Let’s face it, whether you are a trainer or a trainee, we have all experienced that what we learn fades away over time. This is particularly evident if it’s a subject that we don’t revisit very often.

In this era of information overload, our brains need to “offload” information that we don’t use regularly to make space for new learning, so naturally it’s important to refresh our memories on topics that we don’t make use of routinely.

This is where refresher training comes in. Not only does it provide an opportunity to brush up on existing knowledge as a trainee, but it also provides time for the trainer, or the learning and development team, to review the existing training content to ensure any obsolete or outdated information is changed and updated accordingly.

So, what is Refresher Training exactly?

As the name suggests, refresher training enables a recap on the knowledge that learners have previously covered. It is particularly beneficial for organisations when it comes to compliance training or any training that has specific annual or periodic retraining requirements.

At iGaming Academy our refresher training begins with testing the trainee’s existing knowledge using a pre-assessment. The pre-assessment determines whether the trainee has retained sufficient knowledge of the topic and can complete a condensed version of the training or not. Should the trainee be successful, they will continue to the refresher training which consists of the most critical information, including any relevant updates, that they would be required to know for the coming year. If the trainee is unsuccessful in passing the pre-assessment, this would indicate that they would need to review the full training again to ensure all relevant and necessary information is retrained and memorised.

What are the benefits of Refresher Training?

Refresher training has many benefits for organisations and their employees. Some advantages and direct benefits include:

• Increased productivity
• Reduced mistakes
• Increased employee confidence
• Creates a continuous learning culture
• Identifies training needs and skills gaps
• Promotes a compliance culture
• Ensures regulatory compliance
• Increased employee retention

Reinforcing regular refresher training within your organisation will not only aid in employee satisfaction, but it will also protect your brand from any potential compliance risks. At iGaming Academy, we offer refresher training for our main compliance courses. Check out our suite of compliance courses here and get in touch with us to discuss your refresher training needs.

Anyone working in Learning and Development will be familiar with the term ‘Subject Matter Expert’ or ‘SME’ for short. Essentially, the term describes an individual who is highly knowledgeable within their area of expertise. As a training company to the gaming industry, we at iGaming Academy, work both with inhouse SMEs, who form part of our full time eLearning and Development Team, and external SMEs, who are leading experts in the gaming industry.

The SME’s role in creating learning content is vital in the development and ongoing management of effective eLearning courses, and the way we, as Instructional Designers, work with our SMEs is crucial for us to ensure we deliver a high-quality product perfectly curated to suit our target audience’s learning requirements.

When working with industry experts, you must bear in mind they are busy people and being an SME is usually not their primary job. Therefore, being structured and organised in your approach with how you work with an SME, will help to ensure you get the most from their time.

iGaming Academy’s eLearning and Development Team’s top 5 tips on how to work with SMEs:

1. Have a kick-off meeting with the SME: this is crucial at the start of any new project and should take place before the SME attempts to draft any course content on the subject area. Essentially, the kick-off stage, is where both instructional designer and SME align their thoughts, ensuring all stakeholders are on the same page and have a clear end goal in mind.
2. Set timeframes: Putting timeframes in place is beneficial for both the Instructional Designer, as it helps ensure the project stays on track, and the SME, as they will be able to schedule time into their busy workflow.
3. Establish the course ‘blueprint’: it is good practice to ask the SME to detail the course outline of the training, i.e., each section and sub-section to be covered in the training. This serves two purposes: 1. it ensures no miscommunication has happened during the kick-off meeting and 2. it gives the opportunity to provide any suggestions on the course outline before the SME goes ahead and starts drafting the full course.
4. Digest the content: your knowledge may not be as extensive as the SME on the subject, so it is important to get 100% comfortable with the learning content before starting the storyboard. Identify any uncertainties you may have and schedule a call with the SME to go over your queries.
5. Allow time for feedback to be given: the SMEs involvement does not stop once they hand over the course content. They should also be included in the final review of the product, so that they can give their feedback on how the content flows as an eLearning course and can ensure the meaning of the course content has not altered when re-designed during the storyboard stage.

For us at iGaming Academy, putting the above tips into practice coupled with SMEs who have proven experience and come highly qualified in their domain, is how we have been successful in positioning ourselves as the leading training provider to the Gaming industry by delivering compliance training that is relevant to our clients’ operational requirements.

