What happens when a government agency, a learning design consultancy, and a next-generation LMS come together to rethink how young athletes learn?
You get the Future Champions Empowerment Program — a digital learning initiative from the NSW Office of Sport that has already earned international awards and is reshaping how athletes, parents, coaches, and sporting organisations develop capability.
At the OpenLearning Forum, Andrew Napier from Learning Plan took us behind the scenes of this ambitious project. His session revealed not just the scale of the work, but also why the program works: authentic learning design, mobile-first delivery, and strategic use of AI to accelerate content creation.
Here’s what we learned.
The story starts in 2023, when Learning Plan partnered with the NSW Office of Sport to build a single course: The Holistic Athlete Program. It focused on foundational skills — movement, wellbeing, mindset — all built on the OpenLearning platform.
But demand grew quickly. Coaches needed more resources. Parents needed guidance. Sporting organisations wanted consistent training pathways. And athletes? They needed support that extended far beyond weekly training sessions.
Today, the ecosystem includes:
It’s a living, expanding digital ecosystem — and everything runs on OpenLearning.
“AI didn’t replace our design work — it helped us move faster and tell clearer stories from the data. It’s become a powerful partner in how we build.”
— Andrew Napier, Learning Plan
If you’re trying to support emerging athletes, you can’t assume they’re learning at a desk.
Athletes are on the move — literally. Between school, training, tournaments, travel, and recovery, learning needs to fit their lifestyle. That’s why the entire program was designed and tested mobile-first using the OpenLearning app.
From their phone, learners can:
This design choice dramatically improved access for regional and rural athletes who often miss out on structured development programs.
One of the most powerful parts of the program is the “review, practise, demonstrate” model:
It’s real, meaningful capability development — not passive e-learning.
Andrew also shared how the team mapped the experience to the FTEM NSW framework and the 3DAD model, helping athletes understand the journey from foundational participation to mastery.
The program hasn’t just performed well — it’s been recognised for its impact. Among the awards mentioned include:
🏆 Gold — LearningElite (US)
🏆 Editor’s Choice — Best Small Company
💎 LearnX Diamond — Best Capability Program
💎 LearnX Diamond — Best Talent Development (Sport)
💎 LearnX Diamond — Best Learning and Development
🌟 AITD Excellence Awards Finalist
These accolades highlight the strength of the learning design — and the importance of having a platform that supports rich media, authentic tasks, and community interactions.
While the program is deeply human-centered, AI plays a valuable supporting role behind the scenes.
Andrew shared several practical examples:
Upload a PDF → get a two-person conversation summarising the content. Perfect for learners who prefer audio.
Realistic tone control, accent adjustments, and consistent delivery — ideal for large-scale multimedia production.
Used with the University of Melbourne to build scenarios for courses on crucial conversations.
Using Power Automate and ChatGPT, the team analysed:
This helps the Office of Sport understand learner progress and prepare award submissions.
Andrew and the Learning Plan team also tested how far the AI Course Builder could go — generating learning outcomes, initial structures, activity ideas, and rubrics aligned to capability frameworks.
With input from the learning designers, it became a powerful accelerator for course design.
This combination of evidence-based design, thoughtful use of technology, and community-driven learning is exactly what underpins the Future Champions Empowerment Program.
The programme is the NSW Office of Sport’s growing ecosystem of courses supporting athletes, parents, coaches, and sporting organisations across the state.
The program shows what’s possible when:
It’s a model other government departments, non-profits, and industry bodies can learn from, especially those supporting large, dynamic learner groups.
This is learning that’s practical, engaging, and genuinely transformative.
OpenLearning works with organisations that want to scale capability development through authentic, human-centered learning — enhanced by AI.
Thinking about how a more structured course development process could work for your team? We're happy to walk you through what this looks like in practice, so get in touch or explore our AI course design tools !
