Catalog

Catalog Overview

The catalog is the application's primary administrative structure, a nested hierarchy that enables you and your learners to browse all available learning, or to drill down to detailed class descriptions. From here you create and maintain all your catalog objects: categories, courses, offerings, classes, and sessions. 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.

You can view the course enrollment summary on a pop-up window that appears over the Details icon for a course in the Catalog page. The general information about the course shows: course name, an icon if e-signature is enabled for the course, and an icon if an evaluation is attached to the course. The aggregate information for each type of class shows: number of courses, number of learners enrolled, number of learners who finished the class, and number of free seats (only for synchronous classes). The individual information for each class shows: class name and type, start date, number of learners enrolled, and number of learners who finished the class, maximum and minimum number of learners in the class, and number of waitlisted learners.

Reporting on the Catalog

The Attendance and Signature Sheet Report enables instructors to take and report class attendance.

Key Concepts

The catalog depends upon several key concepts:

Catalog Requirements

You can fit the OLM catalog to your existing catalog or build a new catalog from scratch, to better represent your plans for future courses. Categories enable you to maintain a relatively flat structure, only one or two levels deep, or to nest courses several levels deep, which you may wish to do to accommodate a large and varied catalog.

How relevant are courses to your business?

Learning activities enable workers to acquire or enhance competencies, qualifications, and experience. Learners can then better fulfill job requirements and achieve career objectives.

Your enterprise benefits directly as workforce skills and competencies improve and workers meet job requirements more fully. By keeping a detailed, up-to-date record of competencies you can utilize the potential of your employees more completely and effectively.

How versatile is class design using OLM?

The application allows you wide flexibility in scheduling and grouping courses and classes.

How do you deliver online synchronous classes?

You can use the integration with Oracle Web Conferencing (OWC) to deliver web conferences, learning delivered by a live instructor to learners over the web. The built-in integration simplifies the administrative process of linking your application to a virtual learning tool to deliver online synchronous classes. The integration with OWC also enables you to deliver online asynchronous class as recorded web conferences, providing an alternative method to host online asynchronous classes.

How do forums and chats benefit learners and instructors?

Forums and chats are communication tools that bring learners and instructors together in a learning environment. Learners can use class chats to exchange queries on the class subject area with instructors and other learners enrolled in the class. Both learners and instructors benefit by the knowledge and information sharing that happens through class forums. Learners and instructors can also utilize the private forum messages capability to share information that should not be available to all learners, such as homework assignment. Category forums and chats encourage participation in general subject areas beyond a specific class. They are not associated with a specific class and are accessible to all learners who meet the learner access conditions defined for the forum or chat.

Can I evaluate training courses?

You can evaluate courses to collect feedback from learners. Learning administrators can create evaluations using the Test Builder functionality and add these evaluations to courses and classes. Administrators can determine whether an evaluation is mandatory. Learners can complete their evaluation after they complete the class. Administrators can view the evaluation results either at the course or class level using the Evaluation Results page. The OLM Evaluation Report presents feedback on a specific class and the entire feedback on a course.

Catalog Administration

Catalog Objects

The core of the Learning Management catalog is a hierarchy of catalog object types:

Learning Paths and Learning Certifications, unique types of catalog object, contain virtual groups of courses that help learners achieve learning goals that a single course cannot address.

The hierarchical structure of the catalog takes advantage of inheritance in several ways. Each of the five main object types inherits (and can sometimes override) characteristics inherited from its parent object type. Classes, for instance, inherit the delivery modes of their parent offerings, while all offerings under a course deliver the same essential subject matter.

You can use learner access at every level of the hierarchy, each object inheriting (and optionally adding to) the learner access designated for its parent object.

Catalog Prerequisites

You can specify courses and competencies a learner must or should complete before enrolling in a given class. Mandatory prerequisites prevent learners from enrolling in the class, while advisory prerequisites merely inform the learner of courses they should take or competencies they should acquire prior to enrollment. You can also choose to apply a course prerequisite to internal learners only, external learners only, or both, enabling you to establish different prerequisites for each set of learners. Competency prerequisites, which enable you to specify an expected or required level for each competency, apply only to internal learners.

Categories

Categories, the top level of the catalog hierarchy, serve to organize and structure your catalog. With one notable exception, they do not themselves hold information, but serve as named containers to hold other learning objects. They can even hold other categories, enabling you to nest catalog items, much like the directory structure on your computer.

Categories can hold one important piece of information: learner access. Depending on your catalog structure, you can use categories to target courses to particular organizations or any defined subgroup of learners.

Define Access to Learning Objects in a Category

If the Administrator Group field is available, then select an administrator group to restrict access to the learning objects in the category to the members of the administrator group. OLM applies the restriction on the following learning objects in the category hierarchy:

If you leave the field blank, then OLM does not restrict administrators from accessing the category. You can select the administrator group when you create categories. You cannot change the administrator group field after you create a category. The Administrator Group field is read-only when you update the category details.

Remove the Restriction on Access to a Category to make it Available to all Administrators

If access to a category is restricted using an administrator group, then this restriction can be removed by the learning administrator, who can access that particular category.

After restrictions are placed on access to a category, there may be business requirements to make the category and content within the category available to all administrators. In such a scenario, the learning administrator can remove the restriction 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.

Note: The Remove Administrator Group check box is displayed only for the topmost category associated with the administrator group. This check box is not displayed for categories within the topmost category.

