We are over the moon to have won the NZATD Best Online Learning Project alongside Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora for the National Cervical Screening e-learning modules that we developed! This was very much a team effort, with close collaboration between Te Whatu Ora’s clinical experts and Synapsys learning designers. Te Whatu Ora…
The Gartner Hype Cycle is well-documented, and we’ve seen countless learning technologies pass through it. VR is a prime example of the trough of disillusionment that has swallowed up many enthusiasts. Ai, however, is different. It’s broken the curve, or at least the curve is of a scale and pace rarely seen. But just…
As Tāngata Tiriti, our commitment to building our reo Māori is an everyday thing. The trick has been to build te reo into our daily routines. We’ve landed on three ways that work for us During Tū Mai (our daily stand-ups) we check in on each other and our work for the day using te…
Kia ora! This month we’re off for a knees-up to celebrate that we’ve been supporting change in Aotearoa for 20 years. When we started out in 2004, the world was a simpler place. Learning was the domain of Human Resources and we helped HR teams deliver value across their businesses. We learnt though that…
If you’re interested in frameworks and models for diagnosing the need for change, this article provides a useful summary of the more common diagnostic tools, including Weisbord’s Six Box Model, the Burke-Litwin Causal Model, Force Field Analysis and the 7S Framework. All of them stress the interrelated nature of change drivers and the need to…
Most L&D professionals know that investing in a Learning Management System has many benefits for their organisation, but how do you make those benefits tangible and connect to what matters to the C-Suite? Sometimes the things that matter to learning professionals are very different from the priorities of senior leaders. Learning culture is key to…
We’re thrilled to announce that the National Cervical Screening Programme e-learning initiative that we developed for Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has been selected as a finalist for the NZATD Awards 2024 in the category of Best Online Learning Project! 🥳 We believe the learning we’ve developed is truly impactful, empowering individuals, and…
We are thrilled to announce the launch of the farm advisor modules we developed in partnership with Our Land and Water! This free training has been designed to support rural professionals in their work with farmers. It enhances their ability to identify effective mitigation actions for farm environment plans, communicate efficiently, and assist farm businesses…
We are thrilled to be doing an initial evaluation of the e-learning modules we developed last year for NZ Landcare Trust – Ngā Matapopore Whenua – the Aotearoa Catchment Extension learning programme. This nationwide initiative supports those who work with, in, or for New Zealand’s catchment groups, offering valuable, voluntary learning experiences. Working with Casey…
It has been great working with Beef + Lamb New Zealand to build farmer capability in developing integrated farm plans through the development of online learning modules. The integrated farm plans are a key pillar of farm productivity gains and good stewardship, and the programme helps farmers and their trusted advisors to create robust plans…
We have the privilege of working across a wide range of sectors and organisations. Interestingly, we often find new clients asking the same questions. In this series of posts, we’ll address the most common challenges occupying people’s minds. Here’s #3: How do we make the most of Ai-powered Rapid Authoring Tools? Digital learning authoring systems…
Image Source: Teaching a Growth Mindset – Carol Dweck (YouTube, Stanford) In this presentation, Carol Dweck from Stanford University explains how people’s views on their intelligence, talents and abilities affect their (and their organisation’s) performance. Carol argues, “Learning a growth mindset transforms the meaning of effort and difficulty. Students with a growth mindset take on…
Image source: elearning.com This article from elearningindustry.com provides a useful list of things to think about when planning for e-learning programme development and rollout. In part, it speaks to how leadership support can improve adoption by communicating benefits, providing adequate resourcing and setting clear expectations. All good stuff when you have leadership team buy-in, but…
We have the privilege of working across a huge range of sectors and organisations. So, it’s interesting that we often find new clients asking the same questions. In this series of posts, we’ll cut across the most common challenges occupying people’s minds. Here’s another big one: Whether to customise or not to customise your LMS/LXP…. …
In just over one month, we will be heading into the second half of the year, making this upcoming long weekend the perfect time to recharge and relax. In such a fast-paced world, prioritising our well-being and making the most of these breaks matters. Whether your long weekend plans include spending time with loved ones,…
We have the privilege of working across a broad range of sectors and organisations. So, it’s interesting that we often find new clients asking the same questions. In this series of posts, we’ll cut across the most common challenges occupying people’s minds. Here’s a big one: How do we get confidence that we’ll achieve sustainable…
