Stiftung Kinder forschen leverages Totara LMS to promote young talent

The non-profit Stiftung Kinder forschen (Little Scientists Foundation) is committed to early education in the fields of mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology (STEM) as well as sustainability. It aims to empower children of nursery and primary school age to act sustainably and strengthen them for their future.

Together with local network partners and trainers, the foundation offers an educational program with the help of which pedagogical specialists and teachers can accompany children in their discovery, research and learning skills in a qualified manner.

The Challenge

The outdated existing LMS of the non-profit Stiftung Kinder forschen was to be replaced by a new learning platform in order to expand the range of courses offered, facilitate course enrolment, and at the same time reduce the effort in creating, managing and monitoring online learning for online editors. The customer wanted the new campus to provide a wide variety of learning content and a modern and intuitive surface. At the same time, optimized usability should make it easier for learners to use the courses offered in a targeted manner.

In order to meet future requirements and increasing usage, a high-performance, scalable infrastructure had to be set up.

The migration of existing courses and profiles as well as the connection to the CRM system Salesforce were essential requirements in order to advertise courses fitting the learning history.

“It’s always worth coming back to the campus! You always find something new to think about, download and share!” – Teacher from a FRÖBEL daycare centre

The Solution

The use of the Totara learning platform makes it possible to clearly display the complete inventory and structure of the training courses offered so that learners get relevant information at a glance. To this end, all learning units with their individual formats are allocated in respective courses. Users can therefore see immediately how the courses are structured and they can easily choose a suitable offer from a whole range of courses and materials.

The search engine Solr has been implemented and configured specifically for the foundation’s content types and learning elements to enable precisely targeted searching. This allows users to find suitable courses quickly and easily.

Via their dashboard in the course platform, learners have a direct overview of their current courses and their own progress. The dashboard allows them to return easily to recently accessed courses and seamlessly continue their learning path, thereby supporting a targeted, focused learning experience.

In the continuing education of educators and teachers Stiftung Kinder forschen relies on community and mutual exchange. This is why in addition to Totara Learn the Totara Engage collaboration platform is an important component of the LMS. Users can exchange ideas, upload files, give feedback and collaborate easily in a targeted manner in various groups. Totara Engage also makes it easier to provide various resources such as short videos, documents or texts.

In order to ensure a continuous reference to learners’ previous learning successes, the migration of the more than 60,000 existing user profiles with their individual learning histories was an integral part of the project plan for the switch to the new learning platform and the transformation of the IT infrastructure.

Via a specially developed API selected courses or the entire learning catalogue can be made available to other websites and learning platforms – without having to duplicate content. The first integration is already in productive use on the foundation’s own website. Another integration is planned for the MINT Campus in Q2 2024.

The connection to the Salesforce CRM system enables the foundation to communicate with learners in a targeted manner and successfully market the courses on campus.

The administration and management of target groups also makes course development easier. The target groups make it easier to enrol specialists and teachers in learning programs or recurring training courses – conveniently in the administration interface or automated via rules based on profile properties.

The Result

Thanks to the introduction of Totara as a comprehensive platform for social learning, communication and service, the Stiftung Kinder forschen has expanded its distribution of educational offers and pedagogical resources as well as the stakeholder*s continuous qualification. The new LMS realized with Totara enables educational professionals to participate in online courses and webinars, and also use blended learning.

The platform promotes exchange and networking as a “community of practice”, whereby the participating professionals gain valuable practical suggestions and tips for their work. At the same time, the community functionalities of Totara provide lively insights into the everyday life of care centers and elementary schools for the Stiftung Kinder forschen so that the initiative can develop tailored new offers.

The Campus offers a wide range of scientifically-grounded courses and materials free of charge, allowing the users to precisely tailor their individual learning path and choose their learning hours flexibly. The foundation’s goal of appealing to a large number of learners through optimized usability, intuitive interfaces and an improved offer has been successfully achieved. Since its launch, almost 20,000 learners have already used the platform for their training. The requirements in terms of simplification and technology were also met when the platform went live in May 2023.

The “Introduction of the Learning Hub” project ran from the beginning of 2022 to the 31st of December 2023. The flexible access and personalized learning experience now better support specialists in their continuous professional education in line with their day-to-day work.

The foundation is using Totara’s added features to build a community of interested educators. The group & engagement features have been well received and complement the foundation’s portfolio. An important finding is that as the content in the community increases, so does the interaction within the target groups, with the survey tool receiving particularly positive feedback.

Around 1,000 interested educational professionals currently register on the new LMS every month. In 2023, over 50 online courses and webinars were made available via the Campus. In the difficult environment of challenging conditions for German educational institutions, the new Campus has made a significant contribution in consolidating and stabilizing the numbers of successful online course completions. By the end of the launch year the recorded course completions had already reached a total of 13,276.