Introduction to Oracle Learning Management

Oracle Learning Management (OLM) is designed to support all education models by providing a single unified learning delivery system to the extended enterprise of employees, customers, and partners.

Tightly integrated with the talent and performance management functions within the Human Resources application, OLM is also integrated with Oracle Financials and Order Management applications to administer the financial and commercial aspects of your learning business. The application records worker competencies, making them available for career planning as well as candidate placements, performance appraisals, and other activities.

Note: The Appraisals and Questionnaire Administration functions are part of Oracle Performance Management. The purchase of a Self-Service HR license on or after June 18th, 2007 does not permit the use of Performance Management. You must purchase a separate Performance Management license in addition to Self-Service HR license to use the Appraisals, Questionnaire Administration, and Objectives Management self-service functions.

OLM offers a wide range of functions, from catalog and online class management to learner enrollments and learning paths, enabling you to:

Manage All Learning With the Unified Catalog

The catalog provides an interface for administrators to manage the setup and delivery of learning. The catalog model relies on five catalog objects:

Categories organize the catalog so that learners and administrators can find what they're looking for. A category can hold courses, learning paths, or other categories.
Courses define subject matter and instructional objectives.
Offerings define the delivery mode and language of a course. An offering might be an online course given in French, or an instructor-led course taught in Danish.
Classes are enrollable instances of offerings. For example, an instructor-led offering might need delivery online, or in several different places at different times. A learner would enroll in a class held at a specific time and place. You can also hold live online classes using OLM's integration with Oracle Web Conferencing.
Sessions are subdivisions of classes. To help you create a detailed agenda for a class, you can break it down into shorter sessions, specifying the location and schedule of each session.

From the catalog, you can also create and maintain other objects that are not a part of the nested hierarchy such as forums, chats, web conferences, learning paths, and learning certifications. Administrators use the catalog to grant learners access, book resources, and assign competencies to learning. Learners and managers can also view a version of the catalog to enroll in learning.

Group Courses Into Learning Paths and Certifications

Learning paths help to monitor performance and develop the careers of your workforce. Learning paths group courses into meaningful sequences, and can include completion targets to indicate to subscribers the dates by which they should complete the learning path.

Learning path types come from three sources:

Catalog learning paths, created by a learning administrator, appear in the learner catalog and enable multiple learners to follow a path.
Manager learning paths enable managers to specify courses of study for their employees, either directly or as a result of another Human Resources activity such as a performance appraisal.
Learner learning paths, created by learners to set their own goals, define a plan to achieve them, and measure their progress along the way.

Learning Certifications offer learners the opportunity to subscribe to and complete one-time and renewable certifications, including regulatory certifications such as compliance training and professional development certifications such as Oracle DBA. Unlike learning paths, certifications can include renewals and enforced due dates. Administrators can choose from a wide variety of options to designate how long a certification lasts, whether and when a learner can renew, and when the application sends notifications.

Track and Manage Enrollments

Administrators can enroll and subscribe one or multiple learners in classes, learning paths, and learning certifications. They control enrollment through a combination of learner access, self-enrollment permission, and approval options. You can also track successful attendance, maintain learning histories, and set up automatic updates to a learner's competency profile. Search capabilities enable you to place the right learners into the right classes.

Using class and enrollment statuses, you can control enrollments in a class throughout its life cycle. For example, you can create a Planned class to monitor learner interest and investigate resource availability. You might then enter enrollments with the status Requested as learners express an interest in the class and you can update their status to Waitlisted when the learners confirm their interest. You can update the class status to Normal when you have sufficient Waitlisted enrollments to meet the minimum numbers required to run the class, automatically taking Placed enrollments from the waiting list.

Grant and Restrict Learner Access

Learner access enables administrators to define which learners have access to which learning. Administrators can specify this access on any catalog object. All catalog objects contained under this catalog object inherit this access. For example, granting learners access to a category grants them access to all the courses in that category. Learners cannot view or enroll in learning to which they lack access.

Manage, Deliver, and Track Online Content

The content interface enables you to organize and prepare content to be delivered as online self-paced courses. You assemble online content within the interface, or import existing content, such as third-party courseware.

To deliver the online content to learners, you can create a catalog offering, in which learners enroll and which they access through the online player. Web conferences facilitate delivery of online synchronous classes. Instructors can host a live web conference and deliver the class to learners over the web.

