Dan:

Mark Brown, very warm welcome to the show, first of all. Just, um, tell us a little bit about yourself and about Ski Patrol Canada. If you're someone from a, a different country that's never heard of it before, how would you describe it to us?

Mark Brown:
Well, Canadian Ski Patrol is a volunteer organization, 4,100 plus volunteers that provide pre-hospital emergency care in over 200 ski areas in Canada. Uh, we're part of the Fédération Internationale de Patrouille de Ski, and there are ski patrollers on almost every continent with the exception of Africa that I'm aware of, including Australia, uh, in Europe, and they all do the same thing.

They provide, uh, care, uh, and safety services at, uh, operating ski areas. So if you get hurt, we're, we're the people that show up to help you. So on your best day, when it turns, goes sideways and becomes your worst day, we're the ones that come in and help turn it around.

Andrew:
So we've been working with, uh, Ski Patrol, Canadian Ski Patrol for a couple of years now, and every time I meet in person with the senior representative of the team, it's just so cool to listen to the endless uh, and, and their own personal experiences because it is not just a regular day at the office, uh, and a volunteer-driven organization.

Um, so Mark, can you sort of tell us some stories about your background with Canadian Ski Patrol?

Mark:
Well, so I've been patrolling since the year 2000, and I've had the privilege of patrolling not only in Ontario but out west and in Quebec as well. And you're right, it's not a typical day at the office. A volunteer's patrol day will start sometime before the sun rises, depending on how far they have to drive to get to their area of operations.

For example, I typically get up at 4:00 in the morning, drive a couple of hours. Uh, we check in, we check our equipment, we go up, we check all the, uh, key aspects of the of the hill for safety, and then we, uh, have an opportunity to, uh, do some skiing and training until we get called into a particular incident.

And depending on where you ski, it can be very, very busy. Uh, skiing is a safe sport. 1 to 3% of all, uh, skier visits will result in a reportable injury, not necessarily a serious injury. But if you're patrolling at an area, for example, that has 20,000 or 30,000 people visiting, that 1% very quickly adds up into a very, very busy workload.

So there's And you'll deal with injuries, everything from what we would refer to as a hot chocolate injury, uh, where the prescribed treatment is hot uh, all the way up to, uh, life-threatening injuries where suddenly you'll be doing, uh, CPR, uh, to save someone, or you might be dealing with a, uh, massive bleed, a fractured femur, which is a life-threatening injury.

Summer people deal with, at rock concerts, uh, deal with drug overdoses, and we have a motorcycle unit here in Ontario that on their very first day of deployment ended up providing, uh, CPR to two individuals within 20 minutes of each incident during a, uh, cycle race for the Right to Conquer Cancer.

So it can be very serene, and then it will become madness that you have to deal with. And the patroller is, is in charge of managing the incident as well as taking care of the patient, dealing with, uh, managing resources, arranging transportation to a higher medical care if it's appropriate, and all the while figuring out what's going on, typically in, in a hostile environment, 'cause temperatures can range anywhere from, in the winter here in Ontario, we still patrol at -25 centigrade, and we're also patrolling in, uh, 40 degree centigrade uh, at summer events.

Dan:
These are all volunteers?

Mark:
They are all volunteers. The

Wow.

The, there are only four paid employees in the organization right now, so everything we do is done by volunteers. All our training, our manuals, uh, our administration, people management, everything is done by volunteers. They're very committed people.

Andrew:
Mark, when did you get involved in the, in the training and certification part of the, of the organization?

Mark:
Well, I started becoming an I became an instructor about 2005, and in those, our course is, uh, was approximately 60 hours of, uh, in-person instruction. And because we're heavily involved in trauma, a large proportion of the course involves what I would refer to as academic studies, which is, uh, physiology and anatomy.

So our students, uh, our volunteers are coming into or driving into a central location to attend lectures on physiology, uh, anatomy, different systems of the bodies, as well as their skills-based training. And, uh, those courses were 60 hours. So if you were taking it, uh, during the week, it was two nights a week right after work.

And if you did it on weekends, which I primarily did, we typically ran a all-day Saturday course for 12 weeks straight, uh, before a person was able to take their final exams and certify as a member of the Canadian Ski Patrol. And we do this every year. Our instructors are also practitioners, which it makes us unique, uh, among some first aid, most first aid organizations in that every single first aid instructor within Canadian Ski Patrol is also an active patroller.

Just because you're a paramedic doesn't qualify you as a, advanced first aid instructor in Canadian Ski Patrol would certainly help, and we do have some paramedics that are very good instructors.

Dan:

Andrew, before we go forward, um, I'm tempted to say no introduction is, is necessary. I'm sure most of, most of our regular listeners know who you are and who Catalyst are, but for, for anyone who doesn't, just give us a bit of background on your work.

Andrew:
Hi, everyone. Uh, thanks very much for having me on the Moodle Podcast. My name's Andrew Boag. I'm the CEO of Catalyst Canada. I've been working with Moodle for close to 20 years now. Uh, and it's really great to be here to talk to Dan Schumer and to invite Mark Brown from the Canadian Ski Patrol to share some of their experiences with Moodle.