As a Totara Gold Partner, the Synapsys’ team is excited to work with the latest Totara v18! Among numerous new features, two stand out as particularly exciting for us! Firstly, the capability to duplicate learning programs significantly reduces administrative time. Whether you are a course administrator, a system administrator, or a course creator, you can…
Kia ora, At the end of each year we always feel tired, ready for a break. December 2023 felt different. There was a real sense of exhaustion across the board. We felt the relentless acceleration of change and the pressure to keep assimilating to it. We felt economic pressures – on us personally and on…
TrainingIndustry.com have identified three big L&D trends for 2024. Here’s our take on them, and a couple of others you may want to consider as well. 1. AI, EI, and growth mindset take centre stage. It’s difficult to disagree with the idea that responding to AI, building emotional intelligence, and having a growth mindset (being…
Kia Ora Synapsys Whānau! As we wrap up an awesome, albeit challenging year, the Synapsys NZ crew came together to reflect on the year and think about the road ahead. We had a great time discussing ways of strengthening our relationships with our partners and extending a welcome to new members of our Synapsys whānau….
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…
In this very interesting episode of the Learning While Working Podcast Lars Hyland and Matt Linaker from Totara discuss how to navigate the challenges of AI in workplace learning. Lars emphasised the idea that generating content at a faster pace with the help of AI tools might not be advantageous if there is no connection…
🌟 Celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023 with us! 🌟 As we embrace Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2023, we thought we would share the resources we find most helpful as we build our language skills. Here’s what we love and recommend: 1️⃣ Te Aka Māori Dictionary – our favourite te reo dictionary,…
Keeping microlearning short is essential because it aligns with the way people learn in today’s fast-paced, attention-scarce world. Short, focused content improves engagement, retention, accessibility, and flexibility, making it an effective approach to training and education. To help you achieve your microlearnig objectives, Synapsys put together a practical design resource: Synapsys hacks: Keeping the ‘micro’…
We have been exploring Artificial Intelligence (AI) image generators – how they work, what they do, and if we can see a potential use of them in our work. AI content tools are currently a subject of discussion, and it is important to understand their functionality to make informed decisions about their usage. AI generators…
We believe that understanding the goals of a workplace learning solution is essential for creating the best experiences. If you’re clear about why your organisation wants your team to learn something, you’re in the best place to choose the optimal learning activities. It is helpful to determine how much depth of understanding is required for…
Iris Vermeren makes the important point in her article that you need to be clear about your learning strategy and goals if you’re going to get the most out of your LMS. Sounds simplistic, doesn’t it? It’s a no-brainer that an understanding of effective governance of your Learning Management System (LMS) is vital for creating…
As online workshops have become more common, an ongoing challenge has been how to engage learners in the sessions. How do you recreate the participation and collaboration that happens when people are learning face-to-face? Miro is a really useful tool for online facilitation, we’ve been using it in workshops for project managers. Miro is an…
One of the first conversations we have with many of our clients starts like this: I’ve already done a full learning needs analysis and gathered all the content; Can you start building learning content for us? People seem quite surprised when we still want to go through a discovery process before giving a final answer…
Experts sometimes do not have good insights into what support is required by beginners. It’s natural when you think about it. Experts are experts because they’ve been working in a particular space for a long time. Think of something you can do extremely well. Can you remember what it was really like when you knew…
This article https://hbr.org/2018/06/if-strategy-is-so-important-why-dont-we-make-time-for-it notes that many leaders struggle to prioritise time for strategic thinking, and proposes a series of self-management strategies to ‘make the time’. When we think about learning programmes we’ve developed that are truly strategic in their focus, we think it’s dubious that the main driver has been the personal management strategies…
At Synapsys, our Design Phase helps us to look at what formats will help your learners to succeed, based on the goals of your learning intervention and how you want your learners to feel about what you have to share with them. Bringing together the audience analysis with the options for interactions means the resulting…
Constraints, used properly, are the true drivers of innovation. We always take the time early in the design process to establish a project’s real constraints and goals. Goals are great; they help us get clear on what we’re doing – they feel good. Constraints can be frustrating. They limit our thinking and sometimes mean exciting…
