This is one in an occasional series of stories about new and existing Sheboygan-area businesses reaching a milestone. Today’s Q&A is with Michael Finney, with Enlightenment Learning.When was your business founded?
Originally, I owned and ran a training delivery service known as Open Public Safety Institute, which provided online training solely for firefighters and law enforcement agencies. When the bottom dropped out of budgets for some government agencies Tryg Jacobson of Jake’s Café got me to think of the e-learning component to be more than just something I could do for public safety, but to take the platforms to the private sectors too. So in early 2013 my focus shifted to the private sector and we became Elightenment Learning, a platform hosting and course design service. Our clients span the globe and we have created courses and web sites in several different languages.
What does your business do, what services do you provide or what do you make?
This is where I get really excited. We are a unique company in online learning because we bring together services that typically are not mixed. We strive to revolutionize e-learning and web design. We help businesses bring their training programs online, generate online courses and build web sites to make them more interactive and user-friendly.
Most companies in online learning provide one of two services: platform development, also called the learning management system; or course design, which is creating the courses that students and teachers use. Our uniqueness is that we actually provide both. A manufacturer, corporation, school, university, or organization can come to us and we can work with them from development of the platform, to creation of the courses, to rolling out the delivery. We cover all the bases. Few other companies offer this complete level of service.
Being a global company also affords us the challenges of overcoming language barriers, cultural differences, and learning styles. We have to be flexible to meet all of these needs.
