Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine: TopClass LMS Case Study

TopClass LMS resolves legacy productivity issues with secure integration to iMIS, enabling the Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine to efficiently deliver education to 3,400 members.

“Upon installing TopClass LMS, we rapidly saw the benefits of proper integration. The TopClass interface with iMIS allowed us to rapidly remove many of the productivity issues we were facing.

Our members appreciate having a single login for all our systems, and the look and feel is far more modern than our previous LMS.” - Alex Watterson, Project Manager

eLearning Challenge

ASUM had previously been using an open-source LMS to deliver their online education to 3,400 members. However, there was no proper integration between the LMS and iMIS, their member database, causing significant issues and a general loss of productivity. This also required members to remember two sets of login credentials which made accessing the LMS resources more inconvenient and time-consuming. As the LMS was open-source, there was also no support available to assist with integration, customization or even day-to-day issues.

LMS Requirements

ASUM wanted to streamline their systems and make them more accessible to members. The key requirement for their new LMS was a proven, strong integration with iMIS member database and a Single-Sign-On (SSO) system so their members could access all of ASUM’s member resources with only one login credential to remember. ASUM provide a broad range of learning materials including course syllabi, case studies, quizzes, interactive tutorials and they use SCORM content. The new LMS needed to have an attractive user interface, and be capable of hosting the different formats of e-learning content. The new LMS also needed to provide sufficient options for organization and administration of content and courses, to enable ASUM to effectively manage their users’ learning experience.

The Solution

ASUM chose to implement TopClass LMS from WBT Systems. TopClass LMS provides a proven, two-way product bridge with iMIS association management system, which automatically synchronizes member and training information between the two systems. For the learners, the TopClass-iMIS bridge provides a clean user interface with a customizable look-and-feel for consistent association branding, single sign-on, and automatic user creation to allow members to access training directly from the ASUM website. The flexibility of TopClass LMS ensured that ASUM administrators also had the necessary level of control over management of user information and educational content, allowing the ability to successfully manage their member’s learning experience. 

“One of the key advantages of using TopClass over our previous open source LMS was the excellent support we've received. The WBT Systems support team have been great - knowledgeable and responsive.” - Alex Watterson, Project Manager

TopClass Results

The two-way integration between TopClass LMS and ASUM’s association management system has streamlined administration of their educational offerings. TopClass LMS has provided ease-of-access for ASUM’s members and enabled the association to more efficiently deliver educational resources, rectifying the productivity issues experienced with the previous LMS. 

The WBT Systems services team were instrumental in customizing TopClass LMS to meet ASUM’s requirements, and provided support during the LMS implementation, which afforded “a significant advantage” to ASUM. This was in contrast to the association’s previous open-source implementation, which had no formalized support system.

Looking to the Future

In the future ASUM may look to leverage more of the available features of TopClass LMS, such as ecommerce, and move into areas such as providing more ‘paid-for’ learning options, tailored to the needs of their members.

Australasian Society for Ultrasound in Medicine (ASUM), with over 3,600 members, is the peak multidisciplinary society whose mission is to advance the clinical practice of medical ultrasound for the highest standards of patient care, in Australia and New Zealand. A distinctive feature of ASUM is that it brings together on an equal footing medical practitioners, sonographers and scientists from a multitude of specialist areas. ASUM was founded in 1970 as a professional society to address issues such as education and training, professional standards, research and scientific interchange, bioeffects and safety.