Shalimar:
Here we go.

Cool. Okay, well, getting back to that, what's something unique about the Ski Patrol that others outside of the organization, you know, might not know?

Mark:
Well, we're 4,100 crazy people. if you think about it, uh, not only do we... Our members pay to be, uh, members, and then they volunteer. So that's, uh, somewhat unique in it. We're actually, unlike many other charities which raise funds and provide the funds for research for the benefit, uh, of something, we actually are a charity that is operational in the sense that we train ourselves, we go out and we give our time freely, uh, to the general public, and we put in hundreds of thousands of hours of volunteer time at areas across Canada every year, not including the, uh, preparatory work for doing it.

We're the Canadian Ski Patrol, and you think of skiing and winter. We volunteer at events year-round, but yet we're preparing year-round for each one of those seasons. We've already... We started our training cycle in April of this year to get our instructors up to speed on the, uh, changes within the Moodle system that we have in place, as well as just get themselves re-qualified, uh, so that they can teach, because our instructors have to recertify as instructors every year as well as their first aid.

Andrew:
Um, one of the things that, uh, always surprises me is the volunteer nature of the organization. Can you talk a little bit just about the difference between volunteer and some professional, uh, ski patrol organizations that exist within Canada?

Mark:
So there are paid ski patrollers across Canada in many places that will provide the same services Monday through Friday and receive training from different organizations. Our training is specifically focused on outdoor, uh, alpine and Nordic snow environments, whereas Red Cross training and St. John training is a little bit more generalized.

So we provide the specialized training not only in first aid, but also in patient transport, and our first aid is predicated on the basis that the patroller is probably going to have to transport a patient. So the packaging of a, uh, a patient becomes very important, and it's built into our DNA.

I mean, it's just a natural thing. Whereas if you're, if you hurt yourself on the street and taking care of someone who has equivalent advanced first aid training from Red Cross, I'm sure you'll be taken care of well. They're gonna call 911. What we'll do is we will actually...

We're on the hill, we move you because ambulances can't drive to the top of the ski hill, and paramedics won't go up a ski hill to teach. They expect us to bring the patient down to there. So if you've got a broken leg, uh, or a neck fracture or head injury, it's our responsibility to get you there safely.

Andrew:
And you mentioned Europe, and how are the training systems integrated across, uh, different countries?

Mark:
So in Europe, uh, patrollers that are there are typically part of a municipal search and rescue or a, a government search and rescue organization, uh, in Central Europe. They are volunteers, uh, in the UK. Uh, the British Association of Ski Patrollers, uh, are volunteers. Their training is, as I understand it, is, uh, accredited by, uh, the government, uh, in the United Kingdom as well.

Our training, for example, conforms to a Canadian Standards Association standards at dash 24, uh, and is accredited in Ontario as a workplace uh, compliant first aid training as well. So there is some variations in Europe, or sorry, in the Far East, in Korea and Japan. Uh, there's more heavily government involvement.

In North America where, uh, ski patrolling, uh, really took off, it started as a volunteer, uh, effort. Uh, and in the US, and in the US, the, uh, the National Ski Patrol in the United States has 32,000 volunteers. Of course, remember their population is 10 times the size of ours.

So they have 32,000 volunteers, uh, that provide the same types of services, and they are accredited by, uh, the by an act of Congress as the premier outdoor emergency care training agency in the United States. We don't have the same recognition by the Canadian government, uh, right now, and it's not likely to happen.

Uh, that's why we'll we comply with the CSA standard.

Shalimar:
Mark, I wanna learn a little bit more about how learning contributes to ski patrol's culture beyond the formal training. Can you tell me a little bit more about how culture is influenced by your training?

Mark:
One way to describe it is if we're not patrolling, we're preparing to patrol, and that involves training. So we're always training, even on the hill when we're there. We've completed our training, our certification. I go to the hill. There's training involved every day. So a constant process of, of of education as a team and as, uh, an individual is all part of the culture, and it's burnt into you, uh, very early on in your time with, uh, the ski patrol.

And that's really important because while I may ski individually at my particular area, uh, if there is a, a situation that I have to respond to, any number of people will come to assist me as soon as I call for help. So we may ski individually, and then we create dynamic teams, and you've gotta be learning all the time to work in teams so that you have an effective response and treatment for your patient, uh, and a successful outcome.

It's not just, "I'm in charge. You have to do what I say, uh, because I've been training longer than you." We have situations constantly, for example, where, uh, a patroller who is a trades person, uh, will be the first in on a very serious incident, and the, uh, next patroller who will come in and do what that first-in patroller tells them might be a thoracic surgeon.

And they understand that even though I'm a layperson, they will do what I tell them or ask them to do and will help me, and it's never, uh, the doctor's telling me to do this. It's my colleague is assisting to get the successful outcome. A good example is at, uh, many of the, uh, World Cup events, uh, that were run in Canada with, uh, members of the Canadian Ski Patrol, there is a doctor on the medical team and responds when a, uh, a World Cup athlete crashes, but the, uh, doctor has specific responsibilities, but it's the ski patroller who is technically a layperson, although we're highly trained, is technically a layperson who is in charge of the patient packaging and transport and makes the long-term If the patroller says the, uh, patient needs an, uh, pain relief, the doctor might administer the pain relief, but other than that, the patroller is in charge of the patient.

