The New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) is a Government agency that is responsible for overseeing the local administration of real property assessments. In New York State, property is assessed locally by assessors who must be certified. With approximately 1,200 assessors state-wide, ORPS is and re-certifications, while also ensuring that the annual continuing education requirement is met for all assessors. Failure to attain and maintain certification is grounds for removal from office.
Certification of assessors posed several challenges for ORPS –
- Time away from the office – assessment courses can take anywhere from 3 to 6 days per class to complete and with the many demands on the assessors, spending extended periods away from the office to attend training was extremely time consuming and prohibitive.
- Rising training costs – ORPS must reimburse training related expenses to assessors. These expenses include travel, accommodation, food, and tuition costs. ORPS knew that moving from classroom based courses to e-Learning would significantly reduce expense reimbursements.
The Solution
ORPS needed a solution that would enable them to deliver training to a greater number of assessors cost effectively, while at the same time reduce the need for assessors to spend extended periods of time away from home. ORPS knew that having the ability to offer a combination of online learning and classroom training would address their specific challenges.
ORPS needed a system to deliver web-based courses to manage the schedule of classroom training and testing. In addition ORPS also offers the option for self study where manuals are mailed to the students to study prior to taking an exam. ORPS selected WBT’s TopClass Learning Management System as the platform that would power the new web-based training initiative.
Initially ORPS was concerned that when moving to web-based courses that interaction, discussion and the general informal learning that is experienced in the classroom would be lost. However, ORPS has been able to use TopClass discussion threads and collaboration to ensure that a level of interaction is maintained for web-based courses. This has facilitated both peer-to-peer and student-to-mentor real time interaction and has proved to be highly popular with assessors and instructors alike.
Today ORPS offers 50% of their training courses online and half in the classroom. Online classes include many basic courses such as The Fundamentals of Data Collection, Assessment Administration, Mass Appraisal or Sales Data Management. Assessors simply view the training schedule online, register for a particular course, selecting either a web-based or classroom offering, which includes an exam at a specific location — the process is efficient, cost effective and convenient for assessors to complete.
Results
Since offering training courses online ORPS has achieved the following results
- For those assessors taking all of the online courses available for certification, ORPS saves approximately $1,200 per assessor in expense reimbursements.
- ORPS has estimated that return on investment for TopClass will be achieved in a mere 3 years.
- ORPS can now train a greater number of assessors more effectively by offering a training service and schedule that is convenient and requires assessors to spend only a fraction of their time away from their busy schedules.
- The overall pass rate for participants has improved to a 98.5% pass level for web based courses. This represents a significant increase.
- The number of assessors choosing the self study option has been falling steadily each year with web based proving a more popular choice – this is saving ORPS the administration effort and cost associated with printing, packaging and mailing manuals to assessors.
- Municipalities have been able to send their assessment staff to the online training thus saving the municipality money on expenses.
What our customer said
“There are many benefits to using the TopClass LMS including being able to offer our assessors certification training 24/7, but more importantly for those assessors that take all of their training online, it saves ORPS approximately $1,200 per assessor in expense reimbursements.”
Cyndy Knox, Curriculum Training Manager, The New York State Office of Real Property Services
1-877-WBT-7700
