Quick facts about IU International University of Applied Sciences: 
- Industry: Higher Education
- HQ: Erfurt, Germany
- Established: 1998
- Website: www.iu.de
Challenge: Standardizing staff learning to deliver human success
The IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU), with over 130.000 students Germany’s largest private university, is an innovative private university offering both online and campus-based study programs for students in Germany and abroad. IU offers over 250 innovative degree programs—including forward-looking fields such as Robotics, Digital Health or Artificial Intelligence.
Without an existing learning platform in place, IU wanted to standardize staff learning with a scalable, people-centric approach. Thus, this would support the university’s rapid growth, in turn driving efficiency and engagement while also supporting academic excellence.
Learn365 has had great adoption after rollout. It has become a focal point for our employees’ personal development. And through our network of key users who administer all our courses, a culture of learning is much more visible across the organization.
Marcel Hebestreit, Team Lead People Development and Communication
Solution: Using Learn365 to support IU’s rapid growth
IU currently has 38 campus locations in Germany as well as sister universities. It has a highly diverse global workforce including teaching, service, sales and support staff.
In recent years, IU has undergone extraordinary success with rapid growth. In fact, they have become the largest state-accredited university of applied sciences in Germany. As the university’s number of staff grew, the team realized they needed to take a more scalable and standardized approach to learning and development. Marcel Hebestreit, Team Lead People Development and Communication, comments:
IU has expanded quickly. Previously we didn’t have any learning management platform, instead using different tools and decentral approaches, and carrying out live training on campus. Our people told us they wanted a more structured, targeted and harmonized approach to learning which was easier to access and not scattered everywhere. We needed to streamline and standardize our onboarding operations and approach to people development.
Fueling staff learning and development
By introducing a single learning platform, the team wanted to not only drive efficiency, but also equip employees with the knowledge they needed to support personal development and career growth. Marcel Hebestreit comments
We wanted to provide role-based professional training to really get our people up to speed. But we also wanted to improve our employer brand and make IU a great place to work, giving employees the opportunity to develop and grow with the organization.
The team started to research the market. Marcel Hebestreit comments, “We assessed several vendors, made a shortlist of products to demo and challenged to see if they met our requirements.”
In assessing solutions, the team considered several different factors, from the pricing to the product roadmap. They wanted a flexible and feature-rich product that didn’t require customization and incorporated essential areas such as reporting. Seamless integration with Microsoft 365 was also critical. Marcel Hebestreit comments:
A main reason we selected Learn365 is that it integrates very well into Microsoft 365. We wanted a platform that seamlessly integrates into our technical environment. Measurement was also key. We wanted to track and report on people development activities.
Once the decision was made to select Learn365 for their standardized staff learning, the Zensai team were able to support IU with what Marcel Hebestreit calls an “easy and straight implementation phase”.
Finally in June 2021 the IU Learning Hub and accompanying IU Manager Learning Hub, based on Learn365, soft-launched to around 1,500 staff.
Results: High adoption, positive feedback and a network of Learn365 key users
Today Learn365 is being used by all staff across IU Group, the holding company of IU. Reflecting IU’s growth, the number of learners has already significantly increased since launch.
Learners access Learn365 mainly through Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, helped by a convenient integration with IU’s SharePoint intranet. The IU Learning Hub is also available on mobile devices via the Learn365 app.
So far Learn365 has achieved high levels of adoption and received great feedback regarding their standardized staff learning. Marcel Hebestreit comments:
Since we launched Learn365 the feedback has been really good. Learners find it beneficial to access the dashboard and find their learning record, so they can view all their training in one place and stay informed – also by in-built notifications. They are also happy they don’t need different log-in details to access it. We continue to have a very high level of active users.
One reason for IU Learning Hub’s success is the sheer number of courses available. Learners can access around 1,500 courses, covering everything from sales skills to how to use AI. Courses include company-specific skills like essential guidance on how teaching staff can better present learning to students or specifics of study programs for IU’s study advisors.
Compliance topics such as cybersecurity and data protection are also covered. Additionally, the German General Equal Treatment Act is included, where there is a requirement to annually train all staff.
Marcel Hebestreit comments, “We tend to use more off the shelf learning for these compliance and legal topics, with most of our third-party content coming from LinkedIn Learning. However, overall, we create about 80% of the content ourselves and for that have also authoring software in place.”
Putting the ease in standardized staff learning
One of the reasons that there is so much self-produced course material is Learn365’s ease of use, making it a breeze for busy people across IU’s business units to create content, upload it and then manage their own courses. Marcel Hebestreit explains:
We’ve got a community of about 120 Learn365 key users spread across our business units. They are the administrators for courses and for learning paths, and the subject matter experts for specific topics. They develop their courses with support from us when it comes to methodology and didactics. But once we train our key users on how to use Learn365 they are really self-confident and usually able to do everything on their own. This decentralized system has allowed our course portfolio to grow and help develop our staff.
In order to track the success of staff learning and deliver bespoke reporting, the team is also leveraging Learn365’s seamless integration with PowerBI as well as Learn365’s mature API. Marcel Hebestreit remarks:
Learn365 offers a Power BI dashboard with the subscription we have. But we also have our own integration through some additional dashboards that are connected via the API. These are themed around different topics and include more information not covered by Learn365. For example, we have specific reporting on AI capability building and enablement which is crucial for our business model.
Marcel Hebestreit attributes part of the success of Learn365 to good support from the Zensai team: “We’ve had great cooperation and collaboration with Zensai. We have frequent exchanges with our Customer Success Manager, which is always beneficial. Zensai has also made it easier for us to get in touch, for example using the new chat facility in the admin center. It’s very easy to reach out and get questions answered quickly.”
Future: Bringing AI into the learning experience
Going forward, IU plans to keep on using Learn365 to support its continuous growth and staff learning. Marcel Hebestreit is also excited about the future possibilities around using Learn365, particularly leveraging new AI features to further standardize staff learning.
AI is critical to IU’s business model. We already provide an AI-powered personal study assistant called Syntea to our students that supports faster learning and beyond. We’re now keen to integrate AI deeply into our people development operations and our learning experience. We’re excited that Zensai is bringing AI into the product with features such as chatbots, AI-based recommendations and AI-powered content creation.
As well as using AI to better integrate standardized staff learning into the working day, the team plan to keep on leveraging new features introduced by the Zensai team. Marcel Hebestreit comments:
“Learn365 is a strong product, where you can see improvements on a frequent basis. We have a really good solution to support our employees’ development. We’ve also been able to share our ideas and thoughts with Zensai how we can use Learn365 in the future. We’re happy to have Zensai at our side!”
About IU
International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is a German private university offering both online and campus-based study programs for students in Germany and abroad. Founded in 1998, it employs a diverse staff located across multiple locations in Germany and the world. In the past years the IU grew from a small specialized university to one of Europe‘s (Germany‘s) leading private education institutions and continues to innovate, for example introducing AI to support students and transform processes. It is currently the largest state-accredited university in Germany.