- SumTotal Systems, the industry’s largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, today announced that the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) has realized a significant reductions in expenses by deploying the SumTotal Enterprise Suite to launch the Learning Gateway, an online learning facility designed to help develop school leadership in England.

NCSL provides a national focus for school leadership development, research and innovation, offering career-long learning and development opportunities for existing and aspiring school leaders. Driven by the vision of establishing an online capability, NCSL developed a virtual learning environment, to support school leadership development.

Using the SumTotal Enterprise Suite, NCSL created the Learning Gateway, which consolidated separate online learning solutions into a single learning resource. It provides participants in College programs with a single access point to all NCSL’s online learning facilities, allowing users to create their own “learning pathway” to fit around their individual circumstances. It means that they can access learning at their own convenience and choose activities and content to suit their own specific learning styles, needs and experiences, as well as track and evaluate their individual progress.

The SumTotal Enterprise Suite has also enabled NCSL to have a common delivery system for its nine affiliated centers, so that they can maintain a database of participants in their respective regions across the country.

“After an extensive selection process, SumTotal proved to be an extremely responsive company to work with and was able to offer the complete integrated solution we were looking for,” said Jonathan Dale, assistant director, online learning, NCSL. “We were impressed by the level of functionality, particularly providing for user group access and personalization, and also the possibilities offered by the other applications within the SumTotal Enterprise Suite.”

There are already more than 10,000 Learning Gateway users, and this number will grow as it incorporates more of the College’s leadership programs. The fully integrated SumTotal solution enables delivery of personalized learning activities with online learning site sessions scheduled through the suite, and provides online communities to users.

SumTotal software has been used to develop a facility for participants to apply for leadership programs online, and this has realized substantial savings for the College.