Great skill building even in the COVID-19 pandemic through face-to-face and online training

Release Date :May 30, 2023

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Release Date :May 30, 2023

Belle Histoire Co., Ltd. operates "Eclore Yoga," a school specializing in yoga instructor training on remote islands in Japan, such as Miyakojima in Okinawa and Shodoshima in Kagawa. The school is accredited by the Yoga Alliance (Yoga Alliance Association of America), a non-profit organization issuing yoga licenses in the United States, and offers the globally recognized RYT200 and RYT500 certifications. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a need to shift to offering online courses rather than face-to-face, and learningBOX was introduced as the solution. This interview explores how the system was introduced out of necessity, and how it worked more effectively than expected.

A wide variety of quiz types and content, easy-to-use and generous customer support

First of all, could you introduce your business and your work in charge?

We operate a school specializing in yoga instructor training on remote islands in Japan: Miyakojima in Okinawa, Shodoshima in Kagawa, and Yakushima in Kagoshima. Aspiring yoga instructors gather from Japan and abroad for short-term intensive yoga retreat camps to obtain certification.

I am a coordinator for yoga instructor training courses held in various locations, supporting students in living on remote islands and taking courses.

What were challenges you faced before introducing learningBOX?

Our Eclore Yoga's instructor training courses offer Yoga Alliance-certified international licenses such as RYT200 and RYT500. Prior to the pandemic, all credits were earned at yoga retreat camps on remote islands.

However, special measures were required for online courses as an alternative to the camps. It was urgent to implement an e-learning system since we could not maintain our courses without the change.

In addition to video lectures, we wanted to create our original content that helped students' repetitive learning. Also, managing learning progress was one of the most important elements for us.

How did you know learningBOX? And why learningBOX?

I searched the internet for e-learning systems and found many hits. Actually, I didn't really understand the differences between them at that time. After a while, I happened to find learningBOX in an e-book service, and I thought it looked easy to use. That was some years ago, so it seems that the booklet is no longer available.

Our headquarters is located in Himeji, Hyogo, and I found learningBOX, Inc. is located in the neighboring city of Tatsuno. I was surprised and felt a sense of familiarity with your company.

Before implementing the system, I tried the Free plan. Neither I nor any of instructors are familiar with IT, so I asked them to try it and we found it easy to use. Also, the customer support was very courteous and reassuring, which was also one of the decisive factors. We were satisfied with the smooth implementation as well.

While many online yoga courses offer only video lectures, it is very difficult to keep learners focused. learningBOX allows us to create a good balance of various contents, such as quizzes, reports and questionnaires. I expected that this system would be able to raise the level of proficiency more than our traditional face-to-face courses.

Significant improvement with blended learning

Were there any difficulties in implementing learningBOX?

At the time, there were no schools in Japan that offered e-learning for RYT200 and RYT500 training courses. Eclore Yoga was one of the first to introduce e-learning for the two, but in the yoga industry, where face-to-face interaction is assumed, there was little awareness of what e-learning was like, even among online learning methods, and it took some time before people realized its advantages.

Because of diverse lifestyles, some students had difficulties even in turning on the computer or watching long video lectures. To accommodate such need, we made changes to microlearning so that they could learn in their spare time.

Talking about e-learning, it is important to get students interested and encourage them to keep learning. It will be difficult to motivate students if we simply post the same content that we used to provide in person. We are currently working through trial and error to increase the variety of content by using quizzes and other methods, and to create content that attracts students.

We are satisfied with our current school operations using learningBOX, but at the same time, we are also facing challenges to make our courses unique to clearly differentiate ourselves from other companies that offer online courses.

Could you tell some effects by the introduction of learningBOX?

One is reducing time-consuming. learningBOX helps students to save time submitting reports and other content that they used to take time with difficulties.

In addition to credits for the online courses, introducing flipped learning using learningBOX made impacts on their proficiency. Assignment before the yoga retreat camps made students have confidence and led to higher rate of proficiency.

The instructors also like the fact that they can visualize the students' level of mastery, which they can apply to their instruction during the camp. Another great advantage is that we can support students during the yoga camp by adding content and using the message function to reply to individual concerns or help them with supplemental content.

learningBOX remarkably raised the bar in the level of achievement. Preparation using learningBOX, participating in the face-to-face camp, reviewing content on learningBOX and submitting reports...the process plays important roles in our success.

After implementing learningBOX, more students graduated with higher scores compared to the previous camp program. This is because learningBOX contributes to memorization including yoga history, philosophy, anatomy and physiology.

How do you like learningBOX? Or do you have any requests to improve our system?

What we like learningBOX is to tailor the courses to individual proficiency even in a group. We are happy to offer yoga instructor training courses that are truly tailor-made.

It would be helpful if it were easier to understand the role assignment. It is somewhat complicating for us. Also, there is a request from students that they want to save their reports even in progress.

Thank you very much for your comment. It will be helpful for our future improvement. Also, one of the paid options, "Curriculum function" is available for your plan, which allow you to systematically combine content according to your learning objectives. We hope you will take advantage of this as well.

Start your experience with a free plan

Could you tell us feedback about learningBOX from your students?

Ninety percent of Eclor Yoga students are women and the remaining 10% are men. They range in age from their 20s to 60s, and have various levels of experience, from beginners to active instructors.

Some feedback includes that students cannot concentrate on a long video lecture, and we introduced micro-learning to make it easy to stay focused. Our efforts resulted in continuing contracts even after graduation.

What is your vision for the future?

We will continue to offer online courses for RYT200 and RYT500 in the following years.
Eclore Yoga's yoga instructor training courses will support our students with repetitive learning using e-learning.

We also offers a course called Yoga Art®, a yoga system that allows students to learn through art. We believe e-learning contributes to higher-level yoga instructors not only in Japan but overseas.

One-week sample video is available for those who are interested in our e-learning courses.

Finally, could you give some comments to those who are considering implementing learningBOX?

COVID-19 has accelerated a lot of e-learning systems. However, there are few services support Japanese language if it's foreign providers. learningBOX is developed by a Japanese company, and it will be helpful to have good supports in Japanese.

It is also important to try the system and check its usability beforehand. From this point, the Free plan is highly recommended before you implement the system, especially if you are not familiar with IT. learningBOX is very easy to use and will contribute to improve the efficiency of your business.

Like our yoga retreat camps, we are able to provide individualized support for each student, and we believe that this will be helpful for schools officials as well. Eclore Yoga also supports the introduction of yoga into schools, kindergartens, and nursery schools. I hope that e-learning will be used in more schools in the future.

Even if you have concerns about offering the online courses, you will be able to introduce it with confidence because of great customer support from learningBOX. Members in the support team are all friendly and will answer your questions in detail.

Thank you for your participation
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