‘It’s so intuitive!’: How Pendo helps Anthology provide better digital learning experiences to its customers’ end users

In almost every facet of our lives, digital experiences make up more and more of our experiences as a whole. For employees, software has gone from being part of our workplace to the workplace itself—where teams collaborate and execute on goals, measure progress, and plan their strategy. For consumers, tasks like placing orders, communicating with businesses, and giving feedback now happen in apps and online. And for students, learning increasingly takes place digitally, via learning management systems (LMS) and other key tools. 

Anthology® is a leading EdTech company that offers a suite of solutions to learning institutions from K-12 to higher ed. By providing best-in-class tools and operational insights to these institutions, Anthology helps create better experiences and better outcomes for learners everywhere.

One such tool Anthology offers is its Blackboard® LMS, an application for online teaching, learning, community building, and knowledge sharing. In order to optimize learners’ experience on the app, Anthology offers customers Anthology Adopt, a Pendo-powered tool that gives educational teams detailed insights on the usage of content and features, identifies opportunities to streamline the learner journey, and provides engaging in-app outreach tools to quickly communicate important updates to users. 

It was using Anthology Adopt that allowed a major Asia-Pacific (APAC) university and Anthology customer to successfully guide its users through new ways of learning on the app. 

A Southern star, guiding students near and far

Southern Cross University (SCU) was founded in 1994. With its name inspired by the famous constellation, the university has a goal of illuminating a prosperous path for thousands of young Australians. Over the last three decades, they’ve grown to become a higher education powerhouse in the APAC region.

While they have three main campuses, a staggering 43% of SCU’s 17,000+ students are now fully online, including many from remote areas and underprivileged backgrounds. As a result, maintaining an engaging online learning environment is crucial, as is ensuring that technology updates are clearly communicated and that learners feel supported during times of change. 

The challenge: Ensuring a smooth transition to a new and better interface

To provide the most modern and streamlined learner experience for students, Southern Cross University began a staggered rollout from Anthology® Blackboard to Ultra, the completely redesigned interface for Blackboard—starting with Blackboard base navigation. The transition date was set for April 2024, as part of a staggered rollout to migrate courses and move to the full Ultra experience.

The team at SCU recognized that implementing Blackboard base navigation would be a significant change for both learners and instructors. From the first time they entered the LMS, users would be met with a completely new interface. They knew that channels such as email and their website were important for communicating the change but ultimately wouldn’t reach all users. What they needed was a means of communicating the changes within the LMS itself. 

“We wanted to make sure students weren’t overwhelmed during the transition, particularly those who study remotely and don’t have the option to ask questions to staff on campus.”

Dr. Shelley Barfoot, System Analyst, Technology Services, Southern Cross University

The solution: A detailed walkthrough guide powered by Pendo

As part of their preparations for Blackboard base navigation, Southern Cross turned to Anthology Adopt powered by Pendo. They prepared an engaging, 12-step in-app guide to support the transition. 

The guide, which all users had to complete the first time they signed in to the LMS, covered all the vital information about Base Navigation, and passed through each of the menu options to explain the related content and functionality. The final step allowed users to provide feedback on the new experience.

Insights delivered: Anthology Adopt is both more efficient and more engaging

The team at SCU instantly noted that the Pendo-powered Anthology Adopt offered an improved experience from IMPACT by Instructure, their previous in-app guidance solution for Blackboard. The process of creating the guide was simple, while the output was professional and engaging. The opportunity to easily include multimedia such as video with the guides made a big difference to the quality of the walkthrough, and being able to download guides and share internally helped facilitate approval processes and alignment across the institution.

“It’s so intuitive! You just make a light box, put some words in and you’ve already got something that’s really polished. Adopt [powered by Pendo] really is much simpler – other tools are time consuming, and we don’t have time to spare.”

Dr. Shelley Barfoot, System Analyst, Technology Services

Including the option to provide feedback at the end of the guide had two crucial benefits. First, it allowed Southern Cross to quickly understand user sentiment and address any areas of confusion. Adopt’s Pendo-powered analytics meant that they could analyze this separately for students and faculty, and devise a unique follow-up plan for each where required. 

Second, it meant that students were far less likely to provide feedback via other channels — such as to their Help Desk team — reducing the strain on technology support resources and allowing them to focus on the transition to Blackboard base navigation.

Based on the success of this initial guide, Southern Cross has since expanded its plans for Anthology Adopt and applied it in a range of different scenarios. They have created guides to highlight features in the LMS that were being underused, such as filtering the grades tab, and plan to continue doing so as new innovative features arrive in each monthly Blackboard Ultra release. They have also begun to interrogate the insights that Adopt provides on workflows to better understand user behavior and to align targeting with user roles in Ultra to allow for more focused campaigns in the future.

In short, SCU is in the process of offering their learners a better, more efficient, and intuitive experience on Blackboard, an outcome Pendo is proud to partner with Anthology to deliver.