See: Administrator Groups

Courses

Courses, the second level of the catalog hierarchy, hold generic information that tends to remain unchanged even when the delivery mode, schedule, or location changes. Courses save you from entering the same, or incorrect, information each time you create an offering or class. Courses hold a variety of information:

Tip: To increase its availability to learners, you can reference a course in multiple categories, but you must designate exactly one category as primary.

You can add a course image while creating or updating a course. You can upload an image either from your local machine's desktop or select an image that exists in the database. OLM resizes the image that an administrator uploads to 180 x 120 (height * width) size, irrespective of the size of the uploaded image. Learners can view the course image.

OLM uses start and end dates to control when courses appear to learners and managers (administrators can view all catalog objects until deletion). You cannot run classes for the course earlier than the start date or later than the end date.

As with categories and other learning objects, you can establish learner access for each course.

See Learner Access

The application can generate a hyperlink to this course that you can paste into e-mail, external web pages, or announcements.

Learner Competencies

By specifying competencies the course can deliver to learners, you can tie the course into the HRMS competencies functionality.

See Competencies

Order Management and OLM

If you are using Oracle Order Management to manage external classes, you associate your inventory organization with a course.

See Using Oracle Learning Management With Order Management

Course Information Types

If you have set up the Personal Analysis key flexfield, and created and enabled Special Information Types from the professional user interface, you can use Course Information Types from the Other Information link on the Course page.

Course Evaluation

You can add evaluation to your courses to gather feedback.

See: Evaluation for Courses and Classes

Attachments

To provide additional information, you can add attachments to courses that are visible to learners and instructors. You can attach a file, or provide the URL of the document, or provide a text description, and specify whether the attachment is for learners or instructors. You can add documents, such as, information about the training facilities, course timetables, or pre-course material. Learners and instructors can view the attachments before and after an enrollment. Instructors can view both learner and instructor attachments.

Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures

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.

As an administrator, electronic records and electronic signatures help you to track changes to courses and monitor enrollment updates. You can obtain electronic signatures from learners.

When creating a course, if you select the Enable electronic signature check box, then the electronic signature feature applies to all the offerings and classes created in that course. If you create a course without selecting the Enable electronic signature check box, then you cannot enable electronic signature for the course if any one learner has enrolled into a class. For more information, see: Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures (ERES) in OLM

Updating a course that is electronic signature enabled

If the electronic signature is enabled for a course, then when you update the Description, Course name, or Course Code on the Update Course page and click Apply, OLM displays the E-signatures page.

On the E-signature tabbed region, select the signature type, which is the type of signer, for example, reviewer or author. Select Approve or Reject response type. If you select Approve, then OLM saves the course changes after the electronic signature process is completed. If you select Reject, then OLM does not save the updates to the course. Enter any comments, if applicable. Enter your user name and password to sign the document. Click the Sign icon to complete the signature process. The E-Record tabbed region displays a record of the course changes that you make.

Offerings

Third in the learning object hierarchy, offerings are specific instances of courses. You can enter various kinds of data at this level, but the primary purposes of offerings is to set the delivery mode and the language of delivery of each class under it and, for online offerings, to establish the link to the online content. In other words, offerings largely determine how a course is delivered.

Delivery Modes

OLM predefines delivery modes based on two concepts.

Thus, the application offers four combination delivery modes (and typical applications):

Important: The online modes are available only if your enterprise has purchased the OLM Online Learning Option and enabled the Online Learning Option Licensed profile.

Each class you create takes on the delivery mode of its parent offering. Thus you can offer versions of any course in any or all of the four modes.

From the Setup tab, you can create more delivery modes, each based on one of the four options.

Resources and Offerings

You can use the Resource Checklist to specify resource types or resources that are required or useful to run classes for a particular offering. You can then override any of these choices for individual classes.

If you end-date the offering, you must enter an end date for the associated resources. This end date must occur on or before the end date of the offering.

Player Preferences

Player preferences control the display and behavior of the player when a learner plays an online offering. You set the player preferences for online classes from the Offering creation and update pages. The available preferences are:

Instructor Competencies

Select the Instructor Competencies link to specify the competencies required of an instructor of an offering and of the classes based upon it.

See Competencies

Settings Passed to Classes

For each offering you can include several pieces of information that become defaults for any classes based on the offering, then override those defaults for each class. You can specify

As with categories and courses, you can also set (and add to) learner access at the offering level.

Attachments

To provide additional information, you can add attachments to offerings that are visible to learners and instructors. You can attach a file, or provide the URL of the document, or provide a text description, and specify whether the attachment is for learners or instructors. You can add documents, such as, information about the training facilities, course timetables, or pre-course material. Learners and instructors can view the attachments before and after an enrollment. Instructors can view both learner and instructor attachments.

Classes

Fourth in the learning object hierarchy, classes are specific instances of offerings. Classes are the learning objects that learners enroll in and attend or take online. For any class, you can:

Marking a class Restricted limits enrollments to external learners from selected customers, or activates learner access for internal learners. Otherwise, the class is open to any learner.

See Learner Access

To enable administrators to receive and take action on workflow notifications, you must designate a class owner and a sponsor.

If you are an independent learning vendor using Order Management, your telesales representatives can schedule classes in OM as your customers request them.

Carry Out Enrollment Transactions Using the Columns on the Classes Page

Use the following columns when carrying out transactions related to a class:

The Bulk Enroll and Single Enroll icons will be inactive when the class status is Closed or Cancelled. The class status remains inactive if the Enrollment End Date has passed or the Enrollment Start Date is in the future.

Scheduling and Resourcing

For each class you can specify dates, times, durations. Class dates must fall within the valid dates of its parent offering. For online classes, learners and instructors view the correct class and enrollment times for their own time zones.