So it's you, uh, to us, the higher medical authority is a paramedic, and then the paramedic's higher medical authority is the ER doctor. But when you're out in my world, which is the wilderness for many physicians, uh, we're the ones that are considered actually the experts, and that surgeon or physician is actually going to be, uh, following my lead in terms of taking care of someone who's injured.

But so training is our culture. I mean, learning is our culture.

Shalimar:

Feel like that's one thing that we have in common because on every other point, I have Okay. I, have a confession to make, guys.

Mark:
Mm-hmm.

Shalimar:
I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California,I was at a very impressionable age when Sonny Bono died in a ski accident, and I made the decision right then and there that skiing wasn't for me. I'm not built for it, okay? I'll do some sledding. Sure, I'll do some sledding, but I've never been on a pair of skis. And so if I, if we could, 'cause I know there are listeners out there like me who maybe never have visited snow or conceived of themselves on a pair of skis or a snowboard, can you give us, like, top three tips and Can you teach me, a complete layperson, what I need to know before I hit a slope?

Mark:
So first of all, skiing or snowboarding is safer than sledding you've very little control on your way, uh, to manage gravity. So if you want to, uh, take up skiing or snowboarding, number one, take a lesson. Uh, know your limits and understand the Alpine safety code, which is designed to keep you safe, is, is the, uh, next important tip.

Shalimar:
Mm-hmm.

Mark:
don't be afraid to ask. It's a fantastic family sport. Uh, hockey is a big sport here in Canada for families. Our children skied because we can go We started skiing with our children when they were three or four. Uh, we could go out as a family. They could go into their lessons.

Mom and Dad could go off and ski. Uh, although my wife complained because I was patrolling. I went off and did my thing, so she got left alone. But if you're not patrolling, you can go off and ski, meet together for your meals, and at the end of the day, everybody's tired, and the kids don't want to go home because they're having so much fun.

So the key thing about skiing or snowboarding is make the decision to go up and take advantage of any, uh, beginner programs that your local area has, and take that lesson. Most of the, the beginner programs, uh, that, like Canada's Snowpass, involve a lesson so that you're safe. And you can be skiing and, or boarding within a few days of, uh, professional lessons and have a lot of fun.

And as I said very earlier, less than 3% of all visits result in a reportable injury. And a reportable injury is the minute I talk to you and I... For example, if I, technically if I look at, at your finger that you say is, is got a cut in it, that's a reportable injury.

It could be very much a Band-Aid and I gotta send you off a Band-Aid and hot chocolate. Uh, but because I touched you and I put a Band-Aid on, I have to report it, uh, for insurance purposes. So it is extraordinarily safe. There are risks involved in the, the sport, and that's one of the things that adds to the excitement of the sport, because you can go very fast and a lot of people like to go fast.

You can also, uh, once you know how to control yourself, you can go whatever speed you want, and you would be surprised at the terrain. And you, quite frankly, you'll see all body types skiing. It's not just thin people, uh, despite the cartoons and the, uh, the stereotypes, but it's extraordinarily healthy to be out in the hills, uh, fresh air in the winter.

And it's the best way to survive the winter, quite frankly, is to do something outside rather than inside.

Shalimar:
Well, my D&D dice beg to differ with you, agree to disagree.

Mark:
*Laughs*
Well, that's okay.

Shalimar:
No, that sounds lovely.

Dan:
No, I loved, I loved your answer about, um, you know, learning as part of a, the, the culture, learning is your culture. How do you get from that to a learning management system? Like, what, what is it... I don't know if you were at the organization at the time when you decided, "We need Moodle." What was, what, what was it that got you that point?

Mark:
way back and we... The, the challenge is because the course was so long and so much of it involved people coming in right after work, so if you were going to do a class that wasn't going to go till midnight, you had to start it at about 6:00. And if someone finished work at 5:00, it's a little difficult in the middle of rush hour in the Greater Toronto area and a lot of urban areas where we do most of our training to, uh, get out of work promptly at 5:00 and in a classroom promptly at 6:00 to watch or listen to, uh, an hour-long, multiple hour, hour-long or longer PowerPoint presentation on the location and, of the heart, the liver, and spleen, and where, how the different body systems work.

And at that time in the early 2000s, learning management systems were being developed. And Moodle came out, and it was freeware, and as a charity, freeware is great for us because we don't have any money. Uh, so we implemented Moodle very early on as an opportunity to allow people to learn at their own pace prior to coming in for the more kinetic and dynamic uh, one-on-one training associated with the skills of, you know, how to deal with extreme bleeds, how to deal with broken bones, how to deal with head injuries, how to perform a patient assessment, uh, which takes time and, and a lot of practice to get it right.

