LearnKey “Powers-up” Online Continuing Education Programs

Now more than ever corporate customers are coming to LearnKey to power-up their online continuing education programs for their employee’s, leadership teams and owners.

Organizations are scrambling to implement programs so they can keep their existing employee’s and lure in new talent as every company is challenged to maintain and add staff. Here are a few of our offerings that make up our Enterprise Development Solutions which we customize for each client:

Continuing Education Solution: Here is a good read on how important offering continuing education programs to upskill employee’s is as now considered a big part of employee benefits. That is why just learning how to learn online is also an important skill to obtain forever more. Companies are moving away from in person training and knowing how to learn online is the future.

Pre-Hire Academy Solution: This is somewhat new and “out of the box” and if done right can not only attract/pre-qualify candidates – it can be a nice good faith of “corporate social responsibility” by offering education/training that leads to a job within communities. Instead of using the same old traditional job boards for acquiring new talent. Offer it to those that have the willingness to learn a skill.

Vocational Readiness Programs: Here is where we have a huge advantage over our competitors. We have corporate customers on that our on boarding this month who utilize LearnKey signature courses to create an offering they administer and offer their customers. LearnKey also has their open enrollment program available to anyone.

Employability Services: Organizations utilizing any of the above solutions are keen on utilizing our services and assistance with job leads, mock interviews, and resume tips. Additionally, they like having resources to tap into from time to time when it comes to placement assistance for students who graduate from our certification programs.

These are the core education as a service (EaaS) offerings we provide along with our behavioral foundation, which drives a truly successful learning experience.

These are very interesting times in how important continuous education is for our country. We have millions of adults who ware lacking skills for todays in demand jobs. Let’s get them certified.

LearnKey fun day at Woods Ranch in Cedar City, UT

Last Friday July 9^th, the LearnKey Utah and Arizona teams got together to reconnect and introduce our newest Know Your Talents and Brighton team members who took the trip from Arizona. With over thirty-four (34) attending we enjoyed great food and got to hear from our founder John Clemons talk about how he created the first course (WordPerfect) back in 1987 founded the company and brought along LearnKey’s first computer, old newspaper magazines, the original accounting ledger, old shirts, pictures, courses in VHS, DVDS and great company history. Then afterwards he broke out his guitar and played great music for an hour or so.

This is the first time we have been able to get together in a large group setting in over seventeen (17) months and everyone had a blast. We talked about how the entire company works so amazing together as one team and how everyone is “connected and are always there for one another”. There is no me its WE and we all do our best to not let any of our team members down.

I reminded them of the great NFL Head Coach Bill Walsh who said ” if you can get people to laugh and trust you, you can get them to be serious too.” The entire LearnKey team is a true champion.

David Clemons, LearnKey’s former President also shared what he has been up to the past three years launching his HERO non-lethal safety pistol. One of the surprises is all the LearnKey employee’s received safety training and HERO 2020 non-lethal pistols. It was our way as owners sharing that we care for them and here is a way we can help them protect themselves. He and his team took the time to teach everyone how to shoot it and protect themselves. It was an awesome afternoon.

To top things off our Kelly Woods brought up his box/race car and cruised it up and down the canyon. Then our very own Sheena Chamberlain took it for a ride which was the icing on the cake to complete a great afternoon of fun.

I am reminded how truly fortunate we are to have great people, all sharing the same goal to help our customers “Improve their Employability Skills Every Day”.

LearnKey Production: Mid-year course release schedule includes Key Information Technology & Business courses

We are so proud of our LearnKey Production team. At LearnKey these days of summer are always super busy getting ready for updating our key certification pathways and rolling out new ones. With schools back to school in less than sixty (60) days we need to make sure our diverse course library is ready come August.

Big shout out to: JJ, Natasha, Dallas, Mer, Seth, Neil, Brad, Bill, Krista, Sheena, Shar, Annalise, Max, Kaitlin, Shelly, Daniel, Jason, Val, Bart and I probably missed a few (not) they are just pedal to the metal.

Three observations:

New IT Pathway: This one we are excited about which is Certiport’s new IT Specialist Certification program. This pathway has relevant certifications which is why we did this as a LearnKey signature series with them mapping to the ten (10) (i.e. databases, network security, JavaScript, HTML & CSS, etc.) key and in-demand certifications. Stay tuned as those will start to be released next month.

