Careerforce reduced time spent on document keeping and learning admin by 66%

Careerforce is the Industry Training Organisation (ITO) that supports those working in the health and wellbeing, social and community sectors.

They support workplace-based training, enabling employees to achieve nationally recognized qualifications and deliver superior outcomes across the sector.

The Challenge

The challenge was to develop a robust online platform that could deliver quality experiences to a geographically diverse workforce and assessor pool, in equal measure.

Careerforce needed to develop a strategic direction with a clear roadmap for how Totara was going to meet their specific organizational requirements.

The original implementation of Totara did not gain the desired traction and had high administrative overheads.

Development teams were working on a live system and populating it with a range of content; however, the system was not fully implemented, and the business requirements were still forming, which made it difficult for them to describe a long-term learning strategy, and a shared vision for Totara into the future.

Having already built a strong collaborative relationship, it was natural for Careerforce to engage Like-Minded to help them deliver on their organizational goals.

The Solution

The solution was Aka Toi.

Aka Toi acknowledges the complex relationship between learner and assessor. It manages shifting workloads and seamlessly handles changing relationships between assessors and learners. It achieves this without compromising quality in any of the range of user experiences.

Having fully formed the requirements any business-critical functionality not met within the core product was developed as customizations.

The roadmap supported informed decision-making and made it easy to measure the impact of any changes. Measures of success included:

• An increase in active and completing learners
• Improved administrator experience for assessors and moderators
• More available learning resources.

Freedom to innovate and freedom of choice

Careerforce and Like-Minded took the out-of-the-box LMS, and with the flexibility Totara Learn offers, oriented the experience around assessment and competencies, while keeping it as streamlined and engaging as possible.

Customizations turned complex workplace assessor and learner relationships into well-managed assessment-driven workflows, integrated with the native assessment tools.

Converse activities

This customization allows them to track evidence over a period of time, which then builds towards qualification or competence.

Marker blocks

A new dashboard and custom block give assessors the ability to track and efficiently process assessments.

A new theme

A custom-built theme delivered an intuitive, engaging interface, in alignment with brand. Personalization ensured that learner and assessor experiences fully met the need, without compromising one or the other.

Reporting

Customized reporting provides a process for reporting back to NZQA any standards achieved, including results that were split across multiple assessments within a course. Reports on system engagement identified areas where improvements could be made to assessments and ensured continued assessment integrity.

Freedom to save

Increased efficiency and productivity, and the reduction in costs such as printing and postage, meant real financial gains for Careerforce, when compared to the previous paper-based administration.

Freedom to learn

Careerforce now have, at their fingertips, an intuitive and vibrant visual experience that is backed up by solid learning content, just-in-time performance support resources, and other user value-add resources.

Totara gives them the ability to load content created in a range of authoring tools, offering a wide range of interactivity that teaches, but also checks understanding along the way, and therefore, maximizes learners’ chances of qualification success.

It also allows the organization to stay current and incorporate innovative or different learning solutions as they evolve, without having to question the ability of their LMS in handling the new technology.

The Result

The upgrade and development to create Aka Toi is not only a visual and experiential enhancement, but it has also shown solid benefits including increased efficiency, increased use and completion, leading to more positive outcomes.

The development of Aka Toi has achieved the following changes to the monthly averages:

• The average number of users who have logged in each week has increased by 50% since the year has started, from 2000 to 3,500.
• An 80% increase in the amount of assessment tasks being submitted since the year has started.
• The number of assessments being viewed and started has increased by about 40%, from 4,000 to 7,000 (viewed) and 500 to 800 (started)
• Since the start of the year, module completions per month have more than doubled.
• Document management and record keeping administration were reduced by 66% in the last 12-month period.

The platform continues to be proactively monitored and the roadmap is kept up to date. Growth will continue in line with the evolution of the health and wellbeing sector, and incorporating the latest innovations in online learning.

“Totara Learn, along with the Like-Minded partnership, has enabled us to grow our digital learning and assessment offerings without compromising on the quality and integrity of our assessment process or user experience. Aka Toi is now part of our enterprise-level suite of systems and has grown exponentially since its launch.

As our requirements have grown, the flexibility that Totara offers allows new workflows and fresh thinking to be introduced to our current products.

It was critical that any system we implemented allowed workplace assessment, recognized competency and offered multiple options for our qualifications to be achieved. Totara’s ability to deliver on every one of these was a key factor in our choice and contributed to the success of the project.” – Ian Moir, Manager Digital Capability and Systems