Coastguard Boating Education (CBE) is the leading provider of recreational boating education in New Zealand. The organisation is registered as a Private Training Establishment with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.
CBE delivers the Maritime VHF Radio Operator course as a 6-hour workshop and they asked us to design an online solution for the course.
From CBE’s perspective, the online course needed to:
Online functionality
We have worked with CBE to deliver ground-breaking online projects for several years now so when they came to us to reinvent the VHF course as an online course for iPad that used the iPad’s native microphone and playback functions (without using Flash) we took the challenge. This was also something that had not been done before by anyone in the world!
Distribution
As this was a custom build for a specific group of people, we needed to be able to distribute the module without going public on the App Store. We were advised that what we wanted to do was not possible! However after further research, we found a solution.
Authorisation
We also created a robust automated authorisation system to run from CBE’s Moodle course pages to the App Store.
The Maritime VHF Radio Operator Online course is a 45 minute interactive module with VHF simulations, which helps boaties learn about VHF Radio equipment and how to make a variety of calls, and meet NZQA unit standards.
Before VHF Online, CBE delivered this course as a 6-hour workshop for $116. CBE can now offer an interactive 45 minute digital course for $79. This means that CBE can expand their reach and their revenue, without incurring any additional cost for delivery. The number of enrolments in the first month exceeded the target and their payback target was also achieved.
VHF Online was recently awarded gold for the Technical Training category at the LearnX Impact Awards 2018.