The player supports any type of Web-playable content--such as video, HTML, and Flash--that resides on a web server.

The application tracks learner progress through an online course. By default, the application retains performance details at the learning object level, including time spent, completion status and test scores. Further, the application supports content that contains recognized e-learning industry specification function calls, such as SCORM CMI or AICC HACP, to enable finer-grained tracking within the content when required.

Create and Manage Tests

The test builder enables you to create tests, to measure a learner's performance, knowledge, and skills. You can also create and maintain question banks, which help to organize and reuse questions across multiple tests.

You deliver a test to a learner either as a topic within a course, or as an offering in its own right. The application scores a test, and a learner passes or fails based on the results.

The application displays performance statistics, enabling you to analyze learners' performance for a given test or question.

Define Player Prerequisites

For online offerings, you can define one learning object, including a test, to be a prerequisite for another learning object within the same course, or in a different course. When a learner attempts to play a piece of content (learning object), the online player prevents access unless the learner has successfully completed the identified prerequisite (mandatory) content.

Import and Export Online Content

You can import and export existing content--both the metadata and, optionally, the content files themselves--that conforms to recognized content specifications, such as SCORM and IMS QTI. This may be content created in-house, but external to the application, or content purchased from third-party vendors, either off-the-shelf or custom-built.

Enable Learners To Manage Their Learning

The learner interface makes it easy for learners to find, enroll, view, and play their learning. Learner pages include:

The Learner Home page, which provides a snapshot view of learning paths and courses in which a learner is currently enrolled. Learners can:

View the detailed course, offering, and class descriptions as well as enrollment information
Manage their learning paths
View online and offline classes, where learners can obtain their class progress, view their class enrollment status, and take online classes
View and access catalog forums and chats that they have subscribed to

The Catalog and Search pages, which present an online catalog of available learning. When navigating through the catalog, learners can find and enroll only in learning to which they have access. Learners can also:

Search for learning paths, learning certifications, category forums and chats, and learning related to a subject matter; learners can search by course name, description, location, competencies, and training dates
Browse for learning by drilling down through categories to find the desired courses and learning paths
View catalog information such as course objectives and descriptions, to help them find the desired learning
Enroll directly in the learning they find

The Requested Learning page, which displays the classes for which the learner has requested enrollment, but cannot enroll because of pending approval or a full class. The learner can also view classes in which they are waitlisted and courses that are pending approval.

Offer Learning Access to External Learners

All learners, including those in the extended enterprise of customers and partners, can use the Learner pages, making classes available to virtually anyone you wish to train.

View Complete Learning History

The learning history functionality enables you to keep track of all learning activities that a learner has attended, passed, failed, completed, cancelled, or expired. Learners can move courses, learning paths and learning certifications to the Learning History page. This information appears in several sections:

Individual Enrollments presents detailed information for courses (not attached to their learning paths or certifications) such as status, score, and time taken.
Learning Paths lists the expired learning paths and those that the learner has subscribed to and completed, unsubscribed from, or moved to Learning History.
Learning Certifications displays information on expired certifications and certifications that the learner has completed, unsubscribed from, or moved to the Learning History page
External Learning shows learning taken externally, such as from an outside vendor, and entered manually.

Manage Learner and Course Competencies

Like learning paths, competencies help to monitor performance and develop the careers of your workforce. This release extends to learning paths the existing ability to link HR competencies to courses. Administrators can configure the application to update, automatically or with approval, learners' personal competency profiles after they have completed classes successfully. For each course they can also set competency prerequisites, courses a learner should or must complete before they can enroll in a given class.

Enable Managers To Manage Their Workers' Learning

Managers access a page from which they can view learning-related information about their employees. After choosing an employee to view, managers use the learner interface to enroll that employee in a course, or to view employee performance and progress.

Enable Instructors to Manage Their Classes

Using the instructor interface, instructors can manage their classes and bookings, communicate with learners online, and carry out their administrative tasks. The instructor pages include:

The Home page, which lists the classes that you are scheduled to teach
The Class Details page, which provides detailed class information on resources, enrollments, sessions, course prerequisites, and class forums and chats.
The Forums and Chats page, which displays your class forums and chats and the forums and chats that you need to moderate.
The Supplemental Bookings page, which displays your bookings for non-catalog activities such as vacation or preparation time. You can view your past bookings on the Booking History page.

