Totara is a joint offering from Catalyst IT, Kineo and the Flexible Learning Network (Kineo Pacific). It is a corporate distribution of the Moodle learning management system. That is, Totara has the Moodle open source code at its core with added feature enhancements and capabilities through interrelated plugins. It is tailored to fulfil the requirements of corporate, industry and vocational training through innovative features, documentation and reliable support.
In addition to all the great functionality of Moodle, Totara offers the following additional functionality:
Competencies and Roles: Totara allows you to create and customise competency frameworks with depth levels and sub-competencies. Once the competency frameworks have been established, courses, learning activities and roles can be mapped to competencies. In this way, learner paths can be created by assigning learning to individuals in specific job roles.
Individual Development Plans: managers and staff can create individual development plans (IDPs) with a request/approval workflow with built in progress indicators, due date management and reminders. Allows for the tracking of on-the-job training and assesses progress toward career and organisational skill development objectives. The plans can be associated with competency, position and organisational hierarchy frameworks with access to a user’s complete learning history. Additionally, there is the ability for commenting and discussion around objectives, competencies and evidence.
Team management: managers can review the learning progress of their staff and allocate adequate resources. Additionally, managers can view their team members; add, amend and view their Individual Development Plans, view progress towards goals, competencies and learning records.
Classroom management: functionalities to create and manage classroom events, including an online self service booking system. The event management features can automate administrative tasks such as the creation of course/session catalogues, a search function, pre-session management – links and attachments (pre-reading, print-outs), venue and facilitator management support, ability to enable attendance marking and reports and provide evaluation forms. Additionally, there is the ability to automate waiting lists, reminders and custom email messages.
Dashboard: pre-configured dashboards to give each primary system role (Learner, Manager, Trainer, Assessor, and Administrator) an overview of key information related to that role.
Reporting: contains a range set of pre-built reports with a sophisticated site-wide report builder. Reports can be scheduled with the ability to export in a number of formats.
HR/ERP/CRM integration – allows for enterprise integrations (e.g., PeopleSoft, SAP and Oracle).
Totara being built on open-source code, has no licensing fees. Instead it is available on a yearly subscription basis, with subscriptions contributing to ongoing support and system enhancements. Compared to commercial of-the-shelf products, Totara can reduce a corporate organisation’s learning management costs significantly without skimping on system functionality. Additionally, Totara offers a global 24×7 support and Premium Hosting service through its Partners to provide the level of support and services required by corporate organisations.