Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust

Fighting the climate crisis by sharing conservation knowledge worldwide.

Growing a fledgling wetland conservation community with Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is a charity on a mission to restore wetlands and help the wildlife living in these habitats to thrive.

Following more than 75 years of pioneering, evidence-based conservation, WWT wanted to share key lessons with fellow conservationists around the world to help the fight against climate crisis and nature loss.

An LMS for structured conservation learning

Supported by funding from the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative, the charity sought to address a lack of structured training for conservationists working on wetlands by:

Improving conservation knowledge within local organisations.

Sharing conservation best practices globally.

Developing wider understanding of wetland management strategies.

Building a network of conservation professionals.

To help the organisation achieve those goals, we were tasked with creating the Wetland Learning Hub. This would be the organisation’s first learning management system, targeting wetland professionals working for local and international non-governmental organisations and charities.

Absorbing learning experiences

With experience from running a pilot project using another charity’s LMS, WWT was familiar with Totara Learn and knew it would meet all of the key requirements.

Following extensive discovery and consultancy sessions, we had a firm understanding of the short-term and long-term project goals, and the learning technologies that would support them.

This included deploying Totara workspaces to create focal points for the questions and discussions of the emerging community of conservation professionals enrolled on each course. This was enhanced by the use of LMS forums to prolong important conversations about conservation.

This growing community is also brought together for live video sessions. The seminar management functionality provided by Totara makes it easy for WWT to handle booking and attendance for its live webinars and Q&A sessions.

Totara’s multilingual LMS was perfectly suited to the scope of this global project. It enabled the site and courses to be translated into English, French and Portuguese to support the roll-outs of regional courses in Indo-Burma, Madagascar and West Africa. New languages can now easily be added to bring courses to new regions.

The learning content for WWT’s 14-week Wetland Health and Vitality course is delivered using Totara’s H5P integration. This makes it easy for the organisation to share engaging, interactive learning experiences with wetland professionals.

Learning and development professionals in an office environment using a LMS system by Synergy Learning.

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100% praise for positive learning impact

Initially targeting people starting their careers in wetland conservation, the Wetland Learning Hub has attracted a variety of other learners. More experienced wetland professionals, NGO executives, government employees, academics and tourism professionals working in wetland areas have also enrolled.

All respondents to a post-course survey reported a positive impact on their knowledge of wetland conservation.

One learner observed: “There have been significant shifts in my perspective on wetlands, including a deeper understanding of the importance of wetland ecosystems, the threats they face, and the impact of conservation on biodiversity, water quality, and climate resilience.”

Learners have also noted that the interactive H5P learning content sets the course apart from their previous online learning experiences.

Following these early successes, the course will now be rolled out to more regions, with global courses also planned.

I’m very happy. Synergy Learning have been really helpful. It was nice to have consulting calls at the start and opportunities to ask questions. All of my queries were answered very quickly.

Marie Schlenker

Project Officer | Wetland Learning Hub