How Schudio Is Making Education Accessible For Teachers And Parents With Thinkific Plus
Introducing Schudio
Helping schools and educators safeguard accessibility in the education sector
Schudio, a school website design company, provides UK-based educational institutions and educators with the tools they need to engage their communities and tell the stories of all the amazing things that go on every day in their schools.
Schudio’s team has helped over 500 schools and colleges keep a brilliant, active picture of life in their schools up-to-date online by providing them with carefully designed websites that allow them to manage their everyday responsibilities, communicate with parents, empower their staff and students, and exceed OFSTED requirements. Empowering educators and connecting schools with their communities is at the heart of what they do, and that’s not all.
In 2019, Schudio launched its unique online learning platform, SchudioTV. Schudio TV was originally built for customer education and product training purposes. It hosts various online courses with specialized content to help Schudio’s clients successfully manage their school websites and connect with their communities online.
However, after launching SchudioTV, they realized there was an opportunity to offer additional accessible, on-demand, best-in-class training for parents and educators who support students with Autism and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
So, they launched their online learning platform, "The Ability Bridge," which is now an integral and meaningful part of their business. With the mission to help parents and educators working with children and young people with diverse needs, The Ability Bridge provides access to affordable, high-quality online resources and support and is changing the educational landscape for children with diverse needs.
“Everything started from the origin of wanting to help our clients manage their websites and fix their problems, but with this thread of wanting to make sure everything's really good from an accessibility point of view and that we are safeguarding special educational needs.”
Safeguarding accessibility in the education sector
When Ian Richardson, the Founder and CEO of Schudio and SchudioTV started the company, he was focused on making it as easy as possible for schools and colleges to have beautiful, up-to-date websites.
But Ian’s story doesn’t stop there.
Ian encountered a significant problem and recognized a gap in Special Needs education when his youngest son, Arran, started school. As a child with Down Syndrome who requires specialized support, his school was unable to access the training they needed to facilitate his education properly – simply because the school district couldn’t afford it.
“Before our youngest son Arran started school, my wife and I went to the UK Down Syndrome association to train on how primary and elementary school settings can do a really good job to support him, which was amazing. Then we told his school: go to this training because it would be really helpful for you and us."
- Ian Richardson, CEO and Founder
The response Ian received was disheartening. As the training was in person at a facility hundreds of miles away, sending one or two people to the training would require spending almost half of the school’s entire training budget—something impossible to justify.
Quickly, Ian’s entrepreneurial mind shifted into gear. The team at Schudio realized there was an opportunity to create an online learning platform that could save schools and teachers the time, money, and resources normally required for in-person training and development.
“Moving our training online, from the point of view of our website clients and our team, has completely transformed the business. We have been able to solve massive problems for the schools, and for ourselves.”
Choosing a top-notch course delivery platform
Thinkific Plus as the solution.
Due to the busy nature of their schedules, providing a flexible, on-demand learning experience for their school clients was crucial for the Schudio team. They set out to find an LMS that was customizable and easy to use to build their product training courses and found Thinkific Plus.
One of the key benefits Schudio considered when selecting Thinkific Plus was a Single Sign On and an open API. These features were necessary to integrate their clients' training on their own platforms so that they could access it all in one place.
“We decided we didn't want to be constrained by limitations. If we've got 500 schools I want to make the training available for our schools as easy as possible. I chose Thinkific Plus because of the API access. It gave us the ability to go as far as we wanted to.”
Shortly after they began using the platform, the Schudio team created multiple learning environments (or Thinkific sites) to cater to their different audiences and stakeholders. They built online courses in SchudioTV for customer education and product training purposes. They built unique white-labeled experiences for each of their larger clients to deliver training to their staff and provide information to parents and alumni through online courses. They also created a learning environment to provide accessibility resources, training and courses for parents and educators that work with Autistic and SEND children through The Ability Bridge.
“Moving our training online has completely transformed the business from the point of view of our website clients and our team. We have been able to solve massive problems for the schools and ourselves.
