Berry Street supports a diverse learner audience with a flexible LMS that grows with their needs

Berry Street is an independent community service organisation located in Victoria, Australia, who works with vulnerable children, young people and families experiencing hardship or challenges by providing safe homes, healing trauma and strengthening families.

The Challenge

A thorough review of Berry Street’s previous LMS indicated that it didn’t have the flexibility to meet Berry Street’s needs for a flexible learning ecosystem that integrated with a growing suite of HR and practice-based applications.

The new LMS would need to support a varied audience of learners, including residential and home-based care workers, family violence workers, community workers, therapeutic staff, educational staff and corporate staff.

They created an RFQ with a detailed Specifications list, and sought submissions from a diverse range of five vendors.

The Solution

 Through previous experience with open source LMS solutions and with support from Berry Street Information Systems, Berry Street’s L&D specialist knew that there were benefits in selecting an open source learning platform.

One of the vendors on their shortlist was Sprout Labs who proposed using Totara Lear as the basis for their new learning solution.

Once Berry Street made the decision to go-ahead with Sprout Labs’ solution, Berry Street and Sprout Labs collaboratively designed a project plan to ensure the development and implementation of a system that would meet all Berry Street’s essential requirements as well a number of nice-to-haves.

With tight timelines until the Go-Live date, Berry Street and Sprout Labs set about making it happen.  In terms of the system’s functions, analytics and flexible, customisable reporting were important, along with being able to provide managers with visibility on what their teams have completed and what learning is outstanding. In addition to this, customized, ‘pre-loaded’ learning programs were important to ensure learners were across the learning they needed to complete.

Furthermore, the ability to manage face-to-face learning online was very important to Berry Street. Staff are now able to book into sessions within the LMS itself through the display of all face to face events within a centralised online calendar. 

In terms of online learning, the course catalogue is intuitive and easy to navigate, this makes it quick and easy for learners to access the learning they need. There are 18 pieces of online learning in the LMS so far with topics such as Privacy training to Working with Children who have experienced trauma.

The e-learning is accessible anywhere, anytime on any device, and is scalable meaning that it can grow with Berry Street’s needs.

The Results

Updating our Learning Management System and creating the Berry Street Learning Hub has provided us an opportunity to create a new culture of learning, while also enabling us to make responsive changes as we continue to evolve and grow. Thank you Sprout Labs and Totara for helping us to make this to happen! – Aliki Christou, Learning Innovations Consultant, Berry Street

Berry Street’s Totara Learn platform launched in July 2017, with around 1,200 learners using the platform initially. The platform is being used by employees across the organisation allowing staff from different programs to access their required compliance training and ongoing learning.

One of the key successes of the Totara Learn implementation has been the transformation in employees’ attitude towards learning.

Learners are increasingly exploring the system, asking questions and discussing the functionality and content organically. The platform has generated a renewed interest in learning, in part thanks to the inviting look and feel and user friendliness of the LMS.  The platform also integrates very well with OKTA, which feeds Berry Street user data by pulling it from their central Active Directory. It houses all of their staffing data and feeds into the LMS, meaning Totara Learn has entered seamlessly into Berry Street’s existing ecosystem.

The next step for Berry Street is to open up learning within the LMS to an external audience, bringing face-to-face training, seminars, conferences and online learning to the sector.

Berry Street is delighted with the services of Sprout Labs, as it was clear from the very start of the project that they fully understood Totara Learn and Berry Street’s requirements, and were highly responsive and helpful throughout the entire process. They were approachable, skilled and knowledgeable, and this continues to be a highly successful partnership.