Creating engaging, reflective digital learning that brings professional standards and leadership development to life.
The Challenge
As the professional and regulatory body for teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Teaching Council plays an important role in supporting high standards of professional practice, conduct and leadership across the teaching profession.
As part of this work, the Council was developing learning to strengthen teachers’ understanding of professional conduct and ethics, extend existing leadership learning into early childhood education, and provide further development focused specifically on leading others.
Much of the learning had already been designed at a content level when Synapsys became involved, but existed largely as written modules. The opportunity was to bring those designs to life – transforming the content into effective digital experiences that would engage educators, encourage meaningful reflection and help them apply their learning in practice.
Our Partnership
Synapsys became the implementation partner that turned the Teaching Council’s learning designs into engaging experiences. Working within the intent of the existing material, we developed interactive activities and built custom functionality beyond what was available out of the box. This enabled educators to reflect deeply within the modules and take those reflections forward into practical plans for action – creating a stronger connection between learning and practice.
We also brought our wider learning expertise to the experience. Te Tiriti o Waitangi and multicultural inclusion were integrated contextually into the modules through approaches including bilingual labelling and whakataukī, rather than being treated as additional or standalone content. We also used AI image generation at scale to create relevant visual material that made concepts more concrete and the overall learning experience more engaging.
The Impact
The result was a significant evolution from the original written material into richer, more interactive digital learning. Client feedback was particularly positive about the custom interactions and their potential to support educators to reflect on and make decisions about their own practice. The finished experience gave the Teaching Council confidence to move towards implementation with a strong belief in its potential effectiveness.