Iris Hadar: Education is a right, not a privilege

Iris Hadar is an adult education institution with a foundation built on social inclusion. Dating back to the 1800’s, the school was founded by a group of visually impaired people who created their own path into the workplace, at a time when the labour market excluded them. Today, the message of inclusion still rings clear, as Vice Principal Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt puts it: "It doesn't matter who you are. Regardless of background, language proficiency, or diagnoses, you have the right to be a part of society and to influence it."

"The idea is that we want to give people the opportunity to educate themselves and get a job. All of us who work here really fight for this. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to be part of society and to influence it."

Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt
Vice Principal, Course Developer & LMS Administrator, Iris Hadar 

Iris Hadar provides a comprehensive educational and career pathway that ranges from SFI (Swedish for Immigrants), through primary and secondary adult education and vocational training in health, social care, and childcare, all the way to targeted support services designed to help individuals successfully enter the workforce.  

They have a diverse student body, with very different lives, often studying fully remote. Some are newly arrived immigrants, others are long-term unemployed adults seeking requalification, people who could not finish high school, or professionals changing career direction. Many students have diagnosed needs including visual impairment, ADHD and dyslexia, or have care responsibilities for family or relatives. These students require a lot of flexibility in their studies.  

The Challenge: Breaking Barriers for Education

Iris Hadar's adult learners juggle work, family and caregiving alongside their studies, and learn almost entirely at a distance. Keeping them motivated, supported and genuinely included, regardless of background, language level or disability, demands a digital environment that gives room for flexibility, is accessible for all learners and helps teachers be present for their students. Remote studies provide the opportunity to study at your own pace and adapt study time around other responsibilities. Though, with a busy life and not a physical school to go to, it can be difficult for students who don’t have good study habits. For these students, a clear course structure and teacher presence is crucial to keeping them engaged and helping them graduate from their courses.    

In 2022 Iris Hadar decided to move away from itslearning for a free LMS. They quickly changed back in 2023, when they found that it didn’t have the capabilities their teachers and students needed. Its structure was simple but not intuitive: students struggled to find their assignments, resources and feedback. The platform also lacked in-course communication tools, accessibility support and meaningful activity tracking. One visually impaired teacher found the free platform entirely unusable, and students were complaining.  Students listed study-related problems, such as the material being too difficult or language barriers, as reasons why they dropped out. However dedicated and accomplished the teachers at Iris Hadar were, without the right digital tools, inclusion in education, especially for remote students, became too difficult.  Teachers started their day with a knot in their stomach as they knew there were 300 to 500 emails in their inbox from students needing help with the platform. 

"When we talk about including everyone in society and in education, that is not possible with a platform that does not work for that. Accessibility simply wasn’t part of the free LMS."

Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt
Iris Hadar

The Process: Digitalisation is crucial for inclusion

Solving the challenges of inclusion and motivation for remote adult education starts with the digital environment. Used correctly, technology can be crucial for inclusion, but only if it is built with accessibility in mind. The platform needs to be clean and intuitive, with a clear pathway from start to finish. This matters especially for neurodivergent students, and for students with visual impairments who rely on keyboard navigation and the ability to listen to assignments and teaching materials. But a structured, predictable course environment benefits every student. 

Because Iris Hadar’s student body is so diverse, teachers also need to be able to differentiate tasks and adapt course content to each student’s needs, and to do that well, they need the right tools for teacher presence and student interaction. 

• Course architecture: In 2025, Iris Hadar restructured their course architecture by using the itslearning Planner. The students get a clean and simple path to follow. Chrystel compares the course structure to a physical binder with index tabs: each theme occupies one plan, and students move downward through readings, tasks and videos in a single, predictable path. A clear structure is essential for the students to keep motivated throughout the course duration. In itslearning the teachers can copy and adjust the standard assignment making it easy to differentiate the assignments and teaching materials to individual students or groups. 
• Accessibility: Accessibility is crucial for digital educational tools. itslearning makes it possible for the course developers to create courses with universal design, so it is accessible for all students regardless of their backgrounds, or physical or cognitive impairments. Chrystel points to students with visual impairments as a clear example, itslearning makes it possible for them to study using keyboard navigation and the immersive reader that allows them to listen to their assignments and course materials. This was not possible in the free platform that wasn’t designed with keyboard navigation and screen readers in mind. For Iris Hadar, this is not a technical detail, it is a question of inclusion. A platform that does not support these needs is a platform that excludes students from education entirely.