Have you ever thought how user testing can help learning designers improve their skills? We recently had an excellent experience that not only reinforced the importance of user testing, but also helped us understand learners’ needs better. Trust in the process enhances outcomes We were working on materials with Silver Fern Farms who have a…
Great ideas need excellent execution. We asked our project managers for their recipe for starting a successful learning project. 1. Identify your subject matter experts (SMEs) early to ensure they have time available for the project. 2. Get SMEs involved early so they understand the planning process and can come on the…
A huge proportion of our learning experiences start with unlearning. Debunking myths, learning new tools, new processes… Pretty much any big systems implementation will require unlearning. It’s great when your learners are already open to new ideas and have a growth-oriented mindset. But how do we help them get there? We recently came across this…
At Synapsys, we see learning as being about helping the learners to move from one stage of understanding to another. It is important for us to have a solid grip on what you hope to achieve through the learning intervention, so we can support it. Are we trying to make people aware of what they…
Matariki, the Māori New Year, is a special time when people, whānau, and communities come together to commemorate the past year, celebrate the present, and make plans for the upcoming year. It is a time for honouring the memories of our loved ones who are no longer with us, indulging in feasts and festivities with…
The thing about learning objectives is that they can be compared to designing a house. Just as you need to know the specific requirements of a person when building a house, you also need to understand the needs of learners when defining learning objectives. For instance, consider a family with three children, who are…
Sometimes it seems as though every expert has their own recipe for what a good learning solution looks like! At Synapsys we base our designs on research about what works for actual adult learners. The Synapsys Learning Activity Model – SLAM – brings together concepts from Gagné’s 9 events of instruction, Knowles’ principles of andragogy,…
It’s one thing to create a competency framework for your organisation, but many find the process of effectively measuring staff achievement against it a much bigger challenge. Key to achieving this is a technology platform that makes the connection between frameworks, development pathways, and learning opportunities. Public Trust‘s recent upgrade of their TrustEd competency…
Go live is the real start line This is the fifth and final article in the series on ensuring your technology projects leverage learning to deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Curious about what we discussed previously? Check out the previous articles! Part 1. “Using learning to make technology projects stick”…
Change happens when people get it This is the fourth article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Read the second article here “Vision, what vision?“ Read the third article here “Change starts…
Change starts when the programme starts This is the third article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Read the second article here “Vision, what vision?“ We all know the well-worn ‘truths’ about…
Vision, what vision? This is the second article in the series on ensuring your technology projects deliver the change and business value they are supposed to. Read the first article here “Using learning to make technology projects stick” Technology projects are an answer to a problem. Looking through business cases for tech implementations, we often…
Using learning to make technology projects stick Deloitte‘s recent “The nine trends reshaping government in 2023” report speaks of silos inside government shifting to collaborative ecosystems. Driven by trends such as accelerated technology and the rise of networked power, it describes how governments around the world are tailoring public services, bridging data networks and moving…
The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) recently upgraded their Totara TXP to boost their capability to deliver learning programmes to their registrars in a more accessible, engaging, and fulfilling way. The College uses the Totara platform to deliver General Practice Education Programme and Rural Hospital Medicine Training Programme for doctors who would…
In 2021, New Zealand was the host for APEC– a year-long, high-level diplomatic conference that would showcase New Zealand on the international stage. COVID-19 changed the game, with all interactions needing to move to an online platform on short notice. The APEC NZ team needed to move fast, not only taking the APEC – Asia-Pacific…
We all know that our ability to keep multiple things in our mind is limited. Four things is a common benchmark, and the article “When four is not four, but rather two plus two” suggests it might actually be two on each side of our brain. And yet we see so many learning experiences ignoring…
Do you remember the super fun and engaging microlearning project we did with WorkSafe New Zealand and AKQA called “Pickled”? It was a series of learning games that made it to the finals of the Mobile Experience category at The Webby Awards, which received over 13,500 submissions from over 70 countries. That’s right, Pickled was such a hit! Guess what?…