Prioritised and personalised learning delivered to Motor Sports Association users everywhere

The Motor Sports Association (MSA) is the sole national governing body for four-wheel motor sport in the UK, as recognised by the world governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA).

The MSA is a not-for-profit organisation (limited by guarantee) comprising around 750 affiliated motor clubs, which are represented by 13 Regional Associations Nationwide.The MSA represents approximately 30,000 competition licence holders and 9,500 volunteer marshals and officials, and issues permits for around 5,000 motor sport events every year.

The Challenge

• Volunteer Marshals are vital to the safe and effective running of Motor Sports events all over the country.
• MSA marshals have to be highly trained in order to perform their range of essential duties from displaying flag signals for competitors at race events to manning time controls or junctions on a rally.
• MSA required an online training option to support this training and development of its Marshals at major events.
• The chosen Learning Management System (LMS) needed to be fully integrated with the current database system, have a ‘current members area’ that would allow Marshals access to their own personal space and communicate with other members as and when required.
• Robust reporting also would be fundamental to the online training strategy. The MSA required the production of weekly, monthly and yearly reports based on course completions, results outcomes and the awarding of certificates to Marshals for completing the required training.
• The system also needed to be fully responsive and flexible to enable Marshals to access course information from any device, at any time, in any location.
• Synergy Learning was successfully appointed to oversee this project.

The Solution

Based on key requirements, Synergy Learning recommended a Totara Learn implementation to be the most cost-effective LMS solution. The robust reporting architecture within the platform coupled with the flexible learning features would meet key requirements and offer opportunities to scale in the future should the MSA require this. Here’s what they did:

• Hosting, set-up, monitoring and backup services for the Totara Learn site
• Creation of main theme design for the site that is closely aligned and meets MSA brand guidelines
• Provision of development services to enable continued growth and scaling of the platform and to provide integration with the existing database system
• Totara Learn administrator and Course Creator training to allow the building of custom reports and development of course materials
• Implementation of a Responsive Theme Design to enhance the user experience on smartphone and tablet devices
• ‘Premium Support’ providing support as and when required

The Results:

Within the first 18 weeks the MSA had almost 4000 subscribers to the Totara site. To date, almost 5000 fully accredited Rally and Cross Country marshals since inception of the Totara site.

“Synergy Learning is a trusted supplier who knows and understands the processes of planning and implementing eLearning within such a regulated environment such as ours. An essential part of this project was to integrate our current database system with Totara Learn and I have to say the level of skill and expertise demonstrated by the whole Synergy Learning team was outstanding. We currently have around 5000 subscribers to the site and have been able to successfully certify Marshals for key sporting events. We are excited to continuing work with Synergy Learning to further develop our eLearning plans in the future.”