it supplies the learning environment and a course development tool, and it also designs, writes, codes, trains and advises. The company lists its office in Utrecht, and its site is in Dutch. The home page says more than 100 companies have already gone before you.

Where it comes from

LearnHero grew out of a family of sector brands. Through its labels HorecaHero (hospitality), SafetyHero, WattApp, WatersportHero and RecreatieHero, the company says it has already trained whole industries and learned from doing so, and it bundled that experience into LearnHero so it can design a tailored learning solution for any sector, organization or association. Recent news on its blog shows the labels still growing: WattApp is a learning solution for technicians in the electrical installation industry, LearnHero won an assignment to develop WatersportHero, a post marks a fourth year in a row of RecreatieHero and HISWA-RECRON, and a newer label, VaarbewijsHero, takes its name from the Dutch boating license (vaarbewijs). The blog has also announced online training on working smarter with AI.

The Hero concept and short learning

LearnHero's teaching approach rests on short, spread-out learning. The home page cites the Ebbinghaus curve, saying the German research psychologist concluded that after four days people remember on average only 20% of what they learned, and that the answer is spreading learning out and repeating it regularly. LearnHero therefore focuses on short learning interventions and deliberately cuts the number of training days: "Less is more". The Hero concept is its complete, worked-out learning concept for companies and associations, which the site says puts every tool within reach to organize training and education more easily, smartly and affordably.

Building courses yourself or with LearnHero

Organizations that want to do the work themselves get a development tool. Under the headings "Bye handboek" and "Hi e-learning!", the home page says the tool lets you build lively online trainings very easily and entirely on your own, which makes it a good fit for turning old training manuals and materials into e-learning.

For teams that are too busy, LearnHero builds with them. Co-creation means creating the most educational and enjoyable online trainings together, because every company is different. The design is the client's to choose: the home page jokes that if you like combining "fletsgroen met pimpelpaars" (washed-out green with deep purple), they will do it, or they will handle the design work themselves. The Visual Design & Video service has LearnHero's designers make illustrations for online trainings, described as affordable, fast and effective, and the site recommends using video in trainings to raise interaction. Training & didactic advice is the fourth service: the site says online learning has to reach the intended learning goals as well as being fun, and its Learning Coaches are there to make that happen.

How the platform works

A post on the LearnHero blog by Michelle, a Learn Coach at the company, explains how the e-learning platforms it works with are used. The platform is the learning environment that holds the trainings, not the trainings themselves. Learners log in with a username and password and see the trainings set out for them, on a computer, tablet or phone. An e-learning can include audio, interactive video, icons and images, and each chapter can end with different types of test questions.

Administrators can monitor behind the scenes which trainings are assigned to each employee, whether that person has started, and whether they completed successfully, and step in where needed. Learning paths set a fixed order of trainings on a topic and can end in a classroom session. The post's example comes from hospitality: first a wine knowledge course, then an advanced wine course, and only once both are passed does the employee get access to sign up for a practical wine tasting day.

The platform can be connected to other systems in the organization, such as a student tracking system at a school or an HR system at a company, so hundreds of employees and their roles can be linked to the platform in one go. Roles and rights decide who has access to what, with roles such as administrator, organizer and learner. Training can be assigned by role, for example linking everyone marked as service staff to the same training at once instead of by hand.

Customer example

The home page quotes Cindy Groenestein, operational manager at De Beren: "Met LearnHero hebben we onze eigen trainingen op een leuke en efficiënte manier digitaal gemaakt voor al onze medewerkers, zodat zij waar en wanneer ze maar willen getraind kunnen worden." In English, the company turned its own trainings into fun, efficient digital courses for all its staff, who can now train wherever and whenever they like. She adds that after a smooth launch, the franchisees got started with their teams straight away. The site also has a customer cases section and a downloadable whitepaper, and prospective clients reach the team by phone, contact form or chat.

Who it suits and who it does not

LearnHero suits Dutch-speaking organizations that want a learning environment shaped around them rather than an off-the-shelf LMS: hospitality and franchise chains, recreation and watersports businesses, technical trades, associations, and companies with a shelf of training manuals they want online. It works for a team that wants to build its own courses with the development tool as well as for one that would rather hand over design, writing and video to a studio and get didactic advice on top. Organizations that like short, repeated learning over long training days will find that view built into the method.

Because the work is tailored and the site is in Dutch, organizations that need an English-language vendor, or want a self-serve LMS with published plans they can sign up for online, will find LearnHero set up for a different kind of customer.