I. How do I create Summer Revenue Streams with my LMS?
Schools out for summer - Alice Cooper
Summer holidays are a particularly lucrative time for learning and enrichment centers. Parents are more likely to spend money during the summer to compensate for their child’s time away from compulsory education. And it’s highly recommended your educational institution take advantage of this small, 6-8 week window of opportunity.
The Summer Slide
Students’ achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month’s worth of school-year learning. https://www.brookings.edu/research
Summer learning loss, also known as the summer slide, has been a talking point among K-12 educators for decades. It’s a phenomenon where students tend to lose some of the knowledge and skills acquired during the school year due to the extended summer break.
Learning loss is backed by science, and should give your learning center all the incentive and justification it needs to create additional learning opportunities for your students. It’s an easy sell to parents who are eager to prevent their children from falling behind. Not only is your institution helping to mitigate learning loss, but you're increasing profits, too.
Read on to learn how to create, launch and sell summer learning products quickly with your Content Management System (CMS) and your Learning Management System (LMS).
Intensive courses and summer camps are courses many parents expect in the calendar year. A summer course can vary in length and price, but they should have defined learning objectives that differ from the student's regular study program. Come up with an exciting theme that weaves its way through each lesson, and creates memorable experiences by designing original activities, rewards, and certificates.
You can advertise the summer course by using advertising banners on your LMS system. Create a colorful banner with details of the course and a clickable call to action button. Parents should be directed to a booking page or a payment gateway via the banner.
I recommend you advertise and promote in early spring. Create exclusivity by allowing parents of currently enrolled students to pay for the course in advance before other learners.
Some students, especially teenagers, may object to spending summer weeks stuck at a desk. Harder to please students may prefer flexible self-study modules. These carefully designed interactive packages are usually an extension of their current curriculum, focusing on one skill overall. They offer learners the flexibility to set their own learning schedule, and are easily accessible on tablet or mobile devices.
We recommend content authoring tools such as H5P. This software contains almost 50 interactive content types and can be integrated into your content management system, allowing your enterprise to create well-designed self-study material.
These packages can be advertised through your LMS's push notifications. Your LMS should already hold information about students based on grade, level, and subject. Leverage this information and craft your push notifications to target specific students (or parents) about self-study modules that appeal to their interests and learning styles. Ensure that each notification includes a button that takes learners directly to a booking form, or payment gateway.
Offering custom summer coaching courses to individual students, or small groups is a worthwhile way to create an additional revenue stream. This highly personalized approach should focus on one specific skill that benefits the learner, such as public speaking, academic writing, or advanced math.
Use your LMS learning analytics to find areas that individual students may be struggling with. The student analytics dashboard will give you information on which class assessments students have performed poorly, or failed. In identifying specific areas for improvement, educators can create a highly tailored approach and charge a higher price for this service.
You can also create personalized coupon codes with the students' name to promote your custom coaching. You can use a custom coupon code generator, or create one on your LMS admin dashboard itself. Configure your LMS to automatically apply the discount associated with the coupon code when learners, or parents enter it.
Open-house events have many benefits. They’re an excellent way to build relationships with students, parents, teachers, and management. They’re also an effective way to showcase student achievements and any new facilities, or technology. Most importantly they’re a fantastic way to promote new courses. Use open-house events to promote intensive summer courses, self-study modules, and custom coaching.
Promote your open house by sending personalized emails months before the event. Email marketing applications like Mailchimp can be integrated into the LMS, allowing you to reach thousands of parents easily.
At your learning center’s physical location, many parents may offer to pay for the course on the spot. Set up a seamless way to receive payment and make sure administration can create receipts for customers.
As summer approaches, we hope your learning enterprise will take advantage of the revenue streams available. To do this efficiently it’s wise to utilize the power of an all-in-one LMS system.
It’s the #1 Learning Experience Platform for enrichment learning and contains all the tools you need to create, launch and sell summer learning products quickly.