Automate Communication With Workflow Notifications

The application delivers over 25 workflow notifications that inform learners and managers of classes such as enrollments that require approval, and enrollments and cancellations made by managers or others. Implementers can use Oracle Workflow and Oracle Approval Manager to configure these notifications and their behavior.

Develop and Budget for Courses

You can assign budgets both for the development of new courses and for the running costs of all classes scheduled for a course. You can assign instructors and other resources for course development.

Secure Access to Functions and People

You can restrict administrator access to a subset of the application (such as the catalog or resources) and people (such as members of other business groups) through OLM's implementation of Role-Based Access Control and HR Security Groups. Using Role Based Access Control you can control which functions an administrator can use on the catalog and content data.

Control Access to Categories and Folders

Using the Administrator Access Control feature, enterprises can determine who can view and work with a specific category and content. You can control administrators' access to OLM data. You can define administrator control at the catalog category level or content folder level. Administrators belonging to a specific administrator group can access the catalog objects belonging to that category or the content objects belonging to that content folder.

If access to a category is restricted using an administrator group, then this restriction can be removed by the learning administrator by selecting the Remove Administrator Group check box in the Update Category page. If the learning administrator selects the Remove Administrator Group check box and clicks Apply, a concurrent program runs in the background that removes the association between category and administrator group. The category and the content within the category then become accessible to all administrators.

Manage Waiting Lists

You can create a waiting list for a class, either because the class is full or because you want to prioritize enrollments before allocating places. When a place becomes available (a learner may cancel their enrollment or you increase the available places), or you are ready to allocate places, you can view the waiting list and select from it.

Automatic Waitlist Enrollment

Alternatively, you can enroll waitlisted learners automatically, based on waitlist priority or enrollment date. Automatic enrollment for waitlisted learners occurs when a learner has cancelled an enrollment, or after the maximum number of attendees for a class has increased. OLM automatically moves the first eligible waitlisted person into the class.

Record Outcomes of Attendance

When a class has taken place, you can record the results of each attendance, including the failure reason, where appropriate.

If you are holding competency information in Oracle Human Resources, you can update learner records to show the new qualifications, knowledge, or experience they have gained from the class.

Cross Charge Class Fees and Resources

You can transfer the cost of class fees or resources between organizations, departments, or cost centers within your enterprise.

You can designate, at finance header level, a receiving cost center and a paying cost center, and summarize finance details for charges (or credits) for each combination of approved finance headers and lines. You can also create output to be included in the open interface for the Oracle General Ledger system (or another general ledger or accounts receivable application).

Use the Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures (ERES) Functionality of Oracle E-Records in OLM

Oracle E-Records is a configurable framework for secure capture, storage, inquiry, and printing of electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES) in compliance with government regulations.

OLM uses the electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES) functionality of Oracle E-Records to enable organizations meet legislative compliance, such as the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Title 21 Part 11, otherwise known as 21 CFR Part 11.

Using the electronic records and electronic signatures functionality, you can obtain electronic signatures for the following business transactions:

Administrator updates course name, course code, or course description
Administrator or instructor changes the enrollment status of a learner.
Learner completes a course.

You can use the Oracle E-Records Evidence Store to query electronic records and esignatures.

See: Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures (ERES) in OLM

Oracle Learning Management Requirements

Oracle Learning Management (OLM) supports a wide range of business activities associated with learning and development.

What courses can you set up?

You can set up courses, learning paths, and learning certifications to describe any educational or developmental undertaking designed to enhance competencies, qualifications, or experience. Courses are not restricted to conventional training--you can use them for online training, on-the-job training, work experience, apprenticeships, tests, and so on.

Can instructors deliver live online classes to learners over the web?

The integration with Oracle Web Conferencing (OWC) enables instructors to deliver live online classes to learners over the web. Administrators can set up online classes as web conferences using the integration with OWC. Instructors can host the web conference and deliver the class over the web. Learners automatically join the live web conference on playing the class from the learner interface.

Can you create and maintain the content for the online courses within OLM?

Creating content is a task for curriculum developers outside of the application. OLM supports all Web-based content and places no restriction on the authoring tools that you use to create the content, as long as the content is playable on the web. You can set up one or more content servers in OLM, to store and maintain the online content. You can transfer online content to the server using the Upload and Import utilities.