You can also designate the beginning and the end of the enrollment period, enabling you to plan and resource classes without making them available to learners, and to close enrollment for a class about to begin or for a class that might be cancelled (setting the class status to Closed also prevents new enrollments). You can also enroll learners in advance or retrospectively by changing the enrollment dates.

For offline classes you can specify a location hierarchy:

Use the Create or Update Class pages to choose a Training Center (a general locale or organization, for example) and a Location (perhaps a building or institution belonging to the training center). Then choose a Primary Venue (such as a classroom or meeting room) from the Resource Bookings or Resource Checklist pages.

Use the Resource Bookings or Resource Checklist pages to select an instructor or other resources. The Resource Checklist enables you to view and book resources defaulted from the offering.

See Resource Booking

Enrollment

You can update and delete learner enrollments from the Class or Enrollments and Subscriptions pages.

Once a learner has completed a class, you can record the learner's successful (or unsuccessful) attendance. If enabled, the application may automatically update the learner's competency profile.

If the status of a learner for an online class is not automatically updated, you can manually update the learner's status for the online class using the Update Player Status button in the Enrollments and Subscriptions page or the Enrollments page of the class. See:Enrollment Updates

If your enterprise uses organization security for classes and enrollments, only users who belong to the appropriate sponsoring organization can designate a class as secure. If you belong to the sponsoring organization, you can update and delete the class and enroll learners in the class later. If you are not assigned to the organization that is administering the class, you cannot update or delete the class nor enroll learners in the class.

Caution: Selecting the Secure check box for a class overrides learner access granted to any learner outside the sponsoring organization.

Class as a Part of Learning Path

When you create a class, you can select the Learning Path only check box to indicate that the class is part of a learning path and is not available as an individual class for learner enrollment. If a class is Learning Path only, then OLM does not display the class when learners or managers search or browse for classes available for enrollment. If they search for a class as part of a learning path, then they can view the class.

Class Pricing

You can choose from among three price bases for a class (a fourth, Order, defaults automatically when a telesales representative creates a class in Order Management; others cannot choose this option).

Customer means that you plan to charge customers associated with the class a block price for a certain number of enrollments. If you select Customer, you must associate one or more customers with the class before entering enrollments.

Student (Learner) means that you plan to charge a price for each learner enrollment.

No Charge,of course, means that the price of the class is zero.

Any pricing information you enter here overrides any pricing information set for the parent offering.

The associated finance line must use the same currency as the price basis for the class.

If the price basis is Customer, you enter the price for each customer associated with the class in the Customers for Restricted Class window.

If the price basis is Learner, the price you specify becomes the standard class price, which appears in the Enrollment Details window. Users with a qualifying responsibility, however, can charge a different amount when they enter enrollments.

Internal Learners

You can set a maximum on the number of employees who can enroll in a class. This number is a subset of the maximum total number of learners who can enroll in a class.

Cost Analysis of Classes

If you have installed Project Accounting (PA), you can link classes created in OLM with projects to analyze the actual cost of running a class. You track classes, resources, or resource bookings through OLM while you track and invoice the cost of preparing and delivering training through PA.

Additionally, if you need to bill expenses (such as those costs associated with delivering a restricted class) to a customer, you can itemize the expenses in Project Accounting, and invoice them through the standard Project Accounting (PA) to Accounts Receivable (AR) interface.

Change the Status or Maximum Attendees of an Class

After creating a class, you might need to change its status or the maximum number of places available.

For example, if a class proves to be popular, you can increase the number of places available by changing the venue, or rearranging the seating at the selected venue.

Alternatively, if a class is Full, you might want to prevent any new enrollments by changing the class status to Closed, automatically cancelling any enrollments with the status Requested (that is, enrollments where the learner's interest has not been confirmed or approved). You can cancel any finance lines associated with these enrollments.

Note: Administrators cannot update the class name if learner enrollment is mandatory for the class.

Class Status

When you create or update a class, you select the predefined class status in the Status field in the General region. You select the User Status field in the Administration region for information purposes only. The user status values do not control the behavior of class statuses in OLM. For more information, see: Class and Enrollment Status Setup

Class Evaluation

You can add evaluation to your classes to gather feedback.

See: Evaluation for Courses and Classes

Attachments

To provide additional information, you can add attachments to classes that are visible to learners and instructors. You can attach a file, or provide the URL of the document, or provide a text description, and specify whether the attachment is for learners or instructors. You can add documents, such as, information about the training facilities, course timetables, or pre-course material. Learners and instructors can view the attachments before and after an enrollment. Instructors can view both learner and instructor attachments.

Sessions

Sessions are the lowest level objects in the catalog hierarchy. A synchronous class, online or offline, can run for any period of time you choose, from hours to weeks. 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.

Sessions are discrete topics or time slots within a class. For example, you may run the class Setting Up and Using Learning Management over three days. The first session, on Day 1, might be Introducing Learning Management, the second session, on Day 2, might be Setting Up the Application and the third session, on Day 3, might be Scheduling Classes and Enrolling Learners. The sessions may or may not be held at the same venue.

You can divide a class into several sessions, specifying the date and time for each session. For example, if a course runs every Wednesday morning for 5 weeks, you can create a class with a duration of 5 weeks, comprising 5 sessions. You can then schedule each session from 9 am to 12 noon on consecutive Wednesdays. You must specify both start and end dates for a class to add and schedule sessions. The session start and end dates must occur within the class start and end dates.