Uh, and it saved time because our volunteers' time is valuable, uh, and it's very limited. And we were also at that time, and have, and everybody in North America and probably around the world, uh, over the last 25 years have been facing the fact that people are getting busier and busier with other things and have less and less time to volunteer.

So we have to be very cognizant in everything we do about the time that our volunteers are involved in taking to do things, uh, including training.

Dan:
So my understanding is that you then, uh, many years later, moved from Moodle to, to Moodle Workplace. What prompted that change?

Mark:
Well, really, our members prompted that change because while we were using Moodle, I mean, it was being, uh, managed and run by volunteers. We had, as an organization, had some in-house developed expertise in it, but we'd had nobody that was a, a Moodle expert. So a whole bunch of volunteers were doing a whole bunch of things, and we were locked into a, a schedule, and we got our a bunch of volunteers together, well over 100 of them, and said, "How do we make your life easier?

How do we make training better?" And they came out and said we needed certain capabilities in our online learning. Couldn't get rid of online learning, but we had to have certain capabilities, uh, and there were wants, needs, and desires such as gamification, control of the flow of information, uh, some of which is not necessarily a Moodle, uh, issue.

It was the way we were doing things. So we went back, took all their wants, needs, and desires. Uh, we'd been looking at alternative learning management systems to see what was might be available in the marketplace, went to an RFQ (Request for Quotation), uh, and we submitted And Catalyst was, uh, responded to it.

And what we discovered, uh, based on our response, is that with the base capabilities in Moodle Workplace, we could do pretty much everything we wanted to do, which was very important for us. I attended a Moodle Moot, and a number of, uh, very highly qualified Moodle for something or other, uh, users were saying they could do everything they said in Moodle, in Moodle Workplace, they could do it in Moodle by writing scripts.

The challenge is I have volunteers, and I have no time at all to write or maintain any scripts. And I also have to have 24 hour a day availability on the training because, quite frankly, I'm dealing with five time zones across Canada. I don't, can't afford to have the system down.

And as we evolve as an organization to start taking on more, um, non-skiing events, I've got to be able and flexible enough to provide training any time of day or, day or night and any day of the week in any part of the country, uh, at any time of year.

And what Moodle allowed us to do was most effectively integrate, uh, that concept and be basically out of the box everything we need. The only custom programming code that we have involved, and we have this thing uh, uh, trying to create an aversion culturally in our management team, is an aversion to custom code.

The only custom code or scripts that we, uh, will permit right now is when Moodle talks to our member management system. So we've we've set up auto-enrollment into, uh, courses now because our patrollers come back and for new patrollers, and we've eliminated a whole bunch of work that volunteers were having to do in terms of uploading, uh, Excel spreadsheets so that they could be loaded into Moodle, downloading results, and loading them into another system.

We've now integrated that now so that, uh, when I register, uh, Moodle is advised that I'm an active member. They let me into my course. I can start my training. It advises the, uh, local patrol that, uh, I've completed my training successfully, tells our member management system that that is approved when it's all done, and it updates my my certification certificates as well as my membership ID.

And we're now issuing our membership IDs, uh, through your our phones, whereas we used to print out plastic cards, so which basically went to landfill every year because

Andrew:
You could probably call that an extinction or an integration as opposed

Mark:
Well, yeah

Andrew:
the horror of oneness of custom code

Mark:
was definitely environmentally friendly. I mean, think about it. We were printing out 4,000 some odd plastic credit cards every year that were going to landfill 12 months later.

Others:
Yeah.

Mm.

Mark:
we've eliminated that, and that saves money and ink.

Shalimar:
Great. Mark, quick question. You mentioned a Moodle Moot. Any chance you remember which Moot that was?

Mark:
Uh, it was Moodle Moot Canada. Um, and it was the first one I went to, which was at York, so that was 2024.

Andrew:
Uh, 2023.

Mark:
That'd be Moodle Moot Canada 2023.

Yep.

Shalimar:
That's a big shout-out to Moodle Moot Canada. If in or near Canada or considering traveling to the great nation of Canada, please check out Moodle Moot Canada. Sorry. Just gotta plug those Moots. I love them.

Andrew:
Coming again, coming again in May 2026 (2027*).

Mark:
Yeah. Moodle Moot's been very, uh, uh, I would recommend Moodle Moot to anybody who's starting down the Moodle world just to meet, uh, individuals who are working through an, uh, with Moodle. And whether it's Moodle Workplace or just Moodle, you'll probably find the challenges that you are faced with, somebody's dealt with it, and you've got an opportunity to share how you might do, uh, different things, and that has had an influence in some of the tweaking that we've done in, in you know, getting into the weeds, get, you know, setting up groups and cohorts and, uh, stuff like that.

And I found this year we brought a number of people from our sport team to the Moodle Moot in Montreal, Moodle Moot Canada in Montreal 2026. And it was outstandingly successful from that point of view in the things they learned. As a matter of fact, we're now field testing, uh, the Sora, the Sora AI plugin for Moodle, uh, to assist us in modifying our training or delivering our training, and we're hoping that we'll be able to, uh, deploy that, uh, in some way, uh, next, uh, April for our, uh, patrollers.