What industry specifications does OLM support for sharing content across learning management systems?

You can create, manage and better distribute online content across learning platforms if the content adheres to common industry specifications. OLM supports industry specifications such as IMS, SCORM (SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 Edition 4), and AICC to reuse common content across applications without making significant changes. You can import and export learning objects, tests, and content hierarchies using XML files that adhere to these specifications.

Can you design curriculum for specific goals?

Yes. Not only can you can design curriculum for specific goals and objectives, but you can also include licenses, certificates, and management training.

Does OLM support external learners?

OLM enables Applicants (people of the type applicant in HR and iRecruitment), who are not created as learners in OLM, to search and enroll in learning using the learner interface. They can either self enroll through the learner interface, or an administrator or a manger can enroll them. Enrollment is subject to the learner access conditions defined on the learning.

Can you update competencies?

You can update competencies automatically or manually after a learner successfully completes a class.

Can I use HRMS Intelligence to investigate and monitor career management?

If you also have Oracle HRMS installed, HRMS Intelligence includes Reports, Discoverer Workbooks, and Performance Measures designed to help you investigate the competencies, proficiencies, and training within your enterprise. You can use HRMS Intelligence to answer business questions such as:

How many people, and which ones, have the required skills and competencies for the job?
How quickly can I improve the skills of a group of people, and at what cost?
How does a person compare with the skills and competencies needed for the job?
Do my employees need more training?

Introduction

The Learning Cycle

The learning cycle followed in the Oracle E-Business Suite model appears in the figure below.

You can use Oracle Learning Management in tandem with other Oracle Applications to support just as much of the learning cycle as you require.

Setup Stages

Create administrator groups to restrict administrators' access to learning categories and folders.
Define the competency requirements of your business: define the competencies (qualifications, knowledge, and experience) your enterprise requires from its current staff and future applicants.
Assign competency requirements to organizations, jobs, and positions: assign your general and specific business requirements to particular structures within your enterprise.
Assess competency achievements and gaps: evaluate your current workers and applicants, then conduct a development needs analysis to identify the gaps.
Design or identify development courses: develop new internal courses or identify external activities that can supply the competencies required to close the gaps.
Price courses: create budgets and create price lists, if appropriate.
Group courses into learning paths and categories: design your catalog to accommodate the needs of organizations and individuals.
Identify resources and suppliers: identify the equipment, venues, instructors, and other resources required to run your courses, and build up a database of resources you can book.

User Stages

Create classes and book resources: create online and offline classes and book the resources required to run them. Manage payments to resource suppliers.
Manage charges and commercial relationships.
Enroll learners in classes.
Manage enrollments and cancellations: handle multiple enrollments using waiting lists and confirmations, issuing standard letters as required. Invoice paying customers.
Record attendance and achievements: after classes, record results including test scores, attendance levels, and competencies attained.
Evaluate courses: assess their effectiveness and compare actual revenues and spending with budgets.
Appraise learners: evaluate the longer term impact of learning management.
Create learner groups to group learners based on their common interest or job responsibility. You can use learner groups to give learner access to specific training.

The OLM Learning Cycle

the picture is described in the document text

Setup Decisions

Before you set up Oracle Learning Management so that users can perform their tasks, we recommend that you plan carefully.

The responsibility for planning and setting up the different stages of the OLM learning cycle varies from enterprise to enterprise. Typically, stages 1 and 2 may be the joint responsibility of several departments, stages 3 and 14 may be the responsibility of the human resources department, while stages 4 to 13 lie more clearly within the domain of learning management.

OLM is integrated with Oracle Human Resources, and together these applications can support all stages of the learning cycle.

You may not be concerned with every stage in the cycle. For example, commercial learning service providers need not identify internal training requirements nor maintain detailed learner records. They mainly focus on the maintenance of schedules and the management of enrollments and financial transactions.

Internal training departments that do not open up their classes to external learners on a commercial basis may be less interested in the management of price lists and other financial information. To support internal accounting practices, however, the application does enable cross-charging.

What Decisions Do You Need to Make?

To understand the decisions you have to make before you set up OLM, see Implementing Oracle Learning Management, Oracle Learning Management Implementation Guide.