How do you grow a business which is all about performance, building engagement and being accessible? These 3 factors provided a real challenge to international opera singer Sean Ruane’s company Chant Productions (www.chantproductions.co.uk). Their mission is to not only provide inspirational opportunities for school children to sing, but to get them doing it in front of thousands of people at sporting stadiums too! (Look out for them on Children in Need and at the Rugby League Four Nations tournament amongst others.)
Sean’s use of Nimble has been creative. With so much of their content on video, he’s used the platform to provide “chunks” of video material which does things such as teaches children songs, appreciation of music and even breathing exercises.
Building engagement
Building engagement in the education sector isn’t easy because you have lots of stakeholders to satisfy: teachers, students, parents and even OFSTED. The Nimble LMS is a critical factor – it provides quality data of the children’s engagement. Eventually, Sean plans to make greater use of the interactions in his resources so they encourage the children to investigate them on their own. For now, though, he’s using the platform to deliver videos in a blended learning capacity.
Advice tip for building engagement: video clips are great ways to build engagement because they provide a multi-media experience for the learner, whilst the video content can lead to assessments, and the subsequent data used to monitor the quality of learning.
Being accessible
It’s Sean’s ambition that Nimble will help to deliver Chant’s resources not only into classrooms but into children’s homes so they can learn and practice anywhere. Sean was excited by our announcement at the Nimble Community Day of our mobile player’s potential to provide learning experiences like his, on any device. Children will just need internet access so they’ll be able to sing along with their parents and show them what they’ve learned in school.
Advice tip for being accessible: awareness of audience is crucial. High-quality production values reflect the professionalism of the company. Using peer group feedback generates stakeholder satisfaction.
Blended learning and performance
Sean emphasises the importance of creative problem solving and finding ways to use Nimble’s flexibility as a platform. His sections address different categories of the learning process while pages contain video clips (and later on animation) with interactions that encourage appreciation of the performance. He currently uses the courses in blended learning situations, so they’re part of a workshop, but the material remains available for teachers to reuse and rehearse their pupils.
Advice tip for blended learning: the use of audio, visual and kinesthetic learning methods to avoid over-dependence on text is important, linked to clearly identified learning outcomes.
Sean wants to point out he’s still on his journey. He’s allowed two years to develop his material borne out of five years of practical workshop experience and twenty-five years of a professional singing career. So why is Nimble so important? “Because the Nimble platform has opened up an endless world of creative delivery.”