MacIntyre provides learning, support, and care for children and adults with learning disabilities at more than 120 MacIntyre centres across the UK. Its diverse range of services includes registered care homes, supported-living schemes, accredited training schemes, and lifelong-learning services, as well as residential special schools and a further-education college.

One of the major challenges facing the new LMS will be to satisfy the demands of the charity's regulatory authorities. Sheldon Carolan, Learning & Development Manager for MacIntyre, explains, "The ability of our operational staff to provide support services is closely regulated and monitored by both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. The different regulatory bodies demand different reporting data. This can also change going forward. We therefore needed an LMS that could meet these conditions and enable us to build and save our own reports to reduce ongoing activities."

Another attraction was the ability to create and manage 'gadgets' on the home page. Sheldon continued, "We are keen to encourage users to visit the LMS as often as possible. By having the gadgets on the home page, we are able to provide a more active, varied, and interesting environment for the users. The look and feel is also very familiar and easy to grasp, which is also important if you are expecting learners of all kinds to come and use the system effectively."

e2train Business Development Director Martin Belton comments, "For obvious reasons, many charities are in the unusual position in having lots of support workers out in the field but only a few hard-working administrative and IT operatives in their head offices to manage. It therefore makes a huge amount of sense for them to go for a cost-effective service that will enable them to meet regulatory demands and reduce costs and effort in the bargain."

The LMS will also enable MacIntyre to increase the number and breadth of its blended learning programmes. This includes making use of the system's chat and learning forum features and the learning pathways tools to enable learners to progress quickly with programmes tailored to their learning needs.