NCCER constructs a commercial grade extended enterprise learning solution

The National Center for Construction Education and Research (“NCCER”) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) education foundation created by the construction industry to develop standardised curriculum and assessments with portable credentials and certifications for skilled craft professionals. NCCER provides a comprehensive workforce development system that includes accreditation, training, assessment, certification and career development solutions for the construction and maintenance industries.

The Challenge

In order to meet the evolving training needs of craft professionals today, NCCER was faced with the monumental task of transitioning their training and assessments from a paper-based approach to an online learning and testing model. A strategic initiative of this magnitude would require NCCER to break away from third party partnerships and legacy systems to bring processes in-house and employ a more coordinated enterprise technology solution.

Legacy systems had reached end of support in their lifecycle and were presenting operational challenges and technical limitations. Any system updates required third party involvement which impeded NCCER’s ability to be responsive to dynamic training needs. Additionally, the system architecture was limiting the ability to integrate with other platforms in NCCER’s enterprise which created silos of disparate solutions and learning data. In order to achieve the business objectives of NCCER’s transition, operational and technical changes were a must.

The Solution

Following a review of several commercially available Learning Management Systems, NCCER decided that Totara Learn’s robust feature set and open source architecture were key differentiators and therefore best positioned as the flexible enterprise solution required by the move in training approach.

Totara’s freedom of choice empowered NCCER to be able to shift from a client-hosted model to a cloud-hosted model through their Totara partner, Synege, in order to gain added control and increased level of access. Totara’s open API’s and LTI capability allowed for real-time integrations with Salesforce, Shopify, a third party testing platform, and the NCCER Registry (proprietary credentialing system) to create a seamless course purchase experience capable of updating results and credentials in real-time. This presented NCCER with a single, coordinated enterprise solution capable of promoting the flow of data and access to user and training centre information throughout their enterprise to effectively grow their training programs.

The initial focus was on their high stakes Practical Exams which are assessments and analytics (psychometric reporting) which are very unique to NCCER and critical to both the legal and performance side of their business. Other vendors tried to support NCCER’s practical exams and custom scoring algorithm in digital form, however were unsuccessful, while Totara had many of these out of the box, which could then be expanded upon where needed. Taking full advantage of Totara’s open architecture, NCCER and Synegen were able to extend the quiz module functionality to build custom assessments and scoring metrics in order to successfully migrate practical exams.

Totara Learn’s multi-tenancy provided the ability to create training organisations based on their current business model and easily adopt the parent-child relationship and qualifications of training centres passed from Salesforce with related privileges that could be automated compared to their legacy system and processes that were manual in nature.

Results

NCCER began with a soft launch of their new assessment platform, allowing customers a 6-month period to transition from their old paper-based testing.  As of 2021 all 600 NCCER Accredited Assessment Centres and more than 1,000 Authorised Assessment Sites were testing exclusively using the NCCER assessment platform built on Totara Learn leading to the delivery of 12,000-15,000 tests daily and over 300,000 tests per month!

NCCER could not be happier with their decision to use Totara Learn powered by their partner, Synegen. Totara Learn offered an advanced feature set and unrivalled flexibility and level of integration compared to other vendors they considered. Synegen was uniquely qualified as their partner of choice due not only to their standing as a Platinum level Totara partner, but also a longstanding Salesforce partner as well. These capabilities helped NCCER take full advantage of Totara Learn’s open-source flexibility and “achieve the impossible”, tailoring the platform to their unique training requirements while integrating with other best-of-breed systems (Salesforce and Shopify) within their enterprise architecture.

Totara and Synegen have provided NCCER an immediate return on their investment while providing the training organisations and craft professionals they serve an enhanced online training experience. Additional organisational and craft professional impacts include:

• Totara Learn is delivering an intuitive online training experience that has led to an increased adoption rate compared to paper-based model and is currently administering over 300,000 tests a month! Totara Learn is currently presenting over 50,000 craft professionals with a streamlined experience to get in, get trained, and back to the job site
• An ability to bring operations in-house rather than split revenue with a third-party provider has delivered significant bottom line impact by doubling revenue without changing the price of their training!
• Totara Learn’s automation and intuitive interface for both admins and learners has led to less of a burden on training staff through reduced admin time as well as a reduction in the number of calls and assistance required by learners
• Increased operational visibility by making data more accessible, accurate and integrated throughout their enterprise architecture
• A reduced go-to-market timeframe to build and launch an assessment has allowed NCCER to be more agile and responsive to industry changes and dynamic training requirements of craft professionals.