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"Even if you've had LearnPath for a while, the training definitely helps. Before, it was just there. Now it's 'wow, look what we've done.'"
Fiona O'Connell, Library Manager, Rangitoto College
Rangitoto College is the largest school in New Zealand, with more than 4,000 students across Years 9 to 13. It has achieved the country's top scholarship results four years running. A big school with a big research load, and a library team that knows LearnPath usage is worth watching.
Rangitoto has used LearnPath since 2018, but for a long time it sat quietly in the background. The original set-up had been built by a colleague who has since left, and when she went, the guides languished on the webpage.
"It was set up in school colours and lacked visual impact. The content was still good, but I'm not sure it was getting used as much as it could have," says Library Manager Fiona. "When she left, it stagnated, because I didn't really know how to use it properly."
The guides worked. They just weren't growing, and no one on the team felt confident enough to rebuild them.
In March 2026, Fiona and her team booked a training session with Softlink’s LearnPath specialist, Kerianne. It changed how they built guides.
“I’d learnt to build the guides with a text box. Kerianne showed us how to do it with an image instead, along with lots of other ways, which made it so much easier to pull together,”
Small techniques, like adding brand colours and building guides in Canva, streamlined the work. “The tips Kerianne showed us were outstanding. We’ve reused them the whole way through.”
After the session, the team went, in Fiona’s words, “really hardcore.” They audited every guide with the departments, retired the ones no longer used, put others on hold, and rebuilt the rest with a consistent look.
Then they took the guides to teachers directly, department by department, from Social Science to Classics to PE and Health.
The usage data tells the rest of the story. In the five years before the training, guide views averaged around 388 a month. In the eight months since, they’ve averaged over 1,100. May 2026 became the busiest month on record, with more than 4,200 views across 50 guides. And 31 guides have been opened for the very first time, including New Zealand collections that had sat unused for years.
“The Bridget Williams collection is free and really New Zealand based. It’s great to see those finally being used, because they’d languished there for a long time,” Fiona says.
The numbers have become a story Fiona tells upwards, too. “I put it in my annual report to show what we’ve got out of it. Before, LearnPath was just there, not something I was rushing to use. Now it’s ‘wow, look what we’ve done,’ and that makes it so much easier to promote.”
“Get everyone on board for the training, it makes it so much easier. And even if you’ve had LearnPath for a while, it definitely helps. Learning the different aspects of it is what really matters.”
For Rangitoto, the session did more than teach a tool they already owned. It gave the team the confidence to rebuild, the buy-in to spread guides across departments, and the data to prove the value. Fiona now sees the guides as the library’s “cheat sheet” for teachers: half the work done, ready to use.
Rangitoto’s LearnPath use nearly tripled after one training session with our specialist. Whether you’re new to LearnPath or already have it and want more from it, we can help.
Already have LearnPath?
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