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Maximising generative AI in organisations
After the initial excitement of generative AI, organisations are now looking at the challenge of translating potential into tangible value. Many have learned that capturing gen AI’s advantages requires not only technology tools but also organisational capability development. As with any new technology, value is only realised when it’s applied to solve real people and…
Harnessing the power of AI in LMS
We are often asked how AI tools can be integrated into LMS platforms. Here are the most common ways we’re seeing this done: Chatbots and virtual assistants have been around for some time and can offer learners instant support and guidance at any time Generative AI enables course creators to develop content, generate course summaries…
Mark Your Calendars: Totara 19 Arrives This Month!
Totara is releasing it’s latest version of Totara LMS, Version 19, in January 2025. We’re pretty excited about this release and the benefits it will bring. Totara 19 offers practical features that make learning management more straightforward and effective. The new Course Enrolment Approval workflows let organisations control who can access training with customisable approval…
Exciting features of Totara v18
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…
Navigating Change: The Path Ahead with Synapsys NZ
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…
Synapsys take on big L&D trends for 2024
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…
Merry Christmas from the Synapsys Team
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….
Smart learning technology in action
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…
Navigating AI Challenges in Workplace Learning – podcast
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…
AI Image Generators: Their Potential and Impact in Creative Work
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…
Effective governance of Learning Management System (LMS) – why is it still a struggle?
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…
Engage and Collaborate: Miro’s Role in Online Workshops
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…
How long does it take? – Navigating learning design timeframes
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…
Using Animation in E-Learning Design: Engage, Delight, and Educate Your Learners
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…
Achieving Competency Excellence: Public Trust’s upgrade of TrustEd with Totara TXP16!
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…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (5 of 5)
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”…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (4 of 5)
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…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (3 of 5)
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…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (2 of 5)
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…
Digital Transformation: From tech change to behaviour change (1 of 5)
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 limits of visual working memory and how we apply it in learning design
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…
Need to get out of a Pickle?
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?…
Supporting Farmlands Co-operative with their transformation
Farmlands Co-operative is taking their employees’ development and growth to the next level with a whole new learning experience to be rolled out this year, and it starts with Totara 17. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be partnering with them and support their vision to become reality as they roll out new functionality this…
Z Energy responds to new supply chain opportunities
How do you measure learning experience going forward? That was the big question for Julie Fitzgerald from Z Energy when partnering again with Synapsys in 2022 – this time to help develop a company-wide learning and training platform with a focus on understanding supply chain models. Our Managing Director, Phil, recently sat down with Julie…
Gamification in Learning: Partnering with Z Energy
Z Energy is one of New Zealand’s largest fuel distributors, and a long-term partner of Synapsys. Z Energy first engaged Synapsys’ services when Z took over the company from Shell, and were responsible for developing a learning and training platform for pilot Z Energy sites around the country. Having now established themselves fully –…
Synapsys on partnering with DIA: NZLPP Project
“This programme is an exemplar for Synapsys in how genuine partnerships with our clients can contribute to significant positive impact across a sector in challenging times.” The Department of Internal Affairs (“DIA”) is New Zealand’s public service department, responsible for issuing documents like passports, citizenship grants, registering births and deaths, and more. They also advise…
Engaging learners through interactive video
Many people are already using video to deliver training, but traditional video can only go so far to meet learning needs. Interactive video, where questions, branching, and other interactions can be added to enhance the experience, has been becoming more mainstream and easier to create in the past couple of years. We’ve been particularly impressed…
Notes from ATD Atlanta 2017
With over 10,000 attendees and hundreds of presenters and vendors, nobody sees everything at ATD. Here are a random collection of ideas and tools that caught my attention. Evaluating learning impact From Tony Bingham’s conference welcome, IBM has sidelined big data analytics for measuring learning impact and gone to asking managers what they think…
Mastering Mobile Learning by Chad Udell & Gary Woodill
We all struggle to figure out how to fold new technologies into our learning experiences. It seems human nature to try and shoehorn the new tool into our existing paradigm, rather than ask how our paradigm could change. If this sounds familiar to you, Mastering Mobile Learning will be a useful tool to help you…