And if we hadn't gone to Moodle Moot, we would not have, uh, learned about that.

Shalimar:
Excellent. Now, Andrew, I wanna talk to you for a second. can you tell me about how Catalyst IT supported Ski Patrol's transition to Moodle?

Andrew:
So Ski Patrol was already using, Canadian Ski Patrol was already using Moodle before they came on board as a Catalyst client. It was One of the most significant changes was the move to Moodle Workplace. Um, and Moodle, our, our sort of philosophy around clients using Moodle Workplace is that it's not necessarily, and this is often one of the perception challenges, is 'cause Moodle Workplace has a huge suite of functionality and features and, and ever-growing capabilities, uh, compared to core Moodle.

I mean, the core Moodle's got a lot of amazing stuff too, but sometimes organizations look at these differences and decide that they don't need all of these things, uh, and therefore maybe not, um, you know, maybe explore a a solution with Moodle and scripts or, or some other customizations.

Whereas, you know, our school of thought is that once you need one or, you know, some of these features, that Moodle Workplace makes sense. Um, and the beginning of the process was about bringing on board, um, you know, some of the enhancements and capabilities that Moodle Workplace allowed for Canadian Ski Patrol.

Dan:
Thank you. Yeah.

And so Mark started off by saying, you know, originally Moodle was a free platform, and as a volunteer organization, as a charity, that's, you know, the, the easy choice. That must have been a battle for, for, for Catalyst. How do you go about convincing them that the amount of time that as an organization they save through adopting Catalyst's work and Moodle Workplace, that, that ultimately it's, uh, the, the, the, the total kind of cost involved is actually less, not more?

Mark:
Well, actually, I, that, I didn't have to do that. I had to convince the board that we needed to spend the money, uh, on this. And the key points that we, we mentioned to the board, uh, arguments were, number one, because we do so much learning, if we're not patrolling we're learning or preparing to learn or, uh, doing the learning, sharing the learning, is that we really need to invest in ourselves to be better.

Dan:
Mm-hmm.

Mark:
We had this, uh, demand that came from the membership saying, "We want things such as gamification. Uh, we want, uh, the ability to handle some regional differences." Although we have a national course, there are some requirements in different provinces that we have to address. And previously under Moodle, uh, default method of dealing with that was everybody learned about the same thing, even though it might not be applicable, uh, for you in that particular area.

So one of the things we were looking was the ability to regionalize, plus I have to do everything twice because I have to do it in French and in English. And we, uh, wanted to be able to say, "Let's regionalize it, meet the requirements," which in Quebec there are some specific legislative requirements that we had to meet.

Uh, in in Alberta, uh, they wanted some material removed from our curriculum. And in other provinces, they wanted that material in the curriculum. So we needed to be able to segregate this, again, without writing custom scripts to do that. So we needed to invest in ourselves. We also needed to recognize that, uh, the amount of time spent supporting the infrastructure of Moodle, you know, both in terms of, uh, the servers that we were paying for and volunteer time to do patches, updates, uh, loading people into courses, dealing with day-to-day troubleshooting that occurs with any system.

No system is perfect all the time. Took a lot of volunteer time, and that's not what people did, because all these people that are doing this work are ski patrollers. They joined because they love to ski, love to help people, and really, it's, you know, not the right recruiting, uh, tool to say, "Come and join the Canadian Ski Patrol."

Mm-hmm.

Great skiing or snowboarding, great healthy stuff. And tell you what, the other thing I'm gonna ask you to do is spend 30 hours a week maintaining a computer system called Moodle. You know?

Dan:
Yeah, totally.

Mark:
We want people to volunteer. So what we looked at was, and you can put a, a, a dollar amount, and, uh, there's estimates out of, uh, the federal government suggests that, uh, volunteer time is worth between $30 and $32 per hour. So what we were able... We turned around said, "Let's offload the mundane so that people can..." Like, a lot of the, the instructors love instructing.

They really enjoy teaching you how to do what we do, but they didn't sign up to be a Moodle administrator.

Dan:
Yeah.

Mark:
Although some of them were required to do that. So it was a new cost for us totally, but was let's shift the the cost from people maintaining infrastructure, and provide funds to support them to do what they like to do. So it's a slightly different than, we didn't save any money.

We're spending more money now than we did before, but we see the value in it. The members are happier with the, uh, learning experience for online. Uh, we're doing a shift, a cultural shift, to a truly hybrid approach of learning, and a lot of members, most of the members really appreciate that because it means when we get together, we're practicing doing the things we like to do.

Andrew:
So from in our involvement, it's really about Moodle for the Canadian Ski Patrol and the learning management system being an, an educational instrument, uh, not a technical responsibility or an operational responsibility, right? It's there to deliver learning. It's there to deliver outcomes. No one need, ever needs to be going to meetings about, you know, the configuration or hosting or any of that sort of stuff of the platform.

Dan:
Yeah.