Note: The session end date is always the same as the start date. To schedule sessions that occur over multiple days, you must schedule separate sessions, one per day.

You can book resources, such as instructors or venues, for individual sessions. See Resource Booking

Note: Before you can delete a session that has resource bookings, you must delete the bookings.

Learning Paths

A learning path is a catalog object that contains one or more virtual groups of courses (sections), helping learners achieve learning goals that a single course cannot address.

Learning paths can come from various sources:

When an overall learning objective spans multiple courses, such as a curriculum of introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses, you can set up a learning path to which learners subscribe, and which then appears to the learner in a specific learning path table.

A learning path does not duplicate the courses; the learning path is simply a container for a logical grouping of existing courses, with some added attributes at the learning path level.

A learning path enables you to identify mandatory and optional courses, and to set a target completion period, to help learners and their managers manage their long-term goals. You can also specify a number of days prior to the end of the target completion period for the application to notify the learner of the upcoming target completion.

OLM uses start and end dates to control when learning paths appear to learners and managers (administrators can view all catalog objects until deletion).

Many aspects of catalog learning paths are similar to courses. You can set learner competencies for a learning path, in addition to competencies that already exist at the individual course level. See Competencies

As with courses and other catalog objects, you can establish learner access for a learning path. See Learner Access

Learner and Manager Learning Paths in OLM

Learners and managers can create learning paths through Self Service. Such learning paths usually serve individual needs, and do not appear in the catalog. Learner-created paths receive a source type of Learner, and manager-created paths receive a source type of Manager. See Self-Service Interfaces

Learning Paths from Talent Management and Performance Management

If you use SSHR, Performance Management, and OLM, appraisers and managers using the Suitability Matching or Appraisals modules can recommend courses for their employees to take. These courses become part of a learning path automatically created for the learner, and do not appear in the catalog. The path receives a source type of Performance Management.

Target Completion Period

The target completion period for a learning path is optional, but is useful to ensure learners successfully meet their goals, for example when related to performance reviews and career planning.

You enter the target completion period as a number of days. When a learner subscribes to the learning path, the number of days is converted to a date calculated from the subscription date.

Learning Path Sections

A learning path must consist of at least one section. Each section determines how many courses (components) in the group the learner must complete. Create sections to provide a mixture of elective and mandatory courses in the same path.

You can reorder the sections, to determine the order in which they appear to learners within the learning path.

The section types available are:

To ensure an identifiable completion criterion, at least one section must have a mandatory component. Therefore, when you create the first section of a learning path, the All Components Optional section type is not available. If you subsequently create additional mandatory sections, you can make the first section optional.

A learning path is marked as completed when a learner has met the completion requirements of all sections in the learning path.

Learning Path Components

Learning path components are existing courses in the catalog. You add components to each section in the learning path. You can reorder the components, to determine the order in which they appear to learners within the section.

When you add components, you may set a target completion period for individual components. If you specify a period for one component that is greater than the period set for the learning path, the application updates the target completion period for the learning path to match the longest individual component period.

Subscription and Enrollment

When learners subscribe to a learning path, the application does not automatically enroll them in any of the component classes. Learners search for offerings and classes for each of the components they wish to take.

Similarly, when learners unsubscribe from a learning path, the application does not unenroll them from the component classes. Learners can unenroll from individual classes.

Learning paths have no effect on enrollment or learner access. Learners require access to the individual components in order to enroll in a class, whether or not the learners have access to the learning path.

Automatically enroll learners in classes when subscribing to a learning path

If required, you can automatically enroll learners in classes when you subscribe learners to a learning path.

Adding Multiple Subscriptions to a Learning Path

On the Subscriptions page of a learning path, when you select learners and click Add Subscriptions, the Bulk Subscribe: Selected Learner page appears. Select the Enroll learners in class when subscribing to Learning Path check box to enroll learners in all the classes of a learning path. The check box is available when all sections in the learning path have the All Components Mandatory section type. This feature enables you to create learning paths to group classes for specific learning requirements and enroll required learners in the learning path using minimum transaction steps.

After you select the Enroll learners in class when subscribing to Learning Path check box, you can choose which of the classes the learners must enroll in when they subscribe to the learning path. For each of the sections in the learning path, you can view:

Viewing the learner status

The Learner Status column provides administrators a quick overview of each learner's status for the learning path:

The learner status is for information purposes and does not drive the application functionality.

The Additional Details table for each of the learners displays the enrollment method of the learner.

You can view whether a learner has:

Use the Unsubscribe and Unenroll buttons to unsubscribe learners from the learning path and unenroll learners from all classes of courses in the learning path. When you unsubscribe and unenroll learners, the application unenrolls learners only from the classes that they have enrolled through learning path subscription. If learners are mandatorily enrolled in a class, then when you unsubscribe and unenroll learners from the learning path, OLM does not unenroll learners from mandatorily enrolled classes.

Notifications

When learners have subscribed to a learning path, the application sends the following notifications:

In addition, if you specify a target completion period for the learning path or for individual components, the application sends the following notifications:

The application sends the preceding two notifications only if you have scheduled the following concurrent programs to run at least once every day:

See the implementation step Set Learning Path Reminder Concurrent Programs to Run Regularly, Oracle Learning Management Implementation Guide

Learning Certifications

The learning certification catalog object offers 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.

Important: Oracle Learning Management provides the administrative framework for learning certifications; it is solely the responsibility of your organization to ensure that each learner meets all the success criteria you establish. These criteria may include such activities as proctored examinations and supervised laboratory work.

