Endeavour Foundation implemented personalised learning with Totara Learn

Endeavour Foundation is a for-purpose organization established in 1951 with a vision to support people with an intellectual disability to live their best life – starting with equal access to education and life-skills learning.

Today they focus on ability – on dreams, goals and potential. They collaborate with their customers to imagine the possibilities and then work together to make them happen.

The Challenge

Endeavour Foundation needed to implement a replacement learning management system (LMS) to manage, track, report and deliver education and training initiatives across Endeavour Foundation services for approximately 3,000 staff, in line with the organization’s evolving L&D strategy.

The business case for the LMS required successful implementation to:

  • Increase engagement and participation through the use of motivational and positive user experience
  • Reduce costs of maintaining in-house software systems by using a SaaS system accessible 24/7 across different time zones and geographic locations
  • Reduce cost for administering training sessions using an LMS to establish virtual classrooms and e-learning options
  • Reduce in-person training sessions and create a seamless training process that doesn’t require in-person instruction and take advantage of different learning models
  • Reduce cost and time delays in preparing and delivering new learning initiatives
  • Include an alternatively branded dashboard for Community Solutions Group subsidiary staff

The Solution

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The LMS deployment design needed to satisfy key criteria for technical flexibility and cater for a broad range of user experience, including:

  • Provide a platform for the delivery of courses and resources to support annual accreditation
  • Provide secure access dependent on user role
  • Two-way integration with Endeavour Foundation key systems such as the HRIS
  • Bulk registration options including automated registration from upstream systems where desired such as from the HRIS
  • Automatic duplicate checking using Androgogic’s Androsync integrations module
  • Consolidation of all course materials and information (for online and face-to-face courses) into one place for easy access by users
  • Automatic generation of mandatory and recommended courses for users
  • Automated management of certifications ("rollover courses") including reporting and notifications

Be easy to navigate including:

  • Consistent look and feel of the system
  • Consistent navigation including placement and structure of menus, clickable buttons and text
  • Personalized dashboards to track learning progress

The LMS architecture needed to address the user experience needs of each audience during a pilot and be adaptable to support change and over the medium to long-term for changing and diverse audiences:

  • Staff
  • Apprentices
  • Trainees
  • Volunteers
  • Contract staff

The user experience needed personalized "dashboards" for each audience to allow different collections of resources and other collateral to be presented according to need. Totara Learn and the Androgogic Totara Plus suite of products provided all the features required to support our objectives.


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 A key requirement was to implement a flexible, scalable and efficient LMS architecture and Endeavour Foundation was able to leverage the sophisticated learning platform developed by Totara Partner Androgogic to achieve and exceed the project goals.

The Results

The initiative has replaced cumbersome manual processes and multiple vendor relationships with seamless automation and one vendor and so targets a positive ROI. With these considerations, the leadership team determined the project to be cost effective and has already initiated further improvements.

The project met key strategic performance targets by providing the required functionality to:

  • Consolidation of all course materials and information (for online and face-to-face courses) into one place for easy access by users
  • Automatic generation of mandatory and recommended courses for users using dynamic audiences which allow assignment of courses against user metadata such as e.g. user role, pre-set competency standards etc.
  • Automated management of certifications (rollover courses) including reporting and notifications
  • Detailed administration options including for example:
  • Consistent branding
  • Creating and editing reports
  • Creating and editing evaluation surveys
  • Creating user cohorts or "Audiences" using dynamic user metadata rules and linking the Audiences to mandatory and self-enrolment in courses, learning plans and interface access permissions including e.g. audience specific dashboards etc.
  • The ability to set up new integrations and manage operational support using Androgogic’s Androsync and Androexport
  • Self-load content without the need for assistance from the vendor
  • Create, edit and schedule multiple notifications including email notices
  • Easy to navigate including:
    • Consistent look and feel of the system
    • Consistent navigation including placement and structure of menus, clickable buttons and text
    • My learning page which filters out completed courses (to a Record of Learning Report)
  • Easier to maintain than resource-intensive legacy systems
  • Well-integrated with other business systems and will:
    • Eliminate or greatly reduce the need for manual data entry for user registration
    • Allow progress information to be visible to the end user in the LMS giving an overall picture of their training
    • Update the HRIS with course completion data
    • Export report data to Power BI

The success of the project resulted in a commitment to a development roadmap to grow the platform to cater for new functionality including:

  • Performance management
  • Appraisals
  • Webinar integration
  • Courseware refresh

The user experience includes personalized "dashboards" for each audience to allow different collections of resources and other collateral to be presented according to need. Totara Learn and the Androgogic Totara Plus suite of products provided all the features required to support our objectives.

A key requirement was to implement a flexible, scalable and efficient LMS architecture and Endeavour Foundation was able to leverage the sophisticated Learning Platform developed by key Educational Technology Partner, Androgogic to achieve and exceed the project goals.

The project was delivered on time and on budget with a project management approach that enabled a fast track implementation without compromising quality. We now have a modern and scalable LMS Architecture that supports our growth. Our staff and management have been very positive with the successful implementation of a central repository, single point of access for all content, inclusion of video, audio, podcasts, animations and SCORM content and personalized dashboards for our staff, apprentices, trainees, volunteers and contract staff

Melissa Bayly

Digital Learning Specialist, Endeavour Foundation