Background
The University of Canberra (UC) is in Australia’s capital city ACT. It offers undergraduate and postgraduate education. Specialising in a range of interrelated disciplines, UC teaches and researches in arts and design, business, government and law, health and education, science, technology, and mathematics.
Opportunity
UC(external link) developed a suite of eLearning resources to increase disability awareness among school staff by explaining their obligations under the Disability Standards for Education (DSE) 2005 and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1992. Ten education agencies from around Australia invited the University of Canberra to lead the collaborative project from the research and development through to the delivery.
With a potential learner base of 300,000, delivering face-to-face training was prohibitively expensive. eLearning was chosen as the delivery method, enabling the University of Canberra to maximise the reach of the training and to deliver it cost-effectively.
UC needed a place to put the seven eLearning courses to ensure they would reach as many learners as inexpensively as possible. Plus, the learning had to reach teachers across Australia, from remote rural communities to inner cities. The learning content had to be accessible via dial-up internet connections, intuitive and user-friendly to account for the wide variation in computer literacy of the learner base.
The learning also needed to fit seamlessly within the systems managed by each of the ten participating agencies, enabling each to deliver the eLearning in its own brand that was recognisable to its own staff. Each of these agencies also needed the ability to generate their own customised reports on user statistics relevant to each of their separate accountability requirements.
The solution - design, implementation and hosting of Totara Learn LMS
UC chose Totara Platinum Partner Catalyst Australia to design and deliver the LMS platform, Totara Learn. The platform was to act as the DSE eLearning gateway that would quickly direct each user to the landing page of their education authority. For instance, once the system recognises the employer’s brand, the user could take a course in confidence according to their employer’s instructions.
The Totara Learn solution enables education agencies to determine what courses to offer from the full suite of DSE eLearning modules. They simply need to switch courses ‘on’ or ‘off’ via their landing page. Additionally, education agencies can change course offerings and the advice they offer learners through their landing pages. Plus, they can generate their own reports on user statistics.
The innovation of cloud hosting computing technology also made delivering the mass eLearning programme on this scale easier. Totara Learn is perfect for providing a mass online training course like the DSE eLearning to multiple groups of users because it can give each client a branded product with customisation and reporting features. Yet the DSE eLearning remains an integrated eLearning system managed by the University of Canberra. Enabling staff at the University to monitor the user experience, collect user feedback and assess the overall impact of the learning.
Complementing the structured eLearning for staff of education providers is a publically accessible website providing a practical guide to the Disability Standards for Education for individuals, families and communities.
The University of Canberra again chose Catalyst to host this important asset in their campaign to raise awareness of the rights of people with disability in education and the obligations of education providers.
The Result - a cost-effective, scalable eLearning solution
An analysis of the data from the first 46,000 users indicated highly positive user feedback on the eLearning experience and the impact of the training on their professional knowledge, attitudes and skills.
After completing the course, a significantly higher proportion of participants said they understood their legal responsibilities under the Disability Discrimination Act 1998. Learners who had completed the course also demonstrated a positive change in attitudes towards making adjustments for students with disabilities after completing the first two hours of online training.
Both participants with no prior training and prior training in the Standards scored an average of 95% understanding after completing the eLearning. Those with the least experience working with students with disabilities learned the most from the DSE eLearning, showing the biggest improvement in the pre and post-learning questionnaires.