We use separate Thinkific environments for different uses like alumni provision, district-wide staff training, virtual work experience training, local authorities training, and more. We use the platform not only to develop our business in terms of what we're able to offer, but now we have also partnered with Thinkific to offer to build Thinkific Plus environments for clients to integrate on their own websites.” - Ian Richardon, CEO and Founder, Schudio
Reaching more students and increasing revenue with online courses
Long-Term Business Growth
By fully utilizing Thinkific Plus's offerings, Schudio has made a significant impact across multiple business areas.
SchudioTV has also become an additional revenue stream for the business, and since its launch in 2019, it has grown to include courses from a wide range of partners and topics that have been completed by over 40,000 school staff.
Today, the Schudio team is on a mission to make The Ability Bridge the go-to resource for affordable and accessible training for parents and educators looking to support Autistic and SEND learners in schools.
“I would love for The Ability Bridge to go as far and wide as possible. We want to become the most trusted platform for parents and anybody working with a child with diverse needs and the go-to resource for them to get the support and training they need. We want to do something that makes a big difference to children who are left behind."
For businesses looking to grow and scale their revenue by entering the online learning space
For businesses looking to grow and scale their revenue by entering the online learning space, selecting a topic for a first course can be overwhelming. It’s easy to get caught up in perfectionism and spend too much time worrying about the details.
Ian advises that the best starting point is to get to know your customers and the issues they are currently facing and then build your content from there.
When the first COVID-19 lockdown happened in the UK, Ian and the Schudio team were inundated with questions from clients, schools, and parents looking for answers and ways to navigate the new reality the pandemic had brought on.
”There were 8 or 10 questions that were being asked a lot. I jumped in the studio and recorded quick five-minute videos, answering each question, putting it together as a course and putting it out the same day. It stopped all the inquiries immediately and fixed all the problems for those people who did not know which questions to ask and did not know the answers to the questions they needed. I also answered the questions they hadn’t thought of yet.”
– Ian Richardson, Founder and CEO, Schudio
Ian explains that by listening to customers and taking the time to understand their situation and the current obstacles, a course creator or business owners can put themselves in a position to answer the questions that are coming to their minds and provide them with value through education in online courses.
Ian explains that by listening to customers and taking the time to understand their situation and the current obstacles, a course creator or business owners can put themselves in a position to answer the questions that are coming to their minds and provide them with value through education in online courses.
“Get to know your customers and what issues they’re facing. Ask yourself how you can answer their questions and help them overcome the obstacles they encounter, and build something from there. That’s your starting point.”
– Ian Richardson, Founder and CEO, Schudio
Schudio's Favorite Thinkific Plus Features
Plus Portal
Thinkific Plus can deliver education through separate Thinkific websites or environments to reach specific audiences. Schudio uses multiple environments accessed centrally through the Plus Portal to offer different academies to its unique audiences and stakeholders. It has leveraged this feature to scale its revenue through B2B selling by creating white-labelled product training websites for its clients to deliver training across their organizations.
Groups and User Management
Within Thinkific Plus, Schudio can easily manage and organize their students into groups. This helps them track specific courses and cohorts, and stay organized when running student imports and bulk enrolments. With unlimited admin and group analyst roles, Schudio takes advantage of managing their users with ease.
Certificates
Schudio has incorporated certificates for many of their course offerings to provide educators with the ability to provide proof of course completion for compliance and professional development purposes. Thinkific Certificates are automatically issued on successful course completion and allow Schudio to automatically pre-fill details like student name, completion and expiry dates, and custom fields. They can also search student certificate history, edit and reissue certificates without ever leaving Thinkific.
Enterprise API Access and Single Sign On
Using the enterprise API access provided by Thinkific Plus, Schudio enhanced their customers' experience by allowing them to access multiple courses and resources with a single sign-in. The Thinkific API allows developers to extend Thinkific's functionality in various ways by accessing site data.
Discover how your business can leverage education to enhance customer success today.
When your customers win, so does your business.
Platforms like Thinkific Plus are making it easier than ever for growing businesses to build and launch their first customer education academy. With specialized tools for content creation, engagement, and analytics for continuous improvement, enabling your customers and fostering business expansion is more achievable than ever.
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