Entrepreneurship: Our Entrepreneurship Small Business Certification (ESB v2) update this summer as well. This ESB program has come along way and does a great job addressing the skills required to become self employed and or truly start your own business.

Growing Popularity: Requests for improving communication skills is a topic on the rise. One thing has become very clear teachers, counselors and students want relevant content that covers these basic key skills. Especially for those getting ready to or already in the job market. We have seen a significant interest in this topic and the course we did with Jennifer Stubblefield titled “Communication Skills for Business” is one of our most popular courses right now!

Till next month – Stay cool!

Newest Key Contributor Award winners a true story in teamwork

This year has been filled with new acquisitions like Know Your Talents and most recently the addition of Brighton College. With these exciting additions to the LearnKey family it takes a tremendous amount of work to ensure a smooth transition for our employees, their benefits, and ensuring a smooth onboarding to LearnKey. Then you have the accounting, reporting, IT systems, work, and process flows that need to be integrated; oh, plus you have to continue to run the business. Additionally, since the pandemic LearnKey has been in a growth mode, so there has been new hire on-boarding which is so different in today’s world.

This is where Chad Stocks and Wendi Magnum, two 20-year-plus employees of LearnKey have stepped up big time and earned the Key Contributor Award Winners for the first quarter of 2021!

While things are hectic, exciting, and growing, you need those cool, calm, and collective a.k.a. high pace, high conformance (that’s KYT talk) team members who consistently keep things moving smoothly in the background. And they did that 10 times over for us.

“Chad and Wendi not only welcomed in our newest team members they also rolled out a new benefits plan at the end of last year without a glitch.” said one of the nominating managers. “Wendi came to work every day during the pandemic these past 13 months and never once complained about it.” said another team member.

These two also demonstrate LearnKey’s core values through doing. They are both extremely easy to work with, employees trust them, confide in them, and look to them for guidance all the time. The value they have brought to LearnKey over the last 20+ years is something we will always be grateful for as it is their way of demonstrating our “why” – Improving Employability Every Day!

Once again congratulations on a job well done.

LearnKey acquires online school Brighton College & The Paralegal Institute

Brighton & The Paralegal Institutes short term career pathways aligns with LearnKey’ strategy to expand into healthcare and legal.

Last week was another exciting milestone with LearnKey acquiring 100% of Brighton College & The Paralegal Institute. We have owned 50% of Brighton since 2014 and taking full ownership is something we are very excited about.

It has been over a year in the making, however, the pandemic through some challenges our way, but we made happen this year and that is good news. We continue to focus on our goal of increasing career pathway offerings in in high job demand fields like: Allied Health , Legal Medical and Paralegal studies.

More exiting news is our course production team is having an amazing month with wrapping up our newest Security+ course, and preparing our IT Specialist track along with much more in our quest to always be “improving employability every day” for our students, teachers, counselors and partners.

Azure AI Fundamentals Course (AI-900) a first of many to come

We are excited to announce the release of our new Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) course, our first in our Azure Series of courses.

Here is a quick clip and notice the HD video quality makes for a great preview and also learn more about Object Detection.

LearnKey’s Azure AI Fundamentals (AI-900) course is an introduction to building artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning models. The course also covers basic AI concepts, giving those who take this course an increase in skills needed to land an introductory AI-based job.

Specific exam topics include AI workloads and considerations, fundamental principles of machine learning, computer vision workloads, Natural Language Processing (NLP) workloads, and conversational AI workloads.

This course offers a web version for all labs and assessments to accommodate students accessing the courseware remotely on Chromebooks.

Also included are LearnKey’s: Student workbook (PDF) with additional projects, activities, glossary key terms and definitions to help reinforce learning. Teacher workbook (PDF) with answer keys, lesson plans and short cut keys ensure instructors have everything they need for in the classroom . With a course Total Time of 25 Hours and the supplemental materials its a great way to begin your AI certification credentials.

As for job demand the outlook is really good. Globally AI/Machine learning jobs are projected to be worth almost $31 billion by 2024. That’s an annual growth rate of more than 40% over a six-year period.

Those statistics underscore the need for machine learning talent, and if you’re willing to put in the work, you could be on your way to a great new career.

Information Technology Specialist Certification by Certiport- Will be a winner

It is so important for students and adult learners to be able to validate their Digital Literacy/fluency and IT skills these days. Today we hear allot about the skills gap or “middle skills” gap. It is real and we see it everyday in our business.