Like a learning path, a learning certification is a catalog object that contains one or more courses, helping learners achieve learning goals that a single course cannot address. Unlike learning paths, certifications can include renewals and enforced due dates. Certifications do not duplicate their component courses; the certification is primarily a container for a logical grouping of existing courses, with added attributes such as renewability and deadlines.

OLM uses start and end dates to control when certifications appear to learners and managers (administrators can view all catalog objects until deletion).

As with courses and other catalog objects, you can establish learner access for a certification. See Learner Access

You can set competencies learners achieve by completing a certification, in addition to competencies that already exist at the individual course level. See Competencies

When a learner subscribes to or unsubscribes from a certification, or when a certification is due for completion, the application sends workflow notifications. See Certification Notifications

Learning Certification Components

Certifications consist of components, which are referenced courses. Learners must complete classes for all components to achieve certification. You specify the order in which components appear to learners, though you would have to assign catalog prerequisites to enforce the order in which learners must complete the classes.

Note: You cannot add a course with mandatory evaluation as a learning certification component. When you search for learning certification components, OLM does not display courses with mandatory evaluation or courses that have classes with mandatory evaluation.

Learning Certification Completion and Renewal

When creating a certification, you can specify when a learner must complete this certification, both initially and during renewals. "Based on date" specifies a fixed due date for all learners, while "Based on number of days" enables you to set a due date relative to each learner's subscription or renewal date.

For unrenewable (one-time) certifications, the options are simple: enter the due date or the number of days until due and specify when to send the learner a reminder of the due date.

Renewable certifications first require you to select one of three options (the fourth option, Never, creates unrenewable certifications):

You must also specify how long the certification is valid. If you selected "Based on date", you need only specify the number of days for the validity period. If, however, you selected "Based on number of days", you must decide whether the certification validity period should begin on the day the learner completes the certification or on the due date of the certification period.

Automatic Subscription

When granting learner access to certifications, you can subscribe learners to learning certifications automatically using the Automatic Subscription check box. See: Learner Access

In the Subscriptions page for a learning certification, you can search for learners who are automatically subscribed to a certification. In the search results table, you can view if a learner is automatically subscribed to a certification.

Learning Certification Statuses

To control records, availability, and workflow notifications, certification uses two types of statuses, subscription and period.

Subscription Statuses

Subscription statuses apply to the entire subscription, determining whether the learner is subscribed or certified. Most status changes occur automatically; for example, the status changes from subscribed to certified when the learner has completed all the component courses. You can, however, manually change some subscription statuses from the Enrollments and Subscriptions page. The default subscription statuses are:

Assign Competencies for Learning Certifications

OLM assigns competencies for learning certifications when learners complete certifications. To enable this feature, select the Assign Competence check box in the Update Subscription Status page. Only if the subscription status is Certified, then the page displays the check box. If you select this check box, then certification specific competencies are assigned to the learner based on the Competency Update Settings for the certification. See: Competency Automation

Period Statuses

Period statuses apply only to renewable certifications, and work with subscription statuses to provide a clearer picture of the state of a subscription.

Member statuses indicate a learner's status for a certification course:

Note: When a learner requests renewal of a learning certification, and if the certification period is active, the certification status on the learner's home page changes to Renewing. The Renewing status is not available to the learning administrator when updating the certification enrollment status or certification enrollment period status.

Electronic Signature and Learning Certification

If a course, which is part of a certification, is eSignature enabled, then this course is not considered attended until the learner provides the electronic signature. If a learner completes a course before the certification expiry date, but provides the electronic signature after the certification expiry then the learner has to retake the course and provide the electronic signature again. OLM uses the electronic signature date for learning certification and to assign competencies.

Report on Certifications

You can report on certifications.

See: OLM Certification Report

Forums and Chats

Forums and chats are online communication tools that bring learners and instructors together in a learning environment. A forum is a message board that learners and instructors can use to post general learning topics for discussion. Chats enable quick and easy online communication between learners and instructors. You can create forums and chats within a category or for a specific class.

Category Forums and Chats

Category forums and chats encourage participation in general subject areas beyond learners enrolled in a specific class. They are accessible to all learners who meet the learner access conditions defined for the forum or chat. Learners can:

You can book a moderator to monitor messages exchanged in category forums and chats. Only a moderator is allowed to delete messages in a forum.

Class Forums and Chats

Learners can use class chats to exchange queries on the class subject area with instructors and other learners enrolled in the class. Class forums support both public and private messages. Learners and moderators can post private messages that are only visible to selected recipients. Moderators can post private messages to learners or other moderators. Learners can post private messages to moderators only.

Learners can access the class forums and chats from the learner interface, only after they have enrolled in the class. Instructors can access the forums and chats associated with their class by logging in to the instructor self-service. An instructor usually serves as a moderator for class forums and chats, however you can book a separate moderator (using resource type Trainer or Others) if required. Users booked as moderators can log in to the instructor interface to moderate the forums and chats. For more information on the instructor interface see Instructor Interface

Report on Forums and Chats

You can report on forums and chats.

See:Producing the OLM Chat Report

See:Producing the OLM Forum Report

Web Conferences

You use Web conferences to deliver online synchronous classes, and to record these classes for on demand playback.. A Web conference is a live class delivered by an instructor to learners over the Web. OLM integrates with Oracle Web Conferencing (OWC) to deliver online synchronous classes over the Web.

