Athletics Australia

Focused on the future of learning and development

Athletics Australia, an early adopter of the new Australian Sport Learning Centre (Learning Centre), sees the long term value in joining a community that delivers best practice and quality learning and development approaches to support our whole sector. Adam Bishop, General Manager, Growth and Development at Athletics Australia explained why they committed to be one of the first organisations to join.

‘We bought into the philosophy – the whole approach to aggregating and sharing content across the sector. Athletics provides opportunities for fundamental movement and physical literacy skill development and so our education content can be useful and relevant for other sports and their coaches. We also wanted to create a seamless experience for our learners across online and face to face learning, so we jumped right in,’ Adam explained.

CHALLENGES

‘Due to the nature of athletics, with many events, we have a lot of content, so it was a bigger job than we anticipated,’ Adam said.

Around 80 courses and close to 200 content modules were migrated to the Learning Centre for Athletics Australia – a large undertaking compared with other sports that have less than 10 courses to migrate.

‘There were some teething problems, but we expected that, being an early adopter. We’re ironing out the kinks and smoothing the way for other sports and have been supported along the way by the Sport Australia team.’

PROCESS

‘It was a massive piece of work and we committed significant time and resources to the project, but we also received a lot of support from Sport Australia’s Learning Centre team. We really appreciate the collaborative approach, the dedication and the responsiveness of the team. We were all focused on getting a positive outcome,’ Adam said. ‘I have nothing but positive things to say about the relationship and about the calibre of staff within the Learning Centre team.

‘In terms of cost, there was a one off payment to get set up, and an ongoing annual cost, which is comparable to what we were paying previously. We are comfortable with the cost because ultimately, we will have a better, more modern system, with greater functionality.’

LOOKING FORWARD

‘We are enhancing the education we deliver and future proofing our learning and development system,’ said Adam. ‘Eventually, we hope to benefit from introducing functions such as single sign-on that Sport Australia is working with us on, further improving the user experience.

‘In future, we also see opportunities for application of the platform across staff induction, increased learning at national and state level and also down into clubs.

‘The more sports that join the Learning Centre, the greater the opportunity to collaborate across the sport sector and the greater cost savings for each sport, so we all benefit!’ Adam said.