Learning Pathways in a Totara LMS

See how learning pathways provided guided routes for learners to navigate course content, activities, and assessments.

Totara Learning Pathways – A Simple Guide

What are Learning Pathways?

Learning pathways in an LMS (like Totara) are guided routes through course content, activities, and assessments. They help learners progress in a structured, personalised way that suits their goals and learning styles. This approach keeps learners engaged, identifies where they need help, and makes it easier for course designers to design and deliver effective courses.

Why Use Pathways?

Tailors learning to individual needs
Helps identify strengths and areas for improvement
Keeps learners motivated and on track
Organises content logically for easier learning

Adaptive Learning with Totara

Totara’s adaptive learning pathways are smart—they respond to each learner’s progress, job role, or other criteria to show only the most relevant materials. For example:

Learners might see different activities based on their grades or past progress.
Paths can be tailored based on user roles, language preferences, or course completion.

You can choose between tightly controlled paths or open, flexible ones. Totara also supports long-term pathways using its program and certification tools.

Achievement Pathways in Totara Perform

With Totara Perform, you can define how learners achieve competencies. You set up achievement paths for each skill or goal, then decide how to measure success:

Highest: Uses the top-rated result
Prioritised: Favors manual ratings listed first
Latest achievement: Uses the most recent result

This flexibility helps align learning progress with performance evaluations.

The Pathway Course Format

This is a clean, modern course layout designed to show one activity at a time—great for focus and flow. Learners can:

Complete activities in order or skip ahead
See progress in a side panel with icons (ticks for done, locks for restricted)
Use arrows or a “Next” button to move through content
Collapse the panel to go full screen
Mark activities or the whole course as complete (if enabled)

This format is ideal for multi-step courses where you want learners to clearly see their journey and stay engaged.

How SMART goals drive achieveable results

Survey results indicate that traditional annual performance reviews are both flawed and disliked by managers and staff alike. Their rigid nature and confrontational approach too often relies on a managers subjective personal perception of an employee. Such subjectivity can inadvertently introduce biases and overlook the nuances of an employee’s performance.

66% OF EMPLOYEES

were strongly dissatisfied with their last performance review experience, according to a survey of Fortune 1000 companies conducted by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB).

A more effective approach to performance management takes the form of continuous feedback, which surfaces issues and positive behaviors earlier and ensures that everyone is on the same page. When performance is managed effectively, it has a positive impact on motivation, engagement and job satisfaction.

So what practical steps can an organisation looking to embody modern performance management processes take?

Establishing a clear vision

If you are going to inspire and motivate people across your organisation your vision must be carefully considered and compelling to appeal to all roles and responsibilities geographically.

What is the organisation’s primary purpose?
What are its core values?
What do we want to accomplish over the longer term?

Establishing a clear vision

If you are going to inspire and motivate people across your organisation your vision must be carefully considered and compelling to appeal to all roles and responsibilities geographically.

What is the organisation’s primary purpose?
What are its core values?
What do we want to accomplish over the longer term?

SMART goals

Using Totara to enable smart goal setting.

SMART goals are structured using a set of criteria to improve the chances of accomplishing that goal. They provide employees and their managers with focus and direction, and can be a useful motivator. They can also be mapped to specific learning activities, such as courses, seminars or coaching, to ensure the success of the goal.

SPECIFIC

– describe your goal using a high-level mission statement that covers the 5 Ws of who, what, when, where and which.

MEASURABLE

– what metrics will you use to determine success?

ACHIEVABLE

– set goals that are attainable and realistic.

RELEVANT

– ensure the goal aligns with broader business objectives.

TIMEBOUND

– make sure these are motivating, not stressful – if the target date proves too stressful, it may be a sign that the goal is not achievable or relevant.

Totara Performance Video Guides

Totara features to achieve those Performance Goals

Goals

Goals are an important tool for organisations to drive alignment and for managers to help their employees plan and assess their performance.

Totara goals can be embedded directly within the performance management workflow, allowing users and their managers to collaboratively add, review and update goals as part of their performance conversations. A shared goals page then allows both users and managers to monitor progress which can include a numerical target represented with a progress bar.

Frameworks

Performance activities are very flexible to suit your needs. These activities are how you carry out various performance tasks including appraisals, check-ins and other feedback.

You can pull in content from other parts of the site, such as goals, competencies, evidence and learning – to get a thorough review of your people and what support they might need to achieve their full potential.

The performance management tools you need for a highly productive workforce

Flexible approaches enables both traditional and continuous performance management processes
Better alignment bring company, team and individual goals together.
Competency profiles offer a personalised plan for learning and development
Supportive environments build a coach-mentor culture with check-ins, reviews, and fast feedback

Read our “Totara Perform features guide” guide pdf.

Download the Totara Guide

Quick Perfom video guides

From hierarchical goal frameworks, performance scales and goal-based reporting these videos provide guides on how these work within the Totara LMS.

Case studies

We’ve collaborated with top organizations across diverse industries. Read some of our customer success stories and discover why people partner with Cortexa.