LMS scoping and implementation

In 2024 SETsquared's entrepreneurship education offer had a scaling problem. Its blended learning initiative, combining expert-led mentoring with hosted self-managed courses, was early-stage but already working. The partnership wanted to scale to more programmes without losing control of its content.

Accessibility drove the decision. Live, in-person delivery excludes people the programmes exist to serve. Busy researchers, senior academics in deep technology labs, people with caring responsibilities, anyone for whom travel is a barrier.

So SETsquared needed a learning management system, on a practical budget, meeting the data privacy standards of leading UK universities. edio was engaged to lead the selection and evaluation.

What we did

We ran a requirements sweep across the partnership first, gathering the needs and expectations of partners in different roles so the selection would serve the whole community rather than one institution.

We then scanned the market, covering the major providers to academic institutions and the emerging platform paradigms worth testing against them. Seven products made the shortlist and went through detailed conversations and structured pitch and evaluation meetings with each vendor. A selection matrix scored every option against weighted criteria: ease of use and administration, affordability, data privacy, and the potential to modularise the course catalogue so content could be recombined for different sector programmes rather than expensively rebuilt.

Content built once can be recombined for new audiences.

The outcome

SETsquared selected LearnUpon, an Ireland-based LMS provider, and the platform went live in spring 2025. The course catalogue continues to grow and the blended programmes now reach increasingly large communities of learners across the partnership. Content built once can now be recombined for new audiences. That property is what the whole selection was designed to protect.