Laser Learning
Laser Learning develops and licenses its unique Laser system to training providers. The company was created following the success of its elder sister The Childcare Company, the training provider where the Laser was born.
We created the Laser system with the Childcare Company after our Directors, Sally and Chris Eaton, former nursery owners, identified a lack of consistency and quality within training. They didn't want training to be a "tick the box" exercise, they wanted it to really deliver good underpinning knowledge which would profoundly improve practice and make better practitioners for children. They also wanted it to be fun and interesting and to not be bogged down in paperwork.
In 2008, NMT was kind enough to give us the Supplier Innovator award after its panel saw the innovative potential of the Laser system. Following enquiries from other training providers, we recognised the potential of the Laser for other training providers and began licensing it at low cost. Hence Laser Learning was born from the successes of The Childcare Company. We have now expanded our portfolio to include not just pure childcare, but also supporting teaching and learning, health and social care, playwork, functional skills, business and administration, facilities management and more.
Other training providers can now have the Laser personalised for them, and they have full access to all our comprehensive and engaging learning programmes and our banks of user-friendly resources. We fully support them as they learn to use the system and provide a regular cycle of system maintenance, review and updates.
We have not just stopped there. We have also developed a range of short professional development courses available to learners and settings at low cost. We cover topics such as safeguarding, managing behaviour, leadership and management and many more.
Since our beginnings we've added lots of new features to the Laser to reduce the administrative burden on learners and assessors. We have also provided new administration-level functions that allow such progress reviews and documentation to be monitored, accessed and checked at a glance, making it really easy to spot and correct missing paperwork. Laser licencees find that they are more closely aligned to audit requirements than ever before.
We can now generate statistics on progress and time spent on the system; these are available to assessors, setting managers, quality control personnel and external auditors. We can even see how long a learner has spent studying a particular lesson, which is particularly effective for showing evidence of required learning hours. Setting managers now have their own logins and system views so that they can check on their learners' progress and contribute to progress reviews.
Our brand is well-established; we have an excellent reputation within the industry and we are well respected and recommended by our partners. Our training is known for being of high quality. We listen to our users and make adaptations to the system based on their observations and requirements.
Why does Laser Learning use Dyalog?
We have built a reputation for quick development backed up with a high quality of customer service, and we do this with a small programming team so we can deliver this at a price our customers can afford. The secret to this is Dyalog; it provides us the tools to develop new programs quickly and enhance existing programs without disrupting live systems. We can analyse any problems that may arise and identify system issues from user error. The high level of support we provide is underpinned by the support we receive from the team at Dyalog Ltd.
As our business expands and the systems we develop and enhance require more complex data structures, Dyalog gives us the flexibility to adapt our data structures and therefore meet these requirements without the need to start from scratch each time. This gives us the ability to manage many systems which are tailored to clients' needs but have a common core and therefore can be maintained and enhanced by the small team.
The Dyalog .NET features let us integrate with the best part of many other software tools and enables us to keep our systems looking good and keep up-to-date with the IT industry.