E-learning and LMS blog articles

Are you looking for ways to use your Totara Learn LMS to its fullest potential? Or are you interested in finding out more about what’s possible when you leverage the top features of our award-winning Totara Learn platform? This blog highlights the top five Totara LMS features you should know if you want to maximise your L&D and use Totara to its fullest potential. 

Reports 

Turn key learning data into actionable insights with Totara’s powerful reporting functionality. Seamlessly create and manage custom site-wide reports using the Totara report builder to track learner progress, measure training efficacy, and so much more. 

Reports are a core component of any e-learning platform, enabling admins and L&D teams to be more proactive and strategic when enhancing learning activities and improving training outcomes. However, not every e-learning platform offers the flexibility, functionality and site-wide, detailed analysis required to do this effectively. In comes Totara. 

Renowned for its reporting capabilities, Totara allows admins to create customisable reports using the easy-to-use report builder. Taking data from a broad range of site-wide data sources, admins can analyse a whole host of user activity, from sign-on rates to competencies, making it easy to tailor reports to specific objectives, workflows and training needs. 

What’s more, reports can be configured so that they are automatically scheduled and distributed to relevant users, such as team managers or HR leaders, delivered directly to their inbox daily, weekly, or monthly. 

Certifications 

A fundamental tool for ongoing compliance training and mandatory learning. Certifications can be configured to expire, prompting learners to recertify with automated notifications (reducing admin and mitigating the risk of non-compliance as a result). 

Whether you’re adhering to regulatory compliance training deadlines or maintaining company-wide competency with annual mandatory training courses, it can be difficult to track, monitor and manage training cycles within set timeframes. With Totara certifications, admins can create a certification path or recertification path which outlines a set of courses and activities. Once learners have completed them, your Totara LMS will immediately check to see if completion rules have been met, and the certification status will be updated. 

As certifications are only valid for a certain amount of time, learners will be automatically notified of the upcoming expiration and prompted to recertify. With a formal deadline attached to certifications, learners are motivated to complete mandatory training and encouraged to be held accountable for their own progress. 

Collaborative social learning tools 

Create a collaborative social learning environment and empower employees to learn as a team and seamlessly build collaborative learning into the flow of work. With forums, workspaces, wikis, and Microsoft Teams integrations, social learning has never been easier or more impactful. 

Whether you want to build cross-functional teams, encourage collaboration amongst different departments or facilitate dynamic knowledge sharing amongst geographically dispersed employees, social features in your Totara LMS offer everything you need. 

Interactive social tools such as content sharing, ratings, comments, hashtags, and survey tools put learning into the users’ hands by empowering them to actively engage rather than passively consume training content. Learners can come together in collaborative workspaces and share content, knowledge, and insights, allowing users to learn from one another, resulting in more meaningful and impactful learning experiences. 

Seminars for blended learning 

Striving for blended learning success? Seminars are a must. Whether teaching virtually or in a face-to-face environment, Totara seminar activities allow Site Admins and trainers to effortlessly create, manage, and report on training events and activities. 

A seminar activity can hold one or several Events, which in turn can be made up of one or several Sessions. Each Session has a start and finish time and day, and may be assigned a specific Room, Assets and Facilitators. 

With Seminars, learners can self-book, or admins can assign them, ensuring no one misses out on vital training. What’s more, admins can use the Seminar functionality and reporting tools to track attendance and completion status to identify those who have yet to complete assigned learning. 

The benefit of Seminars is that admins and managers can streamline training events whilst simplifying the logistics of managing them, regardless of whether they’re online or offline. Hubken client, BlueLight Commercial, is one of our many clients experiencing the benefits of utilising the Seminar feature in their Totara solution, using it to create, coordinate and track attendance for training workshops. Find out more and read their full training success story here.

Personalisation tools 

Personalised learning is the backbone of a strong L&D strategy and Totara’s got it handled with dashboards, learning plans, hierarchies, recommended learning, and so much more. 

We know that personalisation is a sure-fire way to optimise your L&D and maximise training outcomes. Just read our blog, ‘How a personalised learning experience achieves better results’, to find out why. Luckily for Totara users, the Totara LMS boasts numerous powerful personalisation tools – let’s explore some of them below: 

Personalised learning pathways 

With personalised learning pathways, site admins can create learning plans comprised of specific courses and content designed to best serve a learner’s unique training needs and goals. 

Dashboards 

Leaners can customise the ‘My Dashboard’ area in Totara Learn to display achievements, completed learning, recent learning activities, calendars with upcoming deadlines, and assigned training. 

Hierarchies

Admins can use Totara hierarchies to map out tailored learning based on a predefined set of criteria such as job role, department, and management levels. Once this has been mapped out, training content will be distributed to relevant parties, meaning training targets specific groups and users. 

Recommended learning 

With the recommended learning engine, learners will receive targeted training recommendations based on data such as previous learning and competencies. 

Totara’s sophisticated personalisation tools are among the key features that make this award-winning e-learning system stand out from the competition. If you’d like to discover more about personalisation with our Totara LMS, be sure to get in touch with one of our experts. 

Get in touch with Hubken today 

Or if you’re ready to achieve L&D success by migrating to a top-tier Totara partner, book a demo with us today.  

If you’re looking for a Totara partner, you’ve found the best. As a Platinum Alliance Partner, we offer the deepest level of Totara knowledge, along with unlimited support and ongoing training to ensure you get the most out of your Totara solution. Find out more about this here.