The Skills Network - Upskilling a Whole Team with the Digital Learning Institute

The Skills Network designs, develops, and maintains an online course portfolio of over 100 regulated qualifications and 200+ short courses, primarily serving the further education and adult learning market. Chris leads the digital learning and teaching team responsible for that portfolio.

When Chris joined the team, the course production process was highly siloed: learning and teaching specialists built storyboards with subject matter experts, which were handed to content developers, then graphic designers, then videographers each working in sequence within their own discipline.

Chris felt this workflow was too delineated and too drawn out against current best practice, with each specialist focused narrowly on their own domain rather than the learning experience as a whole. What was missing wasn't skill, it was a shared foundation.

The team needed common terminology, a shared way of thinking about learning design, and a way to see themselves collectively as learning designers rather than as graphic designers, videographers, or LMS specialists who happened to work on courses together.

Chris had followed DLI's work for several years and rated its approach to professional development for digital learning designers highly. For a transformation project moving at pace, that track record mattered:

The Professional Diploma for Digital Learning Design offered a solid, deliberate foundation the whole team could build on together, in a defined timeframe rather than a patchwork of individual upskilling.

The Skills Network enrolled the entire team... Chris, the project manager, two graphic designers, two videographers, and two LMS specialists onto the Professional Diploma at the same time.

That group decision turned out to be one of the most valuable parts of the rollout. The team formed what Chris calls a "mini cohort" within the wider DLI cohort, running a side channel in Teams to discuss challenges, share progress, and keep momentum going together. The Skills Network also protected dedicated time within the working week for the team to engage with the course, rather than treating it as extra work squeezed in around the day job.

The content itself mapped cleanly onto real practice. As Chris put it, the diploma worked in three different ways depending on where each person started:

One outcome stood out. A graphic designer on the team previously responsible only for applying visual aesthetics to finished courses used what she learned to take a short course idea and develop it end-to-end herself, owning the full design and development process for the first time.

The partnership with the Digital Learning Institute led to:

• A team of qualified learning designers, formally repositioned and financially uplifted

• A shared terminology and approach to learning design across every discipline on the team

• Greater ownership and productivity, with team members taking on more of the design process end-to-end

• A graphic designer moving from applying visual polish to owning full course design and development

• A recognized qualification that strengthened the team's professional standing

The training played a foundational role in Skills Network's digital transformation project, reshaping how the team works together and raising the team's profile within the organization.

• Practical: Course content mapped directly onto real workflows sometimes naming what the team already did well, sometimes prompting a better way of doing it, sometimes introducing something entirely new to put into practice immediately

• Protected: The Skills Network built dedicated time into the working week for the diploma, rather than treating it as extra effort outside the job

• Recognized: The diploma is a recognized, differentiating qualification for learning designers valued by the organization and the individuals who earned it

• Collaborative: The whole team enrolled together, forming a "mini cohort" within DLI's wider cohort and running an internal group chat to share challenges and progress, which built momentum throughout the program

Meet the team and hear how they applied what they learned to transform learning at The Skills Network.

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