I wanted to give you an update on the launch of the Online Learning Center.
It's been an exciting time for us. Well over 200 schools have enrolled in the OLC. Most are using one or more levels of our Hebrew software (Ready, Set . . .Go Alef Bet, Alef Bet Quest or Kol Yisrael: the Prayers of Our People); others are creating their own material or using the Resource Libraries to download digital content for use either in class or by students at home.
Most Online Learning Center members are having a fully successful experience. Over 600 teachers and more than 3,500 students have joined digital classrooms. Students are practicing Hebrew online and classes are creating a wide variety of engaging online multimedia projects and discussions. Happily, the OLC remained fully functional throughout the storm and the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
As with any digital effort, implementation for the first time can be challenging, and a few schools have experienced some difficulty. Our comprehensive "support ticket" system tracks problems, and I thought you would be interested to know about our results so far. To date, 251 queries have been submitted; 80% of support tickets were resolved within 24 hours of submission, often with just one email or call. Over 90% have been fully resolved within one week.
The most commonly reported problems have stemmed from a few basic user errors such as typos when logging in or entering email addresses or confusion over what email address to use when sending an invitation to a teacher or a student. We update our tutorial pages frequently, continue to expand our list of answers to frequently asked questions, and are continuing with our weekly webinars. We invite education directors and teachers alike to sign up for these free training sessions.
We've encounted a few bugs, most of which have been fixed quickly. We have also heard your requests for features to improve your experience. Thanks to your feedback, for example, the list of students for each class is now alphabetical (by first name) and contains 24 names per page, for easier reference. For classes with more than one teacher, educational directors can now choose which teacher’s name appears in the display for the class.
We continue to tweak the features of the Online Learning Center platform to further improve your experience. Our development team has offices in Moldova, Denmark, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and California; they're at work every day to investigate your questions as quickly as possible and make improvements.
Software is hard. We all know that from the recent Apple maps debacle. We are committed to making the Online Learning Center work for you and your school. We have been committed for decades to providing the best books and materials for schools, and we're very close with our software. We're actually quite proud of how well we've done so far, especially as a small firm in a rapidly changing digital world.
We'll continue to keep you posted. I hope you will also continue to be in touch with us. Let us know how we're doing, with books and with software, so that we can get better and stronger as we all work together to serve the children and adult learners in our community.
With best wishes
David E. Behrman
