With over 20,000 learners, The Career Academy is an internationally recognised online education provider who partners with industry to help learners advance their careers. At that scale, operational efficiency goes hand in hand with seamless, compelling learning experiences.
As their Totara partner, our job is to ensure their learning platform achieves both goals – compelling learning and an efficient operating environment. We’ve recently cracked a challenge that’s an issue for many training providers working in the digital space, and we think we’ve done it in a pretty elegant way – even if we do say so ourselves.
The challenge is around managing enrolments and the duration of courses. Learners sign up for a course with a set duration, and can extend if they don’t complete in time. Enrolments are handled automatically, but the trick was to automate course expiry and extension processes. Our solution? – a custom designed Programme Extension plugin.
The plugin has two automations, akin to the two sides of a coin. On one side, on the course expiry date it automatically limits learner access; on the other, it automatically re-enables access for students who take up extensions.
With the auto-run extension, The Career Academy doesn’t have to check every programme manually – the plugin monitors enrolments, ensuring completion within the specified time. If a learner falls behind, the plugin places them in a restricted role. The learner still had access to the programme but with limited read-only capabilities. After the learner extends their course, access is regained automatically.
This simple solution enhances the learning experience by reducing any delay in study, and for the Career Academy, it means a substantial reduction in administrative workload. That’s smart learning technology in action.
“The extension plugin created for us by Synapsys has been a total game changer. We are always looking for ways to streamline processes so that our team can focus on meaningful interactions with our students, and this plugin has resulted in us being able to spend 25 hours less on basic administrative tasks, and refocus energy on providing greater support to our students. Not only have we benefited from major time savings, the plugin has resulted in a significantly better student experience when they come to the end of their enrolment period, and we couldn’t be happier with the final product. The team at Synapsys were fantastic, and we can’t recommend them highly enough!”
Jessie Nankivell – COO – The Career Academy
If you’re looking to improve learner experience and reduce administration overheads, give us a call.