That is why our workforce learning solutions align to addressing the training, practice and certifications necessary to be successful. These are the skills (IT and Customer Service) needed in todays workforce.

According to the National Skills Coalition, while middle-skill jobs make up the majority of the U.S. labor market, just 43% of workers are currently trained to the middle-skill level.

Recently our partners at Certiport launched the Information Technology Specialist Certification and it is going to be a winner. So much in that we are releasing as set of courses that map to these certifications.

The fact that students and learners can certify their skills in the areas of: software development, database administration, networking and security, mobility and device management, and coding is a great start to preparing your career pathway.

National Radio Host touts Know Your Talents

What a great conversation Scottsdale Arizona resident and national radio host Dave Pratt had with Lori Coruccini and Julie Plummer last Friday, during his weekly podcast, discussing the benefits of learning about your natural talents (behavior).

For me it was a trip down memory lane. Dave Pratt has been a longtime radio personality, known to his fans as the “Morning Mayor”. His show Dave Pratt in the Morning became the longest running rock and roll morning show in the United States. Pratt has sold more than 100,000 albums with his band, headlining sold-out shows in major venues throughout Arizona.

The podcast covered many topics but it was all around learning about what the KYT team does for customers. Take a listen here.

If you want to go to a specific topic during the podcast below is the time in and topic:

1.30 sec: Secret Sauce- Its all around ProScan

3.25 sec: KYT History – Staffing background?

6.11 sec: Business renewal rate of 85%

6.30 sec: How utilizing ProScan builds trust

9.00 sec: Company Strategy – Yes Behavior plays a role

10.30 sec: Job modeling with top performers

11.25 sec: Motivation Review how to use it

14.00 sec: 4 types of behaviors

18:00 : Do owners and executives take these seriously?

19:00: Positives of learning about your talents

21:45 sec: You made your husband take this BEFORE you said yes? 23:00: Lori talks about Dave’s behavior- what a good guy😊

Yes, the truth is she did make me take the ProScan survey. Its been an exciting couple of weeks with the announcement of the acquisition of Know Your Talents and now this great podcast. Thanks Dave for supporting our cause.

LearnKey makes strategic acquisition

It gives me great pleasure to announce that LearnKey has acquired Know Your Talents (KYT), a long time sister company. This move enables us to grow our corporate business, through providing a comprehensive and customized Enterprise Development Solution for customers that further integrates leveraging ones behavior to benefit their learning & career experience.

The past year one of our goals was to connect our career pathways at LearnKey with matching behaviors of individuals who are successful in those careers. Therefore, when our students take a ProScan survey they will receive recommended career pathways that align to their natural talents. This is great for career exploration and upskilling.

The KYT team is passionate about helping companies develop a great culture that is unique and attractive to successful like-minded people in their organizations. Our teams (both KYT & LK) collectively have been working together for years helping our students complete their online learning programs and obtain employment. We are excited to take this to the next level with companies that want the best for their employees’ development.

Newest winner delivers LearnKey an awesome makeover!

By the end of last year we successfully rolled out a new LearnKey.com website and we have our newest Key Contributor Award Winner Brad Washburn to thank for that. We call Brad our “utility player”, due to the roles he can perform at LearnKey. This project was something Brad worked on for months at the end of last year and required a lot of collaboration with not only internal LearnKey team members, but also external web developers. The new site features storefront functionality, new messaging, and layout that is much more clear and understandable than the previous website.

Brad truly demonstrated our core values Ease, Value, and Trust. He was easy to work with throughout the project, his contributions were of significant value, and all team members on the project could trust that the work would be done, and done right.

Here is what Beau Shakespear, who nominated Brad had to say “Brad went through every single page of the old website (hundreds of pages) and updated, redirected, or deleted pages. He was patient when Kim and I would ask him to make edits live then change our minds and have him change it back. Brad is always great to work with and always did what he said he was going to do.” He also met every single deadline to ensure this was done by year end. It has been over ten (10) years that we had such an improvement to our website.

We were excited to share Brad’s receipt of this award during our monthly all hands video conference call last week. We feel so fortunate to have team members like Brad and also other 2020 Key Contributor award winners like Jade Brown, Jeff Martin, Annalise Sluder, and Susan Somerville. They all made major contributions to our 2020 success.