Creating a Web Conference

To host online synchronous classes, you must set up a conference server that integrates your application with the OWC server. For more information on setting up a conference server see Conference Servers

You can create a Web conference for an online synchronous class after you have set up a conference server in the application. This Web Conference link is visible on the Class page only if you have at least one conference server set up in the application. OWC uses the conference information entered in OLM to create the web conference on the OWC server. The OWC server returns the meeting ID, attendee URL, and the host URL after creating the conference. Once you have created a web conference, you cannot change the conference server, meeting ID and the time zone for the conference. You can update other information until the web conference begins.

Setting up a Recorded Web Conference

You can also host online asynchronous classes as Web conferences. OWC enables you to record a Web conference on the OWC server as it is being played. You can enter recorded Web conference information such as the meeting ID and the conference server name, for a learning object. To deliver an online asynchronous class as a recorded web conference, you associate the class with the learning object that has the recorded Web conference information specified.

Learner Access

Learner Access is OLM's term for determining who can view and enroll in any given class. You can grant learner access at any level of the learning object hierarchy, each object inheriting (and optionally adding to) the learner access designated for its parent object.

Learner access to your catalog begins at zero: no learner can view or enroll in any catalog object. You must define your own access model.

Note: You cannot modify inherited access directly. You must modify access from the source catalog object.

Tight or Loose? Your Access Model

Inheritance means that you can establish varying degrees of control over access, from defining individual learners' access to each class, to opening up the catalog to everyone with a login.

You'll probably wish to create an access model somewhere in between the two extremes, as one would require huge amounts of maintenance and the other would result in inappropriate enrollments.

Thus it may not be a good idea to set root category learner access to include the entire business group. If your catalog model uses categories to target courses to specific organizations, you can add those organizations to the category's access profile. Then everyone in those organizations could view and enroll in all the classes within that category.

Similarly, by granting learner access at the offering level, you give learners their choice of delivery modes to fulfill their learning requirements.

Restricted Classes

A class can be either public (learners from any customer or internal organization can enroll) or restricted. Marking a class unrestricted disables all learner access rules attached to it or inherited from a parent object.

A restricted class is either:

You restrict a class by checking the Restricted check box on the Create or Update Class pages.

If you restrict classes to selected customers, use the Customers for Restricted Class window to select the valid customers. Once you have done so, only that customer's representatives can enroll in the class.

Learner Access Options

You can add access by assignment by specifying any combination of organization, job, and position. You can thus grant access to all members of an organization, or to all senior programmers in the business group. The Include child organizations box appears when you specify an organization, which enables you to select an organization hierarchy and grant access to all members of the selected hierarchy in addition to members of the selected organization.

Adding access by learner, of course, grants access to selected individuals.

To grant access to a specific group of learners, add access by learner group. Learning administrators can create eligibility profiles and attach eligibility profiles to learner groups. OLM applies the eligibility profile criteria to determine learner access to catalog objects. For more information, see: Learner Groups.

The Self-enrollment option enables the selected learners to bypass the approvals process when enrolling in classes governed by these access rules. Note that enabling self-enrollment at the category, course, or offering level activates self-enrollment for all associated classes.

Caution: Selecting the Secure check box for a class overrides learner access granted to any learner outside the sponsoring organization.

Mandatory Enrollment for a Class

When you define learner access for a restricted class, you can make the learner enrollment mandatory, which means OLM will automatically enroll the learner and that the learner cannot unenroll. You can use this feature to ensure that workers enroll in mandatory trainings. You can make a restricted class with no maximum internal learners or maximum attendees as mandatory to a specific learner, learner group, organization, job, position or a combination of components. OLM notifies learners and class owners about mandatory enrollments.

Note: The mandatory enrolment feature applies only to internal learners. You cannot select both Self Enrolment and Mandatory Enrollment. If you make learner enrollment mandatory, then you select prerequisites that learners must complete for this class. Managers, instructors, or administrators can unenroll mandatory enrolments.

Process Mandatory Enrollments Program

To process mandatory enrollments, your system administrator must schedule the Process Mandatory Enrollments program to automatically run at specified intervals. This program verifies mandatory enrollments and enrols new learners who meet the enrolment criteria. If required, the system administrator can run the program manually. For example, a new class is created with mandatory enrollments and for the enrollments to take effect, the administrator must run the program manually.

See: Running the Process Mandatory Enrollments Program

Depending on the volume of data to be processed, you can schedule to run the multithread version of the program. For example, if there is a large volume of data to be processed for mandatory enrollments, then the multithread version of the program can be scheduled to run.

Subscribe Learners to Learning Certifications Automatically

You can subscribe learners to learning certifications automatically using the Automatic Subscription check box. When you select the Automatic Subscription box, and the Process Automatic Certification Subscription is run, all learners who are part of the group defined by that learner access will be subscribed to the certification. Note that the automatic subscription for certifications feature applies only to certifications based on number of days. OLM does not display the Automatic Subscription check box for certifications that are date based. This feature does not work for certifications that are based on dates.

You cannot select both Self Enrollment and Automatic Subscription check boxes.

Schedule the Process Automatic Certification Subscription Program

To process automatic subscription to learning certifications, your system administrator must schedule the Process Automatic Certification Subscription program to automatically run at specific intervals. This program checks all automatic subscriptions to see if new learners should be automatically subscribed.

See: Running the Process Automatic Certification Subscription Program

OLM applies the following rules when subscribing learners to certifications automatically:

Competencies

You can deliver course competencies at a specific proficiency level through classes your enterprise (or an outside supplier) provides. You can then update a learner's personal competency profile after they have successfully gained the competency. You can also set competency prerequisites, competencies learners must or should achieve before they can enroll in a class under a specified course.

