In Part 1 of this blog post, we reviewed the early days of Eager-to-Learn. In this post, we look to the program’s future.

Eager-to-Learn (ETL) began 20 years ago as a pioneering online learning program for early educators and continues to innovate and grow. One program priority is to keep addressing equity and accessibility through continuous quality improvement. Current program director Marissa Albritton says, “I feel like we are making significant headway on being inclusive. We are offering more and more topics translated into Spanish, and also Somali and Hmong. For the first time this year, we offered an instructor-led course entirely in Spanish through video chat. We are also transcribing the audio in the entire library of Anytime Learning courses for those who are hard of hearing or have visual learning preferences.”

Technology updates also continue. A new Learning Management System platform was launched in 2019. Many new platform enhancements dropped at the end of 2021, including a redesign of the classrooms, global navigation, and help and support pages to be more user-friendly. More courses now have a video chat option, rather than simply text chat. “We are continuously working toward staying user-friendly and intuitive and being a positive learning experience, especially for those who have to do online learning, but are more comfortable learning in person,” says Marissa. “We also continue to focus on how we can better support our users, and scaffold their success by using technology tools such as automated text messaging for reminders and resources.”

The Covid pandemic showed the critical need for high-quality online education for early childhood professionals. ETL has and will continue to meet that need.