Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority award-winning LMS issues 50,000 Open Badges

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) is a government statutory authority that aims to protect the integrity of Australian sport through the elimination of doping.

ASADA’s education programme is one key strategy employed to achieve this mission, with the aim to reduce the number of athletes contemplating doping, reduce the percentage of inadvertent anti-doping rule violations and raise anti-doping awareness.

Update anti-doping learning

Interest in anti-doping in the sporting community and general public increased dramatically in Australia, following several high-profile doping cases in 2013. With over 20,000 registered users and a 200% increase in users, ASADA was looking for a way to refresh their out-dated anti-doping awareness course and ageing LMS, which could no longer support their education plans.

After searching long and wide for an off-the-shelf solution, nothing could meet their strict requirements. ASADA chose Totara Partner Kineo to design and deliver custom elearning and an LMS solution that could fit within their budget, while still being modern and future-proof.

Multi-device elearning and platform

Kineo and ASADA’s education team worked together to overhaul their existing elearning course, and revitalise it by making it accessible for the modern athlete. The result is ASADA’s first ever multi-device elearning course, built on the Adapt Framework, allowing end-users the freedom to the access their learning online and on any device. To make the transition even easier for end-users, the team also created responsive theming for ASADA’s Totara Learn platform.

Designing with athletes in mind

To cater to the sporting community, Kineo’s skilled designers and developers ensured that the Level 1 Anti-Doping course would appeal to their nature, while avoiding the stereotype that anti-doping education is dry and unengaging.

Unique features

Along with an inherently sporty design and story, the team created unique features to appeal to the athletic learner:

• Location-based menu

  Upon entering the Level 1 Anti-Doping course, learners are presented with a visual menu that reflects the Australian National Training Centre, a fictional sporting village that has been broken down into eight destinations: Accreditation Desk, Training Venue (track), Chemist, Doctor, Nutritionist, Doping Control Station, ASADA Headquarters and Stadium, where learners complete their final anti-doping quiz. Each area represents a different module to help users learn more about anti-doping.

• Learner dashboard

  To satisfy the competitive nature of athletes, a unique dashboard was added that tracks summative questions through the course, with learners awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze medals based on their performance. A custom-built plugin was integrated into Adapt to calculate the learner progress throughout the course, which feeds back into the dashboard. Learners can access the dashboard at any time to view their progress, and view a detailed analysis of their responses and learning objectives.

• Guided learning

  A feature unique to Adapt; to complete the assessment strategy, guided learning links formative assessment questions with specific content within a course. Question banks were created for each learning objective, which allowed ASADA to test the learners’ understanding of a concept as oppose to their ability to memorise the correct response.

• WCAG 2.0 AA standards

  A necessary standard to truly make this course accessible, as outlined by the Australian Government Accessibility Guidelines to ensure that no one gets left behind.

Custom Totara platform

ASADA needed more than just an anti-doping course to bring about their awareness and education initiatives to the sporting community. ASADA was looking for an LMS that would largely act as the central portal for its wider education resources.

Based on the following capabilities that ASADA required, Totara LMS was identified as the best solution:

• Multi-device accessibility: Utilising a combination of fluid and adaptive layout, the responsive design allows learners to experience a seamless LMS experience, regardless of which device they’re accessing their learning on.
• Scalable with in-house maintenance: Totara could easily meet ASADA’s growing registration numbers without a hassle, and provided ease-of-use for their in-house team to maintain the system with little reliance on external support.

• Reporting capabilities: Customisable reporting to provide sport-specific content to different sporting organisations, when required.
• Communication tool: With the vision to create an online portal of anti-doping awareness, the LMS has custom features including social media stream, embedded videos and links to their YouTube Channel, ability to host education related polls and survey and links to sections of the ASADA website.
• Open Badges and certification recognition: End-users have the option of earning up to 12 different badges as a reward for their learning. They can also gain a customised ASADA training certificate with their allocated badges. Recognition of learning in a way that the sporting community could relate to and aligned with features of the Level 1 Anti-Doping course.

Impact on learning habits

Since launching the Level 1 Anti-Doping Course in December 2014 the course has helped progress ASADA’s education programme objectives, as a whopping:

• 92% of users have stated they’ve learned something new from completing the course
• 87% found it relevant to their needs.

Additionally, internal stakeholders have become engaged in the process and are using these resources in new ways. For example, The Australian Institute of Sport has designated the course a mandatory part of their athlete requirements for those receiving government funding – which accounts for over 700 athletes Australia-wide.

The new LMS has also had significant impact on learning habits and training management which includes:

• 28,000 site users and 8,000 active users, over 50,000 Open Badges have been issued to those completing their online learning, with a record number of course completions and return visits to the LMS.
• access via mobile devices has increased from 15% to 27%.
• staff have a reduced workload due to a decrease in LMS complaints and assistance requests from end-users.

In 2015, the ASADA Level 1 Anti-Doping Course was recognised by LearnX Foundation and was awarded the Platinum Award for Best Bespoke Elearning Design and Gold Award for Best Deployment of an LMS.

“Working with Kineo allowed us to leverage a team of world class instructional designers and elearning experts in order to create this exciting new course. We are extremely pleased with the outcome and enjoyed the collaborative journey from storyboard through to final delivery. The final product more than meets our expectations and we believe the sporting community will find it a useful tool through which to discover the anti-doping subject.”