For further information regarding the Oracle HRMS competency model used by OLM, see Competencies, Oracle HRMS Workforce Sourcing, Deployment, and Talent Management Guide.

You can also require the instructor of each course to exhibit competencies at specified proficiency levels.

To find instructors qualified to teach a course, see Finding Specific Locales and Instructors.

Competency Automation

If enabled, you can update competencies automatically, depending on the default workflow rule chosen:

Even if the default rule is one of the first two, automatic updates will not occur unless one of the following is true:

You can also set automation rules at the catalog object level (course, offering, learning path, and learning certification), overriding the default automation rule or the rule set for the offering's parent course.

Evaluation for Courses and Classes

You can evaluate self-paced and classroom based courses online to gather feedback from learners. For example, you can collect feedback on the content of a course and about the instructor, and venue of a class.

Using the Evaluation Functionality

The following sections describe how to use the Evaluation functionality in OLM.

Creating an Evaluation

To evaluate courses and classes, learning administrators must first create an evaluation in the Learning Object folder under the Content tab. To create an evaluation, select Evaluation as the Assessment Type on the Create Test page. Select Not Scored as the scoring option for the evaluation. You cannot use tests or surveys for a course or class evaluation.

See: Test Creation

Adding an Evaluation to a Course and a Class

After you create an evaluation, use the Evaluation link on the Course and Class page to add the evaluation for the objects.

Note: You cannot add an evaluation to a course or class if enrollments already exist for the course or class.

Course Evaluation

At the course level, you can add an evaluation not only for a course, but also a default evaluation for the class level in that course. This default class level evaluation appears automatically in the Class Evaluation field when you create a class within the course. You can also define separate evaluations for courses and classes. You cannot select the same evaluation for a course and a class within that course.

Class Evaluation

If a default class level evaluation is defined at the course level, then the administrator can update the default value by selecting a different evaluation or enter a new one if a default evaluation was not initially selected.

Mandatory Evaluation

At the course and class levels, you can select the Mandatory Evaluation check box to ensure that learners complete the evaluation for the learning objects. If you define either a course evaluation or class evaluation as mandatory, then the entire evaluation becomes mandatory.

If a course or a class in a course is already part of learning certification, then the application disables the Mandatory Evaluation check box. If you select this option for a course, then you cannot add this course to the learning certification object later.

Note: You cannot create an evaluation for existing and end-dated courses and classes. Learners must have access to OLM to complete an evaluation. Therefore, administrators must review whether all learners have online access before making an evaluation mandatory.

Updating and Deleting Evaluations

As an administrator, you cannot update or delete an evaluation, if the enrollment status of any of the learners in the course or class within the course is set to a status other than Attended or Cancelled.

Viewing Evaluation Results

Use the Evaluation link on the Course and Class pages to view evaluation results. You can also view the results of different evaluation sections. The Evaluation Results page displays details only for non-text questions: True or False, Multiple Choice (Single Response or Multiple Response). For each question, OLM displays the percentage of learners that responded to the question.

Note: You can view answers for the Free Text, Fill-in-the-blank-text, and Fill-in-the-blank- numeric question types on the OLM Evaluation Report.

Course level

At the course level, you view results for the course level sections as an average of evaluations completed for classes in that course.

Class level

When you view the results for the class evaluation sections at the class level, OLM displays results for the class and the average of responses of all classes in the course.

Viewing the Evaluation Status for Courses and Classes

Learning administrators and instructors can view the status of course and class evaluation for learners. The Enrollment and Subscriptions page displays the Evaluation Status column that helps administrators to track the evaluation status of learners.

OLM displays icons to indicate the following evaluation statuses:

Instructors can view the evaluation status of learners for a specific class.

Learners and Evaluations

Learners can complete their evaluation after they complete the class. If the class contains an evaluation, OLM displays a play icon for the evaluation. When the learner completes the class, the play icon becomes active. When the learner completes the evaluation, OLM substitutes the icon with the Done text.

At the learner level, an evaluation works as follows:

Self-paced class with mandatory evaluation

The evaluation becomes active when the learner completes the class. OLM sets the learner's enrollment status to Pending Evaluation and automatically changes the enrollment status to Attended when the evaluation is completed and submitted.

Self-paced class with voluntary evaluation

The evaluation becomes active when the learner completes the class. OLM sets the enrollment status to Attended whether or not the learner completes the evaluation.

Scheduled class with mandatory evaluation

The evaluation becomes active when the instructor or the administrator sets the enrollment status to Pending Evaluation. When the learner completes the evaluation, OLM changes the learner's enrollment status to Attended.

Scheduled classes with voluntary evaluation

The evaluation becomes active when the instructor or the administrator sets the learner's enrollment status to Attended.

Evaluations and Competency Updates

Evaluations and Notifications

Learners receive notifications about completing mandatory evaluations for online classes when instructors or administrators change the status of scheduled classes to Pending Evaluation.

Course Evaluation Report

You can report on course evaluation.

See: OLM Course Evaluation Report

Producing the OLM Certification Report

The OLM Certification Report enables administrators to report on the subscription status of certifications. Use the report to investigate which of the learner certifications are nearing the expiry date or whether learners hold valid certifications.

Run the OLM Certification report from the Submit Request window.

To run the OLM Certification Report

  1. In the Name field, select OLM Certification Report.

  2. Click in the Parameters field to select the parameters for the report. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields.

    To generate a report on all the certifications, leave the parameters blank.

  3. Select the certification for which you want the report.

  4. Select the subscription status for which you want the report.

  5. Select the learner for whom you want the report

  6. Specify the start and end dates of the subscription status.

  7. Specify the expiry period if you select either the Subscribed or the Certified subscription status. You can view the expiry date of the certification on the report.