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Contact us?to learn about our suite of compliance courses.

The field of compliance is continuing to grow in iGaming, in response to the ever evolving complexities of gaming regulations. It can be difficult to stay organized without a proper system in place to protect the business.

As part of our recent webinar on iGaming Audits, compliance expert Barnabe Robinson shared insights on how to minimise compliance risks, through tight organisation.

You may also like:

Compliance Tips To Prepare Your Gaming Business For Audit

How Does The UKGC Choose Who To Investigate, And What Are The Risks?

Available Now: iGaming Audits Webinar Recording

 

The 6 P’s of compliance

Preparation, Preparation, Preparation, Process, Policy and Procedure – Being prepared is everything according to Barnabe, who recommends keeping an archive or library, to hold records of anything related to processes policies or procedures.

The three lines of defense model

Barnabe emphasised the importance of using the thee lines of defense model in your compliance protocols, in order to demonstrate satisfactory compliance to auditors.

What is the three lines of defense model?

First line:?Primary responsibility for managing organisational risks through designing and implementing appropriate mitigating controls rests with operational management who own and manage risks.

Second line: Reporting to senior management, the second line comprises risk management and compliance functions to help build and/or monitor the first line of defence controls.

Risk management functions are designed to facilitate and monitor the implementation of effective risk management practices by management throughout the organisation, assisting risk owners in defining target risk exposure and providing adequate risk reporting.? The principal purpose of compliance functions is to monitor compliance with applicable laws and regulations.? It is common for multiple compliance teams to operate within an organisation, with responsibility in areas such as health & safety, human resources, legal, supply chain, environmental or quality.

Third line:?The principal function of the third line is to provide risk assurance. Internal audit provides assurance on the effectiveness of governance, risk management and internal controls, including first and second line controls. Internal audit is independent of management with a direct reporting line to the?Governing body/ Audit Committee.

Hold Mock audits

Run fake audits to keep your team on their toes, and to stress test your compliance framework. Mock audits should be built into your existing 3 lines of defence model.

There’s nothing more stressful than a surprise visit from an auditor so it’s important that auditees have easily accessible training data to present when it comes to their training requirements. Companies need to be able to prove that training has been delivered and affirmed by learners and this is easily done by iGaming Academy’s courses and the report section of our LMS.

How do we help the auditees/clients?

 

Our courses include:

• An affirmation button that acts as an e-signature for the learner once they complete the training.
• CPD accreditation which is a formal qualification.
• An official certificate of completion that is downloadable via the certificates section on each learner’s portal.
• A pool of questions which are randomised to ensure that questions are not repeated, and different sets of knowledge are tested.
• A series of interactive questions throughout that allows the user to test their knowledge before sitting for the final test.

Reporting section:

• We have many different reports that can aid the clients during their audits.
• The reports can be generated from broad overviews of learner’s activities down to in-depth details of specific assessment questions.
• All reports have multiple downloadable formats such as excel, PDF or HTML files.

The reports most often used by our clients during audits are:

 

The Learning Path Activity Report for all courses

• This report provides the overall completion rates for all course modules for active learners on the portal.
• The report also shows the status of each course for each learner which can be filtered to show those that have completed the training and those that are still pending.
• It provides information on what courses have been completed including timeframes on how long the course took the learner to complete, start dates and completion dates.
• This report shows the deeper details per individual staff member to show what they have replied to the assessment questions.
• The number of attempts can also be found in this report to show the number of times an assessment was taken.

Assessment Diagnostic Report

• Provides an overview of answers submitted during the final assessment of a module. This report is helpful to spot areas where further training may be required by staff.

Certificate Reports

• Allows the admin user to download all certificates for staff who completed their training to prove that training has been completed.

Email Reports

• Email reports allow the admin user to check when their staff have been emailed. This includes notification emails that are sent directly from the LMS to notify staff on new training, or reminder emails that are sent automatically from the system to notify staff of any pending mandatory training that needs to be completed.
• This report can also be used to include any emails that are sent directly to a staff member’s Line Manager to notify them about members within their team that have not completed their mandatory training.

Custom Reports

• Should there be a specific requirement that a client wants to see visible in any of the above reports, we can add these attributes to suit the needs of the client
• Custom reports can also be built for a client’s own content, including policies, internal documentations and presentations, internal videos, surveys and questionnaires. The list is endless.