Create Income Stream Using Professional Development
School Districts today are facing shrinking budgets amidst a sea of new or changing initiatives. With each new or changed initiative, professional development is needed so that teachers and administrators can stay current within their practice. Wouldn’t it be nice if the typical professional development that regularly occurs within school districts could be monetized to generate a new unrestricted substantial income stream? With a few changes, your current Learning Management System can easily do this by offering professional development courses to a paying public audience. It is not difficult to Create Income Stream Using Professional Development – turn your existing LMS infrastructure into a revenue stream!
It is not difficult to turn your existing
LMS infrastructure into a revenue stream!
TYPICAL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MODEL
A typical model for professional development includes offering a mix of face-to-face and online courses to internal staff. This model may also include incentives such as badges and certificates, or perhaps conference style PD formats offered at specified locations with keynote speakers. School districts recognize that many initiatives they are facing and conquering via staff development can benefit other school districts that are facing the same problems. When your teacher leaders are excellent, the classes, seminars, and conferences that they lead/teach can be marketed and sold for income. With all the time, money and effort going into an internal PD program, why not capitalize on your investment?
TOOLS TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The stumbling block is how do you make both your online content and in-seat courses available to the public? Typically an LMS is only useful for cloud-based learning. The solution is to add online registration software such as GoSignMeUp to Canvas LMS.
The GoSignMeUp registration system allows staff to manage both “in-seat” or online courses and allows patrons to sign-up and pay for either. This changes how a school traditionally uses an LMS, which often is primarily to serve content to students in classrooms. Learning Management Systems are designed with K-12 education in mind, and not focused on professional development. With the addition of GoSignMeUp, however, you can then introduce a unique public portal to a new audience who can search, sign-up and pay for professional development courses hosted within the a Learning Management System. The original classroom functionality still exists, but the additional functionality of a public-facing course catalog facilitates the professional development opportunities, as well as the complementary income stream.
The GoSignMeUp registration system allows staff to manage both
“in-seat” or online courses and allows patrons to sign-up and pay for either
FACILITATING CLASSROOM CENTRIC PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Your learning management system is often ‘classroom’ centric; students interact with a classroom portal for assignments and grades. Professional development programs are ‘course’ centric, meaning a potential student does not report to a portal, but rather signs up for a particular course, or list of courses, to achieve a goal such as a badge or certificate. Many Learning Management
Systems such as Blackboard Learn, Canvas and Haiku Learning use a classroom-centric model, so school administrators may not realize that the same system can dole out professional development content. With GoSignMeUp integration to a learning system, you will then be able to facilitate for course-centric certification. The bottom line is GoSignMeUp connects to individual courses within Learning Management Systems to facilitate professional development to an external audience.
Potential students can then search for, sign-up and pay for certification courses which can be face-to-face, online, or a combination of both. Pricing options, such as coupon codes, mean you can offer your internal audience low or no charge, while your external audience pays full price.
EXTENSIVE REPORTING, ANALYTICS AND AUTOMATION
GoSignMeUp provides tools to track student’s progress helping to develop and improve learning plans and pathways. Additionally, there are customizable and flexible analytic tools that work well for federal, state and local reporting.
Additionally, tasks such as class confirmations, rosters, and issuing course completion certificates are completely automated. This will save lots of administrative time and money. You do not lose any of the original functions of your LMS, only gain a host of options with the addition of the registration software.
GoSignMeUp provides tools to track student’s progress
helping to develop and improve learning plans and pathways
TURN YOUR PD PROGRAM INTO AN INCOME STREAM
If you are currently using a Learning Management System* such as Haiku, Canvas or Blackboard to facilitate internal professional development programs, you can maximize the return on your investment with the addition of GoSignMeUp registration software to open up those programs to an external audience. Monetizing your current PD programs is just another way to increase revenue without spending more money. Use this funding from this new income stream for special projects or to offset the school district’s general fund. Today’s schools districts need to become more business-minded and rethink traditional professional development to create models that can be monetized to create a substantial income stream.
Contact GoSignMeUp for more on how to
Create Income Stream Using Professional Development
*Must be in compliance with your LMS license