Understanding Learner Groups

Learner Group Assignment and Security

One of the primary functions of learner groups is to control access to the learning catalog. For a user to access a particular class in the catalog, the user must belong to a learner group that is assigned to the class, the course, and the category that's associated with the course.

When an administrator defines a category, the category inherits the administrator's primary learning environment. The learning environment controls which learner groups the administrator can associate with that category. Similarly, when an administrator defines a course, the course inherits the administrator's primary learning environment, which determines the learner groups the administrator can associate with that course. When an administrator defines a class, he or she has the option of clicking a button that automatically defaults all learner groups from the course that are associated with the class's learning environment. For example, William Lee, the learning administrator for the North America learning environment, creates a new class. The class inherits the North America learning environment. William has the option of clicking a button to assign to the class all North America learner groups that are associated with the course. He can further restrict access to the class; but he cannot expand access by adding learner groups that are not associated with the course.

Types of Learner Groups

Enterprise Learning Management supports the following types of learner groups:

• Criteria-based

  Create criteria-based learner groups by selecting the attributes that users must have to belong to the group. Choose from a set of eight criteria, using and/or logic to define membership eligibility. Use the Learner Group component to create criteria-based learner groups.

• Query-based

  To create a query-based group, you select a predefined SQL query, such as Job Code and State, and specify the values to use when the query is run. Use the Learner Group component to create query-based learner groups.

  Unlike criteria-based learner groups, query-based learner groups can be built using almost any combination of attributes in PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management. You can use the delivered queries or create your own using PeopleSoft Query Analyzer.

• Virtual

  These groups are formed by using and/or logic to combine existing criteria-based and query-based learner groups. You can form these groups when you define security for a category, course, class, or program. There is no separate setup component for virtual learner groups. The ability to use virtual learner groups can greatly reduce the number of criteria-based and query-based learner groups you need to create and maintain.

• System-created and maintained

  A specific class of system-created and maintained learner groups correspond to learning environments. When you define a learning environment, the system automatically generates a learner group with the same name. Each time that you associate learners with the learning environment, the system automatically adds these learners to the corresponding, system-generated learner group. System-generated learner groups are not accessible through the Learner Groups component.

Criteria-based and query-based learner groups differ only in how the group members are generated. Both can be used for enrollment and security purposes. Virtual learner groups and system-created and maintained learner groups are used for security purposes only.

Manually-Maintained or Automatically-Maintained Membership

When you define a criteria-based or query-based learner group, you can specify whether you want the membership to be updated manually or automatically. You cannot manually add and remove members from automatically-maintained groups.

The system refreshes membership for automatically-maintained learner groups when you run the Build Learner Group process (LM_LRNRGR_AE). This is a batch process that you should set up to run on a nightly basis or at some other frequency.