Texas Offers IIABA’s First Virtual University Online Education Course

The first online continuing education course offered through the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America’s (IIABA) Virtual University has been unveiled—in Texas. The course is available on the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas’ (IIAT) Web site, www.iiat.org/educate/ce_online.htm.

That may seem surprising, given that the idea of the Virtual University was initially conceived in 1997, followed by the launch of a beta version of the program in 1999. The Virtual University’s Web site, vu.iiaa.net, was launched outright after two years of beta testing. According to university director Bill Wilson, no actual online education courses have yet been added to the site—but so far, that hasn’t been the major focus, anyway.

“We’ve been in a beta mode for about two years now, and our initial focus is less on online courses and structured learning and more on just-in-time type learning with a research library and ask-an-expert services … so it’s only been in the past few months that we’ve been working diligently on online courses,” Wilson said. “We’ve got three courses that will be online and ready to go in May, and two others coming shortly after that, probably late May or June.

“Several—about 10 or so—are in the works for sometime this summer or early fall,” Wilson continued. “The first three courses we’re doing are ‘The Ultimate Rental Car Course,’ ‘Workers’ Comp Experience Rating,’ and ‘How to Calculate Business Income Limits in Five Minutes.”

But as Wilson explained further, IIABA has more than online courses in mind for the Virtual University. “There are quite a few providers out there now who offer insurance courses, and we’re trying to take something of a different tack in what we’re doing, rather than just provide another homeowners course or something like that. We’re trying to focus on specific topics that are fairly short in duration and are specific to certain areas—and things that you just can’t find anywhere else.”

Complementary initiatives
David VanDelinder, IIAT Director of Education, explained how efforts of the state organization to get its online education program up and running was complemented by the IIABA’s nationwide initiative: “Several people at both the state and national level pushed this forward, but we wanted a system where we could launch this course country-wide and get the kind of participation by agents in other states that we wanted. The only way to do that, really, was through the national association.

“All this is under the umbrella of the Virtual University,” VanDelinder continued. “Within the Virtual University, one part of this is online training … Right now our course is the only one approved for CE in Texas. Ultimately, we hope that multiple states will have courses available for agents to take in any part of the country.”

Wilson pointed out that the IIABA wanted Texas to be its pilot state for online courses: “We’ve got several states that have gone through initial training: Texas, New York, Massachusetts. We have 10 more states going through training next week. Texas is a big state—they’ve got if not the best, one of the best education programs in the country. We really wanted them to be in the first phase of this.”

The first course
Available on the IIAT’s Web site, the first course is entitled “Why We Have Additional Insureds,” and as been approved for one continuing education (CE) credit in Texas. Additional courses pertaining to agent regulations and ethics are expected to be added within the next few months.

“The one we completed was really one of a three-part series on additional insureds and general liability,” VanDelinder said. “But we’ve stopped that process to address the ethics and regulation requirements for agents coming up Jan. 1, 2003. They have to have a two-hour program each renewal period of their license. We feel the best way to deliver that is online.

“We’re working right now with a two-hour course that will meet that license requirement. Part of the problem in the past has been—the only way to present a program online for CE credits is a self-study course,” VanDelinder continued. “In the terms used by the Department of Insurance, that means there has to be a monitored exam associated with this course. The department has said that this year they will entertain new rules which will allow some online training with a lot of flexibility built into it to be the equivalent of classroom training, which means there’d be no requirement for monitoring the exam.”

VanDelinder explained further, “You take the course—you may or may not have an exam—but there’s enough built-in identification of the student that TDI is satisfied they sat through the program and they got the credit. So we’re hoping that that will come to fruition before the end of the year as well. We have some rules to address that in our course development. That’s the ideal situation we’d all like to see happen.”

Setting up
Detailing the process of generating an online version of a CE course, VanDelinder said, “The content development was fairly easy because we have a lot of this information on existing courses, so I would say my role in scripting this out of storyboarding was about three weeks,” he said. “Then, Flash presentation setup took about eight weeks, largely because we were creating some new graphics and templates. We hope to be able to utilize those graphics in future courses so that development time won’t be as long … We will refine (the template), but we like the Flash media, we like its flexibility.”

Getting noticed
Both Wilson and VanDelinder acknowledged that making continuing education courses available online and obtaining regulatory approval for them could be the easy part—enticing agents to actually enroll in them is an altogether different challenge.

Wilson said, “The movement from classroom training to online training is so difficult a transition. You have to have that CE component just to drive people there to try it one time … I know a lot of people in the business with other providers, and it really takes some aggressive marketing for people to give it a shot.”

Wilson also pointed out another, perhaps more elementary reason: “One thing that scares (agents) off is the fact that they can go to a classroom and be warehoused for a day to get CE credit, whereas with either self study or online, they’ve got to take a test and pass it. They’d rather sit all day in a class that they’re not interested in just to avoid a test.”

In Texas, however, where an online course has been fully launched on the IIAT’s Web site, piquing agents’ interest is less challenging. “The last I heard, we’ve had over 400 hits on the demo,” VanDelinder said. “We have not had anyone take it for CE credit at this point. We’re getting good activity, people want to know … how the course works. Our decision was to post the entire course for free, so you could step through it and see what it’s all about.

“If all you want is the information out of the course, then there’s no charge for it,” VanDelinder continued. “If you want the CE credit, then you go to the provider’s site, which is actually providing the software for registering students. And the e-commerce package is in place to make all that happen.”

The marketing efforts of the IIABA and the IIAT reflect their different yet complimentary objectives, as well as the amount of content available on each of their sites.

“We have put a notice in our newsletter, which is well-read by the members,” VanDelinder said. “We really feel that the people most interested in it are familiar with our Web site, so the main promotional approach has been through the site, and through e-mail addresses.”

Wilson noted that the IIABA’s marketing efforts will coincide with the launch of online courses in May: “We’re working on one right now, and it should be available in May. We’ll have our strategy down, what we’re going to do, at that time. We’re going to do some beta testing with some folks to get their ideas on what would make them want to take that course.”

Topics Texas Legislation Agencies Education Training Development Universities