Yeah. imagine it's a, it's a line you, you folks in Catalyst and Moodle certified partners all over the world are using. Let, let us do what we're really, really good at, and that allows you to do what you're really, really good at, and you, you don't wanna be, you know, spending, as you, particularly with volunteers more than, more than anything, you don't want them using their time in, in ways where they're not experts.

Andrew:
And, and the other thing about volunteer-driven organizations, and this is part of the strength of Moodle, right? Is that you can get someone who can wrestle up an old desktop in, you know, Sub-Saharan Africa or, and, and make a, make a Moodle for an entire school, and that's perfectly okay, and that's one of the reasons Moodle's been such a, such a success story.

But also that can be, that can sometimes be because, you know, this person may have had the best intentions and actually may be capable, but they just might have not have the time or capacity to be able to do what's required to keep this Moodle, um, alive and running.

And the obligations around running any Moodle or web-facing, um, application are only getting more, and there are more and more considerations and risks around privacy and, and compliance and all sorts of rules like that. So it is, but it, it is to be clear that the strength of Moodle, and one of the reasons Moodle's this amazing success story, is because of its ability to be adopted by organizations like this, and prototype and experiment and, and do awesome stuff.

Dan: 
In today's world where AI and vibe coding and everything makes everyone feel like they're, uh, suddenly much more qualified than they, they might otherwise be to do this kind of, uh, or certainly the custom development, is that, is that a pushback you're, you're hearing more, Andrew, these days? More, more and more kind of folks thinking that they can do it themselves?

Andrew:
I think vibe I mean, I'm very cautious with the term vibe coding, 'cause different people mean it to mean different, take it to mean different things. But that's more about development and, and building functionality, which is great and awesome, but often the people who are pushing that, well, often people are pushing the envelope and those capabilities don't really think about the considerations of, uh, of hosting it or putting it in a server somewhere.

Uh, because the, the applications of AI, uh, is, in terms of tinkerers, is so much more about people trying to do offensive things from what I've seen, as opposed to... I mean, there are so many tools that will defend your environment, but, um, yeah, it, it is, it is an interesting world what comes out of vibe coding for Moodle plugin development, but also an impressive one as well.

I mean, it is empowering.

Dan:
Uh, so when did, when did the shift to Workplace actually happen? When did you go live with Workplace?

Mark:
We went live with Workplace in 2024.

Dan:
Okay. So a couple of years in.

Mark:
We started... So we ported all our previous lessons to, uh, Moodle uh, to Workplace, which allowed us to, uh, get our students in. We kept Moodle, Moodle 4 point something, uh, live for those that really didn't want to do it. Uh, nobody used it. Everybody used the new one, so we've unplugged, uh, the Moodle uh, the Moodle installation now.

And, uh, one of the things we discovered was while the overall experience of the, uh, Moodle Workplace was considered better, uh, it was very easy to work with to drop in new videos and things like that using different tools, is we really had to rework our content. So we're right now in the final six, seven months of a 100% overhaul and complete rewrite of our manual to, uh, take better advantage of the capabilities of Moodle, as well as To the different learning styles of the, uh, volunteers that we're, uh, faced with these days.

I'm a baby boomer. I mean, we have baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z, and we're getting ready for the next generation, uh, who will be learning totally different than I did at, in high school and university, and Gen X and Gen Y. So this allows us to be much more responsive to those, uh, individuals.

And millennials.

Shalimar:
And, yeah, millennials. I feel like we left them out. Sorry.

Mark:
No, I thought they were Y

Shalimar: Not to be forgotten

Mark:
No, they won't be forgot.

Shalimar:
Yeah. Okay. Um, can we talk about what, which features have had the biggest impact on your team or your learners?

Mark:
So the ability to, uh, tenancy is a huge key element, uh, in terms of the feature, uh, because that allows us to distribute the workload and give greater control to, uh, our tenants so that, uh, a division, which are roughly analogous to our provinces, can start and do things on their own without having an impact nationally, uh, if they have some local requirements to meet.

The, um, general flexibility, I would say, overall of HP5, which is built into, uh, Moodle Workplace, has proven, is proving to be very, very powerful, uh, and is changing the way we're presenting our information. While we use videos to document, uh, for example, explain, uh, you know, how the heart works and how the lungs work and what the the endocrine system is, uh, we've changed our philosophy of training from one where we do incremental assessments, uh, formative and summative assessments as student work, works their way through, as opposed to a massive exam at the end of the course, and allow them more flexibility to go back multiple times till they learn the material.

And then, uh, Moodle keeps track much... Moodle Workplace easily keeps track of my progress, reports it to the, uh, instructor, uh, without necessarily massive intervention. We can automate some of those capabilities, again, as, as part of the base Moodle Workplace package. And we're just finding it easier to do things, to adapt and to change.

Uh, so ease of use is a, is a key feature, uh, as well.

