Any good continuous improvement platform empowers you to improve in any way you see fit, rather than forcing you to subscribe to one particular methodology. That means people use the software to support a ton of different types of improvement work - including improvement-related certification classes.

Organizing your Lean certifications and classes in the same platform you use to actually do the improvement work makes it possible for students to learn improvement concepts while practicing the methodology at the same time.

This is important because the unifying theme to adult learning is the fact that adults learn better when they actually do the action they are learning. Instead of learning a theoretical improvement concept and then trying to take it back to their workplace, using the improvement concept or tool in a real-life system allows the student to understand the concept or tool better and has the consequence of actually improving the organization. That is why Lean Certification courses generally have an Opportunity for Improvement, A3, Just-do, or larger Lean project component.

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Continuous improvement software is leveraged less as a Learning Management System and more as a Improvement Management System that has a built-in learning component.

Why should you host your classes in your continuous improvement platform?

• Monitor student projects remotely
  
  If you’re teaching a class spread out over the course of a few months, you probably won’t be able to meet with all your students each week - you might not even be in the same building as some of them. But just because you aren’t physically meeting with them, doesn’t mean that your students won’t be working on their projects.
  
  Improvement software lets you monitor their progress without being in the same physical space. This not only saves you time, but also gives your students the assurance that you’re staying engaged and interested.
  
  
  
• Provide real-time feedback to students
  
  Not only does continuous improvement software let you monitor your students’ progress from afar, it also lets you provide immediate feedback about that progress using in-app comments. Less urgent communication can be relayed via daily digest emails so that nobody is overwhelmed by email.
  
  You don’t need to wait until the next class to offer guidance to someone who’s having trouble, which means your students aren’t wasting time doing work that would need to be adjusted and redone after your next meeting.
  
  
  
• Require less meeting time
  
  It can be difficult to get everyone taking part in the class into one room at the same time, especially in a large or dispersed organization. It’s much more efficient for your students to work remotely and communicate via comments and smart notifications on a daily basis, and save the meeting time for bigger milestones.
  
  Even if you are able to get everyone together regularly, traditionally, much of the meeting will be spent giving updates on everyone’s progress. By keeping everyone’s information up-to-date with software, you walk into the meeting knowing everything that’s happened since the last one, and so you’re able to spend your valuable meeting time talking about next steps, improvements, and new strategies.
  
  
  
• Prove a class ROI
  
  Continuous improvement software lets you accurately measure the ROI of your class by capturing the impact of each Improvement or Project that comes out of it and aggregating the results. If you can point to a quantitative measure of your course’s impact, you become a much more desirable teacher.
  
  
  
• Create a permanent record of who took part in the class - and what work each person did
  
  As a teacher, you can use your improvement platform as an easy means of record-keeping by keeping everyone's work (and results) in one place, letting you quickly see a summary of your students’ efforts. You can see what projects they worked on, their progress, and their impact all in one spot.
  
  Our customers will often configure their badges to align with the different certifications that they offer. Once the student has completed a class, the teacher will grant a Badge to the student. It’s a great way to visualize the accomplishment of the student and also understand how many people in your organization have a particular certification.
  
  

 Have you hosted any of your classes in your improvement platform yet? How did it go?