Historical Perspective

Mary Aquino · December 2020

If you can remember back when there was only one Blackbaud University curriculum for Financial Edge, does that mean you’re old? I’m just asking for a friend. I mean, having historical perspective doesn’t make someone old, right? Again, asking for a friend.

So, yes. I was “here” when we had just a single curriculum for Financial Edge, and I was part of the team that broke that set of curriculum into two … Financial Edge and Financial Edge NXT. How the curriculum has grown and changed over the years is a story I love to look back on. And I look forward to how it will grow and change in the future.

See, it’s my job to help chart the course of the Blackbaud University curriculum for Financial Edge and Financial Edge NXT. Not sure if you noticed, but we’ve been making some key changes in the past 12 months in an effort to expedite your learning. We’ve done a few things:

Added quarterly Feature Focus courses that highlight one feature in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT and provide you 90 minutes of learning and trying out that feature
Broken up some of the existing classes into shorter (90-minute) sessions
Retired content that was not meeting your needs
Added courses to cover content gaps
Simplified course names

I truly hope you see these changes as positives. The plans for 2021 are to keep making helpful changes to the curriculum, which will improve your experience and encourage you to continue learning. What changes do we have planned for you?

New Fundamentals content: We’ve created four 90-minute Fundamentals level courses that start at the very beginning with logging into Financial Edge NXT and provide an overview of how the system “thinks.” Then, we dig into the makeup of records and reports. Each session gives you a foundation on which to build your Financial Edge NXT knowledge. While there is an assumed order in which you will take the Fundamentals series (see below), you can still choose your own path.

New types of content: eLearning with practice exercises that align with Fundamentals (more information coming soon)
Certification focused on skills: We heard you. Not everyone who uses Financial Edge NXT needs to understand the concepts of how Financial Edge NXT thinks. But everyone does need functional skills such as adding new records, managing lists, and building basic reports. Therefore, the 2021 Fundamentals Exam focuses on records and reports while lightly touching on overall system concepts. Passing the Fundamentals level certification exam now indicates you have a baseline knowledge of how to add and edit records and reports.
Curricula for the individual systems: Once you have passed your Fundamentals level certification, you can pick the series of courses (or individual courses) that best fit your job roles.

We will continue to offer quarterly Feature Focus courses and build additional intermediate courses to meet your training needs.

If you’re wondering how you can let me know what types of courses would benefit your journey, you can always comment here on this blog, connect to me through the Blackbaud Community, or email me directly at mary.aquino@blackbaud.com.

Sometimes having a bit of historical perspective may not mean you’re old, but instead that you can see the growth and change over time.

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Historical Perspective

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