Accipio + Major UK Sports Organising Body

The Challenge

Having an effective learning platform is integral to delivering the our comprehensive learning and development plans. We had a platform in place, but this was not delivering to the required standard. The platform needed to be improved in terms of configuration, user-experience and new bespoke functionality.
We were working with an ex-Totara partner, and looking for a partner that provided a high-quality/responsive help-desk support, but also pro-active consulting engagement (with regular workshops and check-ins) to ensure the system supported their business requirements on an ongoing basis.
After a robust selection process, we used the “Freedom of Choice” and selected Accipio as their new Totara partner to tap into their deep expertise and innovative extensions (including apprenticeship delivery plugins).

What we did

Accipio upgraded the platform to the full Totara TXP Talent Experience Platform suite with supporting App. Together, we worked to deliver a world-class platform which includes the below.

Totara Learn:

• Multi-tenancy for Club level customisation and spaces. Full multi-tenancy enabling club branding (e.g. Arsenal) and pages/pathways maintained by club staff.
• Programme delivery with adaptive learner journeys. End-to-end learning, assessment and tracking of core education programmes (e.g. BTEC). Content is dynamically assigned to learners, and the site makes full use of courses, certifications, programmes and bespoke dashboard rendered for different roles/organisations.
• User segregation. Organisation/position hierarchy and groups create a student/tutor/parent relationship so tutors and parents can provide support and feedback. There is devolved administrative responsibility for club managers.
• Event management. Full event management, including course booking, joining instructions, location management, attendance and virtual classrooms.

Totara Engage:

• Social learning. The system fosters simple and intuitive social/peer-to-peer learning such as workspaces, playlists, discussion walls, video posts, forums, followers, liking and bookmarking. This includes the ability to follow and share user-generated content and have recommended learning based on machine learning.

Totara Perform:

• Review activities/appraisals. Users mark progress in subject areas against goals/competencies (subjects) which can be informally tracked through the review tool by multiple reviewers (and viewed by parents).
• Evidence and competency management. Evidence of prior learning, logging external qualifications and competency management.

Freedom to innovate: Because Totara is open-source, we could extend the platform for their bespoke requirements:

• End-to-end apprenticeship and qualification delivery, including:
  • Showing progress against qualification criteria and a gap analysis (with views for tutors and managers);
  • Building an ePortfolio with tags to include in EPA;
  • Mapping users to qualifications and tutors/mentors;
  • Recording off-the-job training (OTJT) and CPD;
  • Formal progress reviews and visits/communications logging; and
  • Initial assessment and diagnostics.
• Video capability. Deployed a video upload, sharing and streaming/transcoding facility with built-in player, enabling users to upload large video files for assignment submissions.
• Custom course format. Deployed “Immerse” course format which creates a beautifully engaging course automatically.
• Content repository. Integrated content library where a single resource can be pulled into a course and tracked centrally.
• Other integrations. Integration with external systems to receive user data feeds. Set-up Single-Sign-On and plagiarism detection integration (Turnitin).

The results

The platform has just under 10,000 users and is used widely across the organisation and by members. Over the last three months there have been 130,000 pageviews (approximately 500,000 per annum), and almost 2,000 pieces of evidence have been uploaded by users. Feedback on the new platform has been brilliant, and new parts of the business are engaging very positively again.

The solution’s success is centred on all of the four freedoms:

• Freedom to learn, engage and perform. The site makes full use of the Totara 13 Learning Experience Platform suite, from complex user journeys with multi-tenancy to social learning (engage) and performance activities (reviews and evidence);

• Freedom to innovate. We were able to extend the platform for their unique requirements. This included a number of integrations and an end-to-end apprenticeship delivery with video solution.

• Freedom to save. We reduced costs by over £30,000 per annum compared with the previous supplier. We were able to optimise hosting and other arrangements, whilst ensuring the system was fast, reliable and robust.

• Freedom of choice. Finally, they had the freedom of choice to switch partners to create a world-class learning platform to support their clubs and other stakeholders.