Andrew:
It's another good example of multi-tenancy and what a game changer that's been with Moodle Workplace, because in the past, you would've had a number of non-perfect solutions to ring-fence, uh, you know, let's just say provinces, but I it's maybe a bit more than that. You would've had a number of non-perfect solutions to ring-fence those provinces across Moodle in order to facilitate access control, you know, somewhat some level of standardization of courses, and that would've been either sort of wresting them all into one Moodle and categorization, but there, there are challenges with that in terms of access control, or having multiple Moodles, uh, you know, one for each organization, which is also somewhat cumbersome, and don't really want 10 Moodles when they're all doing quite similar things.

So it's really cool to see the empowerment of what multi-tenancy is able to do in, in these sorts of in these sorts of cases with these sorts of organizations.

Shalimar:
And Andrew, from your perspective, from the Catalyst perspective, um, what, if any, challenges really arose during this transition of Ski Patrol from Moodle to Workplace?

Andrew:
*Laughs*

No challenges. Ski Patrol are amazing. They really are. Like, honestly, I, I genuinely say every time we catch up, I always just love listening, and at some point we'll get to the point about talking, uh, uh, of some stories about making sure sleds are connected to ski mobiles before anyone gets tugged or anyone gets towed anywhere.

But, uh, look, it's a, it is an it is an organization led by operational people, uh, which I just always find, uh, a lot more, a lot easier, to be honest. It, it's not a bureaucratic organization. Um, there's a lot of imminence-based leadership, right? Like, that's quite You see any group, like, there is respect, uh, amongst the cohorts.

And, you know, they're doing cool stuff and important stuff, right? So, you know, I certainly wouldn't be able to... Nothing comes to mind, anything short of perfection with our engagement with Canadian Ski Patrol.

Shalimar:
Oh, ever the diplomat.

Mark:
Yes, he's diplomat. I think probably their biggest frustration when I said Ski Patrol can be our biggest frustration, uh, is we will find, uh, a problem, go back to Catalyst and say, "We need this done," in terms of the interface between the two systems. They'll analyze it, come back and say, "Here's how we would solve it.

Does this work for you?" We'll say, "Yes," and they'll say, "Okay, to do that it's going to cost some extra dollars, and we'll have it done in some period of time." They get it done in that time. Uh, and because I'm dealing with volunteers, they'll say, "It's all ready for testing and staging. Can you, uh, start testing it?" And then I've gotta run around, and I'll... They'll do it in a week, and I spend three weeks chasing people to test the stuff. We're going through that right now with the multi-factor authentication, uh, implementation. Uh, is it's done, it's in staging, and it's working.

Uh, it's getting people to test it so that we can deploy it to, uh, our, uh, production site.

Andrew:
Which is a meaningful and big change. I mean, I'd, like, shout out to everyone in the Moodle, Moodle community. Single factor authentication is bad, right? Even if it's not for admin users. But yeah, I mean, amongst our peer of, amongst our suite of clients, uh, you guys are certainly, uh, always regarded as the smooth and easy ones.

Mark:
Huh. Well, thank you.

Shalimar:
Love that.

Mark:
We enjoy working with Catalyst because, I mean, we get... The advantage of working with Catalyst as well as I would think any certified provider is you're gonna get professional advice, they're going to do the work on your schedule that you agree to, and you'll have plenty of chances to test it.

And yes, if you change your mind, uh, you're gonna pay extra, but then again, that forces you to define your problem well so you get the solution that you want to do. And we have not just federal privacy laws that we have to deal with in Canada, we also have provincial privacy regulations, and working with Catalyst helps us achieve the goals should we ever be audited so that we'll have a clean audit from a, privacy and information point of view.

Dan:
Well, listen, I just wanna... As, as, the more I hear about this, the more I, um, kind of feel humbled and grateful that we're able to contribute towards this. I... We, we have a, um, a client in the US that Shalimar will, will know, it's the Office of Wildland Fires, which is not, not the same, but it's not, not dissimilar.

They, you know, lot, a lot of volunteers being trained, you know. Sometimes I get asked, you know, you know, "You're, you're just creating a platform for education and, and, you know, what, what, what... Does that actually... Is that good for the world? How do we know?" And these are the kind of examples that I think are really, you know...

Hearing you talk about the importance of learning and what you do, and, and the importance of what you do, it's, it's, it's huge. It's life-saving, and it's, and it's, uh, it's very, as I say, it's humbling for us to be a part of it, but it's inspiring as well to hear how, how important, how much importance you place on it all.

Mark:
So the, what we call it, the learning center. The learning center, which is Moodle Workplace, is the hub of all learning, uh, within the Canadian Ski Patrol. Everything regarding learning, it goes through it. Nothing goes through an outside system at this point in time.

Dan:
Tell us a little bit... I've, we've only got a few minutes left, but I want to kind of wrap by a, quite a big open question. Thinking about kind of learning in your sector generally, if you could of, if you could reimagine what learning looks like or how you see learning evolving over the next five years, what, uh, do you have...

Do, do you ever think about it in those terms?

Mark:

Well, we're trying to. I mean, it's a challenge because people coming out of university... First of all, we're getting, uh, our volunteers are 16 to and up, so we're getting them coming out of, uh, different levels of the education system, which is using, uh, technology differently. They have an expectation when they come to us about how they will learn.

