A learning environment for Rosmolodezh’s “More Than a Journey” program
A unified digital learning environment on the Talent Rocks platform helped train more than 8500 program participants across different time zones and unite them into a close-knit community of “guides to meaning.”
Client
The “More Than a Journey” program is run by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) as part of the federal project “Making Tourism Products More Accessible.”
In 2023–2024, more than 8,500 people from all over the country joined the “Tour Guide School” — a project of Rosmolodezh’s “More Than a Journey” program that selects and trains specialists to work at major federal events.
All of them became part of the “Guides of Meaning” community. Its members now work as tour guides at the Russia International Exhibition and Forum, and in March they introduced tens of thousands of guests of the World Youth Festival at the Sirius Federal Territory to our country and its opportunities.
Our “Guides of Meaning” are a unique and challenging audience. The program trains people from many backgrounds: school teachers, extracurricular educators, experienced tour guides and those just starting out in the profession. Almost all of them have a main job or are studying. On top of that, participants are spread across 89 regions and different time zones.
To bring these people together in a single learning space, we need a clearly structured training system and a process that is as comfortable for them as possible.
Challenge
To deliver the training program, we needed a digital platform that met several key criteria:
- Simplicity and convenience for participants, so that anyone can log in to the platform and start learning in as few steps as possible
- Support for blended learning. Participants can watch lectures live or on demand
- A simple course editor that quickly turns recorded video lectures into an e-course — with extra materials, tests and assignments
- The ability to give participants feedback, communicate and build a community without switching to third-party messengers
- The ability to post additional materials, both downloadable and view-only on the platform
- Flexible testing features to run the final test at a scheduled time
- Personal certificates of program completion in the user profile
Another key requirement was to use only fully Russian-made software in the program and to store participants’ personal data on secure servers in Russia.
The Talent Rocks platform fully met the organizers’ requirements. Participants got a comfortable learning environment, and organizers got a convenient, flexible tool for their tasks.
The Talent Rocks platform became a convenient tool for delivering our training program. With it, we trained more than 1000 tour guides for the Russia Exhibition and Forum and more than 300 for the World Youth Festival.
We held lectures online, in a synchronous format, but some people watched them asynchronously, as recordings. Within 2 days after each lecture, we uploaded the edited videos to the platform as e-courses. After completing the courses, participants were assigned a test, which they also took on the platform, and received certificates.
Participants could ask questions and get answers right on the platform at any time — the entire learning space shared a single information environment.
Next steps
The “Guides of Meaning” training system and digital learning environment have proven their worth. Rosmolodezh plans to develop the program further and train not only tour guides but also instructional designers and project coordinators.
In addition, many more forums and events lie ahead where program graduates will be in demand.