SchiLf Akademie
Continuing education in the digital age

When it comes to continuing education and training, the image of rigid frontal instruction and long-winded lectures in dusty classrooms still persists in many people’s minds, even after the advent of digitization. However, frontal and face-to-face teaching in its exclusive form has been a thing of the past for some time now, especially in adult education. More and more popular, however, are mixed forms or even the complete abandonment of traditional forms of teaching. For an innovative, instructive and interactive learning experience, webinars are particularly well suited as an e-learning format and alternative to face-to-face instruction, according to the SchiLf Academy.

The SchiLf Akademie is a division of AAP Lehrerwelt GmbH, to which the leading publishers for teaching materials Auer, Persen and AOL-Verlag belong. AAP is part of the Klett Group and has been offering in-school teacher training courses under the SchiLf Akademie brand for many years. The Academy’s seminars offer direct solutions and individual advice for everyday school life. Professionally founded, it is ideally linked to the specific requirements of schools and takes into account the dynamics of the entire staff.

The training courses offered by the SchiLf Academy have so far mostly been limited to one training day. Accordingly, it proved difficult to deepen and sustainably anchor the training content learned. In order to be able to accompany schools and teachers in the longer term, the idea was to include webinars in the range of seminars. The aim was to make the training courses more sustainable and thus more effective. At the same time, the advantages of webinars – the ability to convey content flexibly, in a time-saving manner, and independent of location – were to be deliberately used to offer schools the respective courses at a significantly lower price than classroom seminars.

While getting to know the webinar format, it turned out that it is not only complementary, but also an interesting format on its own, for which SchiLf Akademie can generate sufficient demand among its customers. Accordingly, the company currently uses webinars primarily for short training units.

With HTML5 for the best webinar experience

Before SchiLf Akademie discovered edudip next as a webinar provider, it was already using webinar software from other manufacturers, but these were based on Adobe Flash Player. In view of its approaching deactivation, but above all due to the frequently unstable connections as well as weaknesses in terms of image and sound quality, the company was looking for webinar software based on HTML5. Also, the fact that Flash Player is increasingly being blocked from schools, school board offices, and government agencies, which often prevented customers from using the webinar offer, made a change in webinar software imperative.

Webinars – the alternative to face-to-face meetings

The webinar offer of the SchiLf Academy is subject to a fee and, depending on the topic, enjoys great popularity. Registration takes place via the SchiLf Academy website . The predominantly “open” webinars are offered on a specific topic with an expert and are advertised both online and offline. By sending out flyers and program posters by mail, SchiLf Akademie informs its customers about the courses on offer and also promotes the events via its newsletter and the various social media channels.

The structure of the webinars is kept relatively simple due to the often very large number of participants: After a short welcome by the SchiLf Academy, an expert gives a presentation on the respective topic for about 60 minutes before a 30-minute moderated Q&A session concludes the webinar. The various tools of the webinar room are used, but primarily the slide presentation, the possibility to play YouTube videos and the chat.

In addition to a dedicated telephone support line for participants, the SchiLf Academy provides its experts with webcams, headsets and mobile lighting sets if required. The company also has a separate room in which the webinars can be held. To ensure a consistent presentation of the teaching content, the experts receive a PowerPoint template, which is then proofread and formatted internally.

Well on track

The SchiLf Academy regards the inclusion of webinars in its advanced training offer as a supplement to its portfolio of advanced training formats in order to increase the sustainability of the advanced training content. In addition, the company would like to use webinars in order to be able to offer a more cost-effective further education offer compared to face-to-face events and to address individual teachers instead of entire school groups. Basically, the SchiLf Academy sees webinars as an independent, lucrative business model, which is to be expanded vigorously in the future, both with more topics and by initiating cooperation.