   

• Teacher presence: Teachers at Iris Hadar are encouraged to open every course with a short video on the notice board, introducing themselves and welcoming students to the course. This is the student's first point of contact with their teacher, and it sets the tone for everything that follows. Teachers also use the notice board to post their available hours, so students know exactly when and how they can reach out in the itslearning chat. The teachers also use the itslearning Teams integration to hold one-on-one meetings with their students, to navigate them through the course, and provide a safe space for the students to share what's on their mind. To encourage the students to collaborate and help each other they also have mandatory group discussions in itslearning and over Teams calls. 
  
  Small gestures matters: a Monday message wishing students a good week, a Friday sign-off before the weekend. This takes moments to write but can mean a great deal to students studying remote.  
  
  
• Student follow up: At Iris Hadar, each teacher has about 200 students, so they need good reporting tools to be able to check in on how their students are progressing with their studies. Chrystel calls the itslearning 360 reports a “Goldmine for us teachers!”, they can easily go into the reports and see if a student are stuck, or haven’t been active lately.  The teacher can then be proactive and check in with the student, and provide support to help them progress and make sure they don’t fall behind or drop out.  
  
  When it comes to feedback on assignments, the goal is always for it to feel personal, ideally delivered as an audio or video file rather than plain text, so students are in no doubt that a real teacher has read their work and taken the time to respond. The students can respond and discuss their feedback right underneath it, which is a reliable way to know a student has truly understood the assignment and feedback. 

"When we build relations with our students, we don’t only increase motivation, but we create a space where students feel safe to come to us teachers with questions, or if they just need to talk.”

Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt,
Iris Hadar

 

The Result: Technology that delivers on the promise of inclusion 

Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt emphasises how the Planner tool has made it a lot easier to create courses in a pedagogical manner.  Since introducing the Planner tool in August 2025, Iris Hadar has seen a 7% decrease in study drop-out rates and a 4% drop in failing grades, while the proportion of passing grades has risen by 3% over the same period. The number of course participants has also nearly tripled across the three years Iris Hadar has used itslearning. The new systems, especially the learning platform and the planning tool, have given Iris Hadar both the technical capacity to handle this significantly larger volume of students, and the tools to give them a better study structure. The nature of drop-outs has also changed. Despite the increase in course participants, the number of students dropping out due to study-related problems, such as the material being too difficult or language barriers, has actually decreased.

Communication and student follow up has also significantly improved by returning to the itslearning LMS. The 360 reports easily show the teachers how much time the student has spent on their activities, giving the teachers the data they need to reach out to students at risk of falling behind. itslearning gives teachers multiple ways to stay in contact with their students. The notice board keeps the whole class informed, while feedback on assignments can spark a direct conversation about learning goals. The chat function keeps individual communication quick and manageable, and notifications mean teachers never have to chase activity manually.  
 
Unlike the days of 300 emails every morning, messages in itslearning are focused and specific, a question about a concept, a request for an extension due to illness. With the free LMS, the questions were about the platform itself: where is my assignment? Why can't I find my feedback? How do I submit? When the course architecture is clear, those questions disappear entirely.  Together the clear structure, efficient course adaption and communication make it easier for both teachers and students. Chrystel summarises it well:

"If you want to increase teacher presence, you need itslearning. If you want to differentiate tasks, reach your students and adapt your courses to specific learners, choose itslearning. If you want to truly follow up your students, know exactly what they are doing and be proactive about drop-out, then itslearning is the right choice. You deliver a platform that gives us the possibility to do our job for remote students, as if we were in a classroom.”

Chrystel Sinclair-Brandt,
Iris Hadar

 

 

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