Want know how to build personalised learning paths in your LMS? We show you the easiest way to set up personalisation.
When you hire a new employee, you’re hiring diverse skills, career goals, and learning preferences.
The organisations that recognise this gain a competitive edge because personalised learning paths empower employees to grow in ways that are relevant, engaging, and aligned with business objectives.
A win-win.
Keep reading to learn:
- What personalised learning paths are
- Why personalised learning paths matter
- How to design personalised learning paths in Totara
Let’s get started.
⏰ TL;DR
Totara is a great LMS if you’re considering personalised learning. With the right partner, you can customise your learning paths further with tweaks to core code. Personalised learning paths can help give your learners the learning they need, when they need it most so it’s worthwhile investing in the right platform.
What is a personalised learning path?
A personalised learning path is a customised education journey that adapts to a learner’s individual needs, skills and pace, often as they go.
This type of learning moves away from a one-size-fits-all approach.
It works by using data, and in some cases, AI, to determine what a learner knows and then sets a direct route for them to master the skills they need.
Why personalised learning paths matter
Instead of overwhelming learners with generic content, a personalised learning path can guide learners through curated experiences that are tailored to their roles, performance and goals.
They can support:
- Better learning engagement
- Improved knowledge retention
- Career progression
- Targeted upskilling
- Alignment between employee development and organisational goals
What do personalised learning paths actually look like?
From an overall perspective, standard (or non personalised) learning paths are basically the same content, with the same order and at the same pace for everyone.
A personalised learning path meanwhile has different content, pace, and sequence based on the individual.
The difference becomes obvious when you see real examples 👇
Example 1: Customer service training
Standard learning:
In a regular learning environment, all employees working in the customer service team would be assigned the following content to complete:
- Introduction to Customer Service
- Communication Skills
- Handling Difficult Customers
- CRM System Training
- Final Assessment
The issue with this is that a senior hire for example has to sit through basic modules while a beginner gets overwhelmed by advanced topics. With no adjustment based on performance or prior knowledge, learning feels stagnant and irrelevant.
Personalised learning:
With the same goals of training our customer service team, let’s look how we would share content instead based on level:
Learner A: new hire (beginner)
- Customer Service Basics (required)
- Communication Fundamentals
- Guided Role-Play Exercises
- Shadowing Session (offline activity)
- Basic CRM Training
- Assessment → unlock next stage
Learner B: experienced hire
- Skip basics (auto-completed via assessment)
- Advanced Customer Psychology
- Handling Escalations
- Performance Simulation
- Certification
The difference is palatable. The content is different and the entry points define what content they’re delivered meaning that progress depends on competency, not just completion.
How to deliver personalised learning paths in your LMS
For this example, we’re going to talk about Totara as we’re a platinum partner so best placed to talk about how we’ve used it historically to deliver personalised learning paths.
Totara LMS provides powerful tools to create structured yet flexible learning experiences.
Here’s how to design personalised learning paths in Totara step by step:
Step 1: Define your objectives
First off, identify the core competencies for each role in your organisation and any skills gap that you have found.
List out business-critical learning outcomes and then in Totara, use the Competency Frameworks feature to define and organise skills and map competencies to job roles and departments.
Step 2: Segment your audience
In order to deliver personalisation, you need to do a bit of work on audiences. Luckily, this is where Totara shines.
Group learners based on:
- Job role
- Department
- Skill level (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
- Career aspirations
In Totara you can use dynamic audiences to tailor the learning experience for each individual, without creating a large admin overhead.
Step 3: Create structured learning programmes
Build structured pathways that guide learners step by step. Use Programs to bundle courses into a defined learning path and set:
- Course sequences (linear or flexible)
- Completion deadlines
- Conditional access (e.g., unlock next course after completion)
💡 Pro Tip
In our work with edt, we created custom functionality to enable mentors to set if learners needed further support in a particular module/subject area, or if they could move onto the next. This took into account more nuanced data but gave all the control to the users to set how learners progressed through the course.
See our work with edt
Step 4: Incorporate multiple learning formats
Once the set up is done of audiences, next is creating your learning. Being mindful of preferred types of learning, make the most of content types like:
- eLearning modules
- Videos
- Workshops and webinars
- On-the-job training
- Social learning
Totara is particularly skilled at supporting blended learning in its LMS, so you can mix courses, seminars, and resources within programs.
Step 5: Enable personalisation through rules and conditions
The trick with learning paths is to make them adaptive.
With Totara, you can have more control over your learning content.
You can use conditional activities to show or hide content based on performance and also to recommend advanced modules after assessments which is a great way to progress learners.
You can also assign different learning paths to different audiences automatically.
Step 6: Use competency-based progression
This is where Totara really stands out as you can tie learning directly to skill development.
And isn’t that the whole point of learning and development after all?
In Totara you can link courses to competencies, track proficiency levels and allow learners to progress once competencies are achieved (not just course completion).
With Totara in play, you can show the way forward by creating learning plans, linking learning to competencies and combining courses into programs and certifications
Step 7: Integrate assessments and feedback
A core part of any learning management system is the collection of competency and feedback.
So of course, you need to measure progress and refine learning experiences as part of personalised learning paths.
With Totara, you can add quizzes and assessments, workplace observations and manager reviews in Totara Perform.
And with all of these results, you can recommend next steps and adjust learning paths dynamically.
Step 8: Empower managers and learners
Personalisation works best when learners and managers are involved and motivated in progression.
With Totara, your managers can get actively involved through Totara Perform by assigning additional learning via goals (or just generally assigning learning in the core LMS).
They also get cool reporting dashboards for easy team progression monitoring.
Meanwhile, you can allow your learners to self-enroll in recommended courses if they want to further their development, and they can also set personal development goals.
Related: How to deliver personalised learning at scale
Creating personalised learning paths with Totara
Designing personalised learning paths is a strategic investment in your workforce.
By leveraging the capabilities of Totara LMS, you can create dynamic, competency-driven learning experiences that adapt to individual needs while driving business success.
Sound good?
See what else you can get from Totara, or check out our own LMS features.
After all, when done right, personalised learning transforms training from a requirement into a meaningful journey.
And that allows your employees to grow, perform, and thrive which is hopefully your overall goal.
See how we work with Totara by booking a demo of our version of the platform, where you’ll get to see all the extra features you can access with the Edition.
