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AI & Learning: IFCAM rewarded for its innovative system

On Monday 21 September, 2020 at the Digital Learning Excellence Awards organized by Cegos, IFCAM (the world’s largest cooperative financial institution) won the “Best Corporate Learning System” prize for its project launched in collaboration with Enza, a consulting firm specializing in major transformation projects, and Domoscio, a software publisher of Artificial Intelligence solutions for learning. In what follows, we focus on the components of a successful AI project for skills development.

The challenges of a diploma course at IFCAM

Since 2015, IFCAM has been offering several MOOCs to employees within the Group as part of its diploma programs, in particular its Bachelor’s degree (equivalent to three years of higher education).

This course can be spread over one or more semesters. It is made of seven learning modules certified by a diploma. Employees follow their MOOCs from the Moodle platform. There they find content to learn and review, a forum hosted by tutors to exchange with other learners and “graded” quizzes integrated into the continuous assessment. To review, employees can go through “ungraded” quizzes which help them assess their proficiency on the available content.  The main challenge of the system put in place is to improve the results of the intermediate quizzes and the graduation rate, by helping employees to review more effectively for assessments.

Defining the project and guaranteeing the success of its deployment

To ensure the implementation of this system, IFCAM has chosen to be accompanied by Enza at each phase of the project by benefiting from its tailor-made methodological approach: 

– Strategy definition: driving AI and Data technology initiatives 

• Identification of relevant use cases and expected ROI, solutions’ benchmark, decision support (maturity, quality and availability of data.)

-Implementation management: guaranteeing the success of all phases of a data project (PoC, Pilot, Scaling)

• Definition of success indicators and scaling criteria, best practices for the industrialization of a solution and its integration into business processes, agility and continuous improvement approach, collaborative tools. 

– Change management: raising awareness and supporting the integration of AI into business activities, encouraging commitment and developing a Data/AI culture. 

• Pedagogy in the explanation of AI solutions, support for skill development, provision of a network of experts

Providing the learning system with adaptive learning based on AI

IFCAM has integrated Domoscio Hub into its Moodle platform in the form of a plugin to better target the strengths and areas of improvement of each employee on the topics to be mastered. Prior to the project, historical data was integrated into Hub in order to measure the correlation between the employees results over the course of their career and the achievement of the diploma.

The processing of this data enabled the identification of the skills required in each subject area to pass the exam. During each MOOC, Hub selects the most discriminating questions to precisely assess the employees’ proficiency. They review with questions whose level of difficulty evolves according to their progress. When they reach the required level on each of the topics, they can pursue their course and repeat the operation during the other MOOCs, until the final exam.

A convincing result and a reward at the end of the day

The implementation of this adaptive learning plugin as part of an experiment on one of the MOOCs allowed to increase by five points the results to the final exam, from 90% in 2018 to 95% in 2019. Hub also made it possible to improve the employee’s commitment to his learning path. From the L&D team perspective, the tool provides feedback on the quality and relevance of the quizzes within the course, and on the learning profiles among employees. By providing expertise and knowledge, Enza has contributed to the successful deployment of this innovative system.

Building on this success, IFCAM decided to extend the project scope to other learning paths and presented it for the Digital Learning Excellence Awards, organized by Cegos: a real success since the project was awarded in the Corporate category for its innovative approach and its convincing results!

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