Fulcrum Labs Wins Gold in 2019 CLO Magazine Awards

Being a great partner is something we value and put a great deal of effort into. And it’s something we are repeatedly complimented on by our clients. Being a great partner is a true core competency for us; it’s one of the areas that everyone at the company contributes too directly– from course development, training and support to data science, product development and QA — to name a few.

In 2017, we were awarded an Excellence in Partnership Bronze by Chief Learning Officer’s Learning In Practice Awards. It was meaningful to us.

This week, at the 2019 Learning In Practice awards ceremony, we were recognized a second time. And this time, it’s a Gold. Fulcrum Labs… winner of the 2019 Excellence in Partnership Gold for our collaboration and success with Aviation Institute of Maintenance (AIM). Very cool.

This partnership award underscores our dedication to building strong client relationships. It validates our commitment and success executing our mission to turn students (and employees) into learners and turn learners into confident subject matter masters.

Here’s a quick look at our award-winning approach to partnership:

One-to-One Learning at Scale

We provide our partners with our personalized, Adaptive 3.0 Learning platform that adjusts to the skill level and experience of each learner. It allows them to efficiently master the material with the help of technology that emulates a dedicated, scalable, one-on-one tutor. This experience:

• Delivers content at the Optimal Challenge for each learner
• Drives all learners to subject-matter mastery (competency-based)
• Allows more advanced learners to quickly prove mastery and “test-out”

It also builds goodwill and trust with the learner by demonstrating hyper-awareness of their time constraints and specific learning needs.

According to AIM:

“Fulcrum has cornered the market of adaptive learning through their intense commitment to detail-level quality, impressive artistic approach to course design, and superior mastery of the adaptive theory and competency-based learning.” – Dr.Joel English, VP, Aviation Institute of Maintenance

Outcomes-Driven

We are, first and foremost, outcomes driven. We collaborate with partners to develop and evolve their learning strategy based on their specific goals and external measurements of success (with the intention of exceeding them). Inside the platform, our proprietary behavior and knowledge mapping (BKM™) capabilities are informing the rich data that administrators see in their analytics dashboards (think of these as a built-in data science team that provides insights about learner performance, knowledge gaps, learner behavior, etc.). Armed with this data, our team and our clients, like AIM, can collaborate to adjust course delivery and strategy to ensure we’re meeting client objectives.

For example, in AIM’s case, the overarching goals were to improve exam pass rates and encourage more learners to sit for the FAA certification exams. So, we developed a capstone learning program that would ensure that learners mastered the fundamentals covered on the exam and that also developed their confidence in the material, so they’d be more likely to sit for the exam. 

After we analyzed initial learning results, we realized that learners would benefit more from the knowledge scaffolding and confidence building techniques used in Fulcrum’s platform if they were able to use it in the initial learning process, rather than just as a test-prep tool at the end of the learning program. This approach allowed AIM learners to experience the mastery, confidence and application benefits of Fulcrum’s platform within their coursework, rather than just at the end. And in a year-over-year comparison, there was 188% increase in adoption and engagement from learners using Fulcrum within their initial coursework. And in the end, we helped AIM boost pass rates to more than 90%+ and boost their confidence (as seen in 25% more graduates taking the FAA exam).

“Over the course of the two-year training program, students often struggle to retain everything they learned at the beginning of the program in order to pass the exam. Our collaboration with Fulcrum has resulted in a higher rate of exam participation (demonstrating a higher level of learner confidence) and an increase in exam pass rate from 79 percent to 90 percent.” – Dr.Joel English, VP, Aviation Institute of Maintenance

Content Fine Tuning

Fulcrum’s platform offers its partners something other platforms don’t: robust content performance analytics. Data-driven insights in the administrator/instructor dashboards help organizations quickly identify and fix content issues that might affect the integrity and efficacy of their learning program. For example, in AIM’s case, Fulcrum’s AI flagged 40 Problematic assessments for “review.” These assessments had a high percentage of incorrect answer submissions, and were evaluated considering variables like: incorrect submissions on first attempts, incorrect submissions on subsequent attempts and performance on other assessments based on the same learning objective.

Rather than simply fix the poorly performing content by replacing it, Fulcrum and AIM agreed that this was an opportunity to better support learners and the learning experience, namely for learners having more of a challenge mastering these concepts. AIM’s lead instructor/SME worked with Fulcrum’s Professional Services team to “deepen the adaptive stack.” This meant taking the 40 underperforming AIM assessments, adjusting them for accuracy and clarity, and then creating 5 new “cloned” assessments for each (2 at the same Bloom’s level as the poorly performing content and 3 additional assessments at varying levels of Bloom’s). The goal was to:

• Provide a more effective and efficient assessment 
• Provide learners who were struggling in these specific areas a more robust scaffolding to help them master the skill and gain confidence
• Improve the course experience by removing problematic content
• Increase the credibility and value of the course, and, theoretically, also increase engagement

Feature Development Based on Real Learner Feedback

We don’t believe that UX development should operate in a vacuum. In fact, Fulcrum depends on learner reactions and feedback to inform some of our product roadmap. For example, based on feedback from AIM learners that they wanted a better understanding of where they had knowledge weaknesses, our team developed a new Learner Dashboard, complete with a self-remediation tool, “Pathway to Mastery”, that leverages the system’s AI to pinpoint, and rank areas where the learner has weaknesses and empower them to shore up their mastery and confidence. Empowering learners with self-remediation tools also cut down on the need for instructor intervention, which allowed AIM instructors more time to focus in other key area, such as hand-on training.

Supporting Learner Flexibility

Fulcrum also supports the flexibility needs of learners. Because our platform is accessible via desktop, mobile and tablet, learners have the flexibility to access learning when it is convenient to their schedules. AIM was pleasantly surprised to find that over 25% of their learners were engaging with their learning in Fulcrum’s platform via mobile device.

Having a strong partnership is a critical part of achieving goals (and stretch goals) with a learning technology partner. (It’s one of the five items we’ve highlighted in our post about choosing a learning technology provider.) We put a great deal of emphasis being a great partner and have seen some incredible outcomes as a result. If having a great partner is something meaningful to you and a part of your rubric, feel free to reach out means we already have something in common.