The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) is the trade association for the real estate finance industry in the United States, with member organizations that provide services to both residential and commercial real estate sectors. MBA Education, the training arm of MBA, provides 400 total education offerings to its member organizations, most of which run through their Learning Management System (LMS) at some point. These include a mix of webbased self-study courses, blended learning offerings that transition students from webinars to the LMS for assessments and additional reading, and instructor-led classes offered across the country, with exams then taken in the LMS.

MBA allows students from member companies to access content in multiple different ways. For some member companies, individual students visit MBA.org, purchase a course or annual subscription, and are passed to the LMS to complete their training. However, for other member companies, MBA offers a bulk enrolment option that would allow, for example, 200 students to be enrolled in a course, and would then require access for a training manager to see their progress, track their grades, and access certificates of completion for each student.

"We wanted to both streamline and simplify the process of enrolling students in courses for our member organizations, as well as enable their training managers to track student progress and access certificates of completion, while providing the most student-friendly experience possible when inside the LMS", explained Dewite North, Associate Vice President, Information Technology.

Commenting on MBA's new learning management system, David Upbin, Associate Vice President, MBA Education Operations and Programming & MBA Strategy, said, "A lot of our struggles with our previous LMS had to do with getting students into the LMS either as individuals via our retail channel, or via bulk enrolments for a large cohort of students from a member organization into a course. TopClass LMS solves our problems for both channels, facilitating both a corporate and private training approach."

As MBA continues work to integrate TopClass LMS into its technology ecosystem, the association is finding that WBT Systems provides a single point of support for its off-the-shelf integrations with all major technology solutions for associations. "This differentiation between TopClass LMS and other vendors was not something that we knew at the time of selection", noted North. "It was not something that we thought to ask during the selection process, but it is proving very helpful as we integrate the LMS with our other systems."

TopClass LMS by WBT Systems provides a connected and personalized experience for learners in a powerful, flexible learning management system that is purpose built for association education and certification. For Trade Associations that manage and sell content to organizations providing education or certification to their learners, TopClass LMS provides a robust and scalable platform, with powerful e-commerce capabilities that enable Associations to maximize non-dues revenue.