We also have to adapt and accommodate individuals that have some learning challenges, just like the public or private education system do it. So one of the key things that we need, uh, and we believe we have within the Moodle environment, is a flexible platform that will allow us to deal with those differences.

We're going to, from a practical point of view, have to deal with the fact that there are fewer days on snow in many parts of Canada which means as an organization, our goal is to evolve into a multi-season outdoor, uh, provider of safety and first aid services, which changes and starts to tweak our focus. Uh, and a, a very practical way is typically if you have an open wound, you use clean water to rinse it out to get dirt and stuff like that out.

I can't carry clean water at minus 25. You know, it's ice. It's not gonna rinse any wound out.

Dan:
Sure.

Mark:
So just that little... That's a shift in thinking, uh, in terms of how I outfit myself and what I do in terms of the steps that I take, uh, is involved. We have to adapt that, and we look at, uh, using our learning platform, uh, as one of the key, uh, tools to integrate those cultural changes into the organization.

The other thing we're trying to do very much with our reworking of all of our content is instead of making learning a chore, it becomes fun to do so that spending... I'm a firm believer that if you have an, an engaging, uh, online learning lesson, you can ask a student 30 or 40 questions, and they won't know, and if they do well and they've got some fun little game application, they don't care.

Uh, it's... That's much better in terms of learning than writing a 100-question multiple choice exam. And our goal is next year we're going to eliminate the, uh, 100 the 100-question multiple choice exam, which caused huge stress and anxiety, and, uh, we will only be doing our summative and formative evaluations, uh, online.

And then you show up, and you can demonstrate, you can do the skills, and then you're good to go as before.

Shalimar:
I love that. I'm very firmly in that camp as well. If, if it can't be fun, it probably isn't worth doing in terms of learning. Um, we've gotta reimagine in, across all kinds of sectors how we engage with students, you know? We just... It's too has it been boring.

Dan:
Because because of what you're competing with. You're competing for attention span with all sorts of other things, and they're getting much more engaging.

Mark:
Absolutely.

Well, and that's one of the reasons why we're, uh, testing the SORA AI. Uh, and based on the preliminary testing, it looks very, very promising for us because it makes the, uh, the online experience, whether you're on your phone... That was also a key thing, go back with Moodle Workplace, was the, uh, mobile app, uh, integration because I had one general area manager say to me, he said, "Mark, the only time I have to do your training is first thing in the morning right after I get up and before I shave," so I'll leave that to your imagination.

So we were able to identify to him when we put, uh, Moodle Workplace in that there was Moodle Workplace app, and that in those, whatever our number of minutes he required between getting up out of bed and shaving, uh, he could do his training. He was thrilled. He was really thrilled that I brought it up in an audience of 100 people, too.

Dan: 
Hahaha, It's now on a global podcast.

Mark:
Yeah, but the AI allows it... From my perspective, it's a, uh, very engaging two-way, uh, conversation that's part of the training, and if you have that type of engagement where it's a conversation in, in terms of learning, your learning is going to be that much more effective, the member experience is better, and if, uh, we have a good member experience, we have a higher retention rate of our members.

Shalimar:
Excellent. Well, Mark, we are just about out of time, but I have to steer the conversation in a completely different direction for just one minute, if I may. In addition to being a longtime Moodler, um, I am also Moodle's, I dare say, premier expert on the sharkploitation cinema genre. Um, and this is, this is a, a debut factoid for the audience. Um, I'm obsessed with shark movies, okay? And one of the best shark movies ever to be made is a Canadian film by the name of Avalanche Sharks, where people are fighting for their lives on the slopes while sharks are just, absolutely ravaging them.

And I just wanna know....Is it true?

Dan:

Haha, you're asking, you're asking if it's a true story?

Shalimar:

A, if it's a true story. B, have you ever seen this film?

Mark:

No, I can't say that I have.

Shalimar:

I... Well, I wanna leave you with this gift. It's available on streaming services everywhere, and I... It's a stupid good time and a beautiful thing, um, that is a gift, I, I consider a gift from our lovely neighbors to the north, um, in I'm in the States, so, um, love, love the work you're doing up there with ski patrol and also with the Avalanche Sharks.

All:

Oh, Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew:

Long live the sharks, yeah.

Mark: 

Yes, I will.

Dan:
Yeah, we will, we will have to wrap there. Thank you so much, both of you, for your time. I really do appreciate it.

Andrew:
Thank you. 

Dan:
Andrew, anything else? So before we, before we finally sign out, anything from your side, from Catalyst side that you'd like to add or say?

Andrew:
Mark, what is the coldest, uh, you have ever been in while skiing down a mountain?

Mark:
Minus 35 centigrade. 

Andrew: That's cold.

Dan:
That is cold.

Andrew: 
Yeah, no, no, thank you very much, guys. Thanks Moodle.

Dan:
We'll see you in a couple of weeks, Andrew.


All:
See you.

Thank you for your time. Great to meet you

Yeah, thank you.

Awesome.

Shalimar: Great. Thanks, guys.

Andrew:
Thanks a lot.

Mark:
Bye. Thank you.