Aligning a learning ethos to the vision of the Key Assets organisation

Key Assets is a non-government, not-for-profit agency providing foster care, family support and disability services across Australia.  It is part of the Martin James Foundation, a Charity based in the UK delivering positive social services solutions globally for vulnerable children and families.

The Challenge

Implementing a versatile solution to cater for many learning needs

Key Assets had a requirement to implement a Learning Management System to align with their vision and support their people across their international group locations; 15 companies in 9 countries. This need arose amidst an organisation restructure, and a need for improvement from limited access to an existing LMS under the previous entity of Core Assets.

The primary purpose was to provide a single flexible system for staff and foster carers to complete corporate and HR induction and role specific skill and knowledge development. The system hosts e-learning resources as well as resource repositories for HR and operational policy and procedure documentation.

Innovation was key for the system journey to support one system resourcing the different companies that presented more differences than similarities. Support was based around language and ensuring KARL (Key Assets Resource Learning) catered for differing learning requirements and resource constraints.

Key Assets wanted each company to have ownership of their part of KARL with the onus placed on them to administer their own users, courses, calendars, reporting, communication and information directly relating to their specific needs.

The Solution

Rolling out a phased solution with future innovation in mind

For the last year, Key Assets has been working closely with Kineo to provide a fully branded Totara Lear (LMS) with tenanted sites and support.

The LMS, known within Key Assets as KARL, is rolling out as a phased solution to meet specific induction and learning needs. Kineo customised the theme, dashboards and search catalogue to ensure the system met the needs of each company.

“KARL provides me with the confidence to navigate my learner journey/experience through the online portal, with all of my courses, materials and resources all in the one place. I love the interactive element to this work and knowing that all of the help I need can be found via the KARL dashboard.”

The multi tenancy system has provided Key Assets with the capacity to address the challenge of supporting an international system with unique county and company specific learning environments whilst managing system and tenant level administration.

Open Source has allowed Key Assets to plugin (collapsed topics) allowing them to store resources, policies and procedures in a central location with enhanced user experience. This is especially valuable to assist with best practice and audit requirements to ensure our staff and carers provide quality services to vulnerable children in society. In the 12 months since launch the LMS has been provided to 962 staff and foster carers in Australia and New Zealand. Providing an in-house, bespoke e-learning platform for foster carers is an innovation Key Assets is proud of. Key Assets has started the process with tenancies in the UK, Ireland and Finland. Further international tenancies will follow.

Key Assets has also partnered with Go1 to access their premium subscription, allowing us to curate relevant courses using the Totara plugin Content Marketplace. Within our limited resources, this allows us to provide a more expansive content library to our staff and carers.

“Using KARL has changed the way I approach and think about learning in the workplace. I love using the interactive dashboard, being able to view my progress and knowing that all of the resources I need are all in the one place.” – Vicky Rados, Staff Learner

At the recent Totara conference in Melbourne there was surprise over the rate of materials and learning since LMS implementation given our size and e-learning team, which consists of a manager and an e-learning specialist. The future goals are to continue to expand and innovate through maximising opportunity within the platform through a focus on learning content, adding further multimedia resources.

The Results

Achieving efficiency, flexibility and compliance

Providing an in-house, bespoke elearning platform for foster carers is an innovation Key Assets is proud of.

The future goals are to continue to expand and innovate through maximising opportunity within the platform through a focus on learning content, adding further multimedia resources.

“Love, love, love this course and how well the young people articulated their feelings and needs and how much they want to be in the decision making about “their lives”. Fantastic and a resource I know I will go and listen to on a regular basis.” Learner – Foster Carer

Key Assets has benefited from all of Totara’s ‘four freedoms’ gaining:

• Freedom to learn: This can be seen in sharing best practice, development of localised content and increased compliance on cultural competency training by 60% within the year.
• Freedom to Innovate: An easy interactive user experience with use of video content with dashboards for different audience types and 30% manager efficiency with a shift to an online HR induction process.
• Freedom of choice: Ability to partner with a range of Totara partners for learning content and platform customisation.
•  Freedom to save: Due to the shared subscription costs Totara and Kineo offered the best value for money for our international tenanted system

“The Totara platform has enabled our organisation to maximise the learning outcomes of our national and international staff and carers with limited administration staff. The platform has allowed us to structure our international sub-tenancies, learner profiles, HR imports from other data systems, dynamic audiences, dashboards, course content, catalogue searching, management and reporting requirements with our values and learning outcomes as central. The ability to manage and navigate the platform and its many features with ease has allowed us to concentrate on providing learning content and resources which has provided a rich and rewarding learner experience. The ability to add customisations with our Totara partner Kineo has also been beneficial as our user requirements evolve. The platform has enabled flexibility for Key Assets in staying current with the latest trends in learning and digital media technologies.”