OWL – a powerful user experience for both staff and learners

An expert team of web developers and training industry experts have joined forces in order to launch a new innovative ePortfolio platform, OWL, which embraces the very latest digital technology and standards in order to provide a powerful user experience for both staff and learners.

Offering an ePortfolio solution that is flexible, intuitive, and user friendly, OWL has been carefully designed to meet the specific requirements of a range of modern day training companies.

Allowing companies of all shapes and sizes to deliver full Apprenticeship frameworks and NVQs, this innovative platform has been meticulously developed to allow businesses to upload learner assessments, track progress, and cross reference evidence in real time, on any device.

From childcare, warehousing, sales, and IT, through to health and social, construction, engineering, and plant and machinery, OWL supports a diverse range of sectors, allowing all businesses to evolve and enhance their learning processes in a way that is in tune with modern day learning and assessment demands.

James Martin said: “Whether you’re a learner who wants to upload supporting evidence to your portfolio or you’re an assessor who wants to cross-reference an entire units’ work, OWL makes every task quick, easy, and efficient. Helping to increase assessor productivity on a huge scale, OWL has been designed to offer a bucket load of powerful features that enhance the learning experience for both staff and learners.

“Initially, OWL was designed as a bespoke internal platform for Safety Advisory Consultants in the North East, England. But we soon became inundated with requests to open up the platform nationally. So here we are! We’re delighted to be able to offer OWL on a national scale.”

Designed to increase productivity in a wide range of business environments, OWL provides a flexible, user-friendly cloud based ePortfolio tool that is ideal for teaching and learning in the digital world.

After your first login on OWL is the Centre Dashboard. This data driven dashboard provides key information on learner’s progress throughout their qualifications, making it easy for assessors to identify approaching and past end date learners.

Developed to optimise quality assurance and communication, OWL also allows organisations to communicate with learners using its built in SMS feature to send emails or SMS to learners when required.

Armed with extensive industry knowledge, skills, and expertise, the founders of OWL managed every step of the production process and were keen to create a platform that was simple, easy to use, and universally accessible.

It is these key components that have allowed the team to create a smart e-Portfolio platform that puts user-friendliness and accessibility first. As a direct result, one of the platform’s main USPs is that anyone can operate OWL.

James Martin added: “Between us, we have a vast amount of experience creating digital and training solutions that meet the demands of a wide range of businesses. From the offset, we wanted to keep the structure of OWL simple yet effective. We recognise that businesses may be apprehensive when it comes to stepping away from traditional platforms in favour of modern digital online solutions.

“With this in mind, we have created and engineered a platform that is extremely easy for both staff and learners to use. Focusing on creating a user experience that maximises productivity, functionality and performance, OWL can be integrated into a wide range of sectors.”

Key features of OWL include spontaneous navigation and real time reporting which allows staff to create and download default real-time reports to view in Excel or customise a new report. This is also a paperless online learning solution, which means businesses can record and manage all data from one easy to use interface.

Built and developed with the needs of assessors and learners in mind, OWL also provides a great platform to gather evidence in a range of different formats including images, audio and video, as well as creating and downloading customised real-time reports in a number of formats.

Tools for learners have also been meticulously developed in order to optimise an all-encompassing learner experience. For example, the platform offers the opportunity to build your own downloadable database of resources that learners can download quickly and easily, from anywhere.

Learners will also be able to access a learner dashboard that is not only fully customisable, but has also been built to meet the individual requirements of learners with visual conditions.

James Martin: “We managed every stage of the development process when it came to creating OWL, and constantly considered the needs of our clients and learners. Perfectly in tune with the latest digital technology, we have also created a solution that businesses can use if they ever find themselves in a position where they need to work offline.

“This is why we decided to create an online App, available for both iOS and Android. The App is due to be launched in the coming months and will allow you to upload content to learner profiles anytime, anywhere. So, watch this space.”

As technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, more businesses than ever before are taking advantage of online platforms in order to streamline and enhance their day-to-day business operations.

And one of the main advantages of utilising digital training solutions is that they can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.