  8. Submit the report.

The predefined report columns list learner name, certification name, subscription status, date, and expiry date.

Producing the OLM Chat Report

The OLM Chat Report displays details of the content posted on chats and users who post the content. You can gather information such as, participants of a specific chat and use the information to monitor chats.

Run the OLM Chat Report from the Submit Request window.

To run the OLM Chat Report

  1. In the Name field, select OLM Chat Report.

  2. Click in the Parameters field to select the parameters for the report. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields.

    To generate a report on all the active chats, leave the parameters blank.

  3. Select the chat for which you want the report.

  4. Specify the time period to view chat details.

  5. Specify whether you want to view the report by content or person type. The report output depends on this parameter. If you select the Content value, the report lists chat name, posted date, and chat content columns. If you select the Person value, then the report lists chat name, person type, and full name columns. The person type column shows the chat participants, such as, instructors.

  6. Submit the report.

Producing the OLM Forum Report

The OLM Forum Report enables administrators to understand the forum activities and participation, for example, to know how much activity happened in the Safety Forum in the last 2 weeks or the questions in a forum. The report displays details such as the forum name, authors of the forum topics, and the date of the forum activity. The report displays both private and public messages. You can generate the report for a specific forum or for all forums in use.

Run the OLM Forum report from the Submit Request window.

To run the OLM Forum Report

  1. In the Name field, select OLM Forum report.

  2. Click the Parameters field to open the Parameters window. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields.

  3. Select the forum name. Leave this field blank to generate information for all forums.

  4. Select an author who participated in the forum that you selected in Step 1. Leave this field blank to generate information for all authors across forums.

  5. Select a message in the forum that you selected in Step 1. Leave this field blank to generate information for all messages across forums.

  6. Specify the period for which you want to see the information.

  7. Submit the report.

The predefined report includes the author, message, original message, topic name, forum name, description, and date columns.

Producing the OLM Course Evaluation Report

The OLM Course Evaluation Report enables administrators to view feedback on a specific class and the entire feedback for a course. You can generate the report for a specific course or for all the courses. Use this report to improve your training courses.

Run the OLM Course Evaluation report from the Submit Request window.

To run the OLM Course Evaluation report

  1. In the Name field, select OLM Course Evaluation Report.

  2. Click the Parameters field to open the Parameters window. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields. You can generate the report for a specific course or for all courses.

  3. Select the class name for which you want to generate the report. Leave this field blank to report on all classes.

  4. Select the course name for which you want to generate the report. Leave this field blank to report on all courses.

  5. Specify the answer type to view the feedback evaluation. The Text answers include: Free text, Fill-in the blank text, fill-in the blank numeric questions. The Non-text answers include: True/False, Multiple Choice (Single response and multiple response).

    Note: The Answer Type that you select defines the predefined report layout. The report for the Text answer type lists the Course Name, Class Name, Date, Section Name, Question Text, and Answer columns. The report for the Non Text answer type lists the Course Name, Class Name, Date, Section Name, Question Text, Choice Text, and Number of answers columns.

  6. Specify the period in which learners have completed the evaluations.

  7. Submit the report.

Producing the OLM Learning Path Report

The OLM Learning Path report enables administrators to report on the status of learners in one specific learning path or on the status of all learning paths for one specific learner.

Run the OLM Learning Path report from the Submit Request window.

To run the OLM Learning Path Report

  1. In the Name field, select OLM Learning Path Report.

  2. Click in the Parameters field to select the parameters for the report. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields.

    The learning path name or the learner name is mandatory.

  3. Select the learning path for which you want the report.

  4. Select the learner for whom you want the report.

  5. Select the learning path status for which you want the report.

  6. Submit the report.

If you choose to report using the learner path name, then the predefined report includes the learner name and learner status columns.

If you choose to report using the learner name, then the predefined report includes the learning path name, learner status, class name, and class enrollment status columns.

Running the Process Automatic Certification Subscription Program

Schedule the Process Automatic Certification Subscription concurrent program to run automatically at specified intervals. This program checks all automatic subscriptions to see if new learners must be automatically subscribed. For information on automatic subscription, see: Learner Access

Run the Process Automatic Certification Subscription Program from the Submit Request window.

To run the Process Automatic Certification Subscription program

  1. In the Name field, select Process Automatic Certification Subscription.

  2. Click in the Parameters field to select the parameters for the program. The Parameters window includes the following optional fields.

  3. Chunk Size and Thread Count: OLM provides these multithread parameters to enhance performance when large volume of data is processed. Specify the chunk size and thread count that OLM must consider when running the program.

    • Chunk Size: Chunk of person IDs that the request must process.

    • Threads: Define parallel runs for the request.

    When you specify these two parameters, OLM processes the request using multiple threads. Based on the learner access definition, OLM selects the person list and then chunks are determined based on the chunk size parameter.

  4. Select the certification for which you want the request to process automatic subscription. If the parameter is left blank, the request runs for all certifications to verify automatic subscription.

  5. Submit the request.

    Note: When the Process Automatic Certification Subscription request runs, the Purge Mandatory Enrollment Multi Threading Records concurrent program will run in the background.

When the concurrent program is run, it will check to see if new learners have joined the group defined by the learner access. These new learners will then be subscribed to the certification.

For learners who will become eligible at a later time, for example, if there a change in the organization, position, job, or member of a new learner group, then their subscription will happen as soon as the concurrent program has run the first time after the change has taken place.