When viewing a Team members Plans the status of each of the staff learning plan is shown in the Status column.
For example in demo.totaralms.com and the Learner User's Learning plan shows the Plan progess status as
62.5% 0/4 Courses complete, 4 in Progress, 0/1 objectives met, 3/3 Competencies achieved.
This is useful information but I was wondering how is this figure is calculated ? it seems an odd number.
It would be good to take the priority of the tasks into this calculation.
It is the number of complete items divided by the total number of items, with courses that are 'In progress' counting as half complete.
So in this case:
0 complete courses = 0
4 in progress courses = 4 * 0.5
0 objectives met = 0
3 competencies achieved = 3
8 items in total
Progress = (0 + 2 + 0 + 3) / 8 = 62.5%
How would you propose that the priority would alter progress?
I'm not sure that it makes sense as the bar is indicating progress, not importance of the tasks.
Simon
Thanks for an explanation of the calculation.
I was thinking if someone has completed the 180 hour course and was in progress for a 10 hour course should they have the same progress as someone who has completed the 10 hour and in progress for the 180 hour course.
The higher priority could be given to the 180 course and this could be given a numerical weighting.
eg the 180 hour course could have a weighting factor of 1.4
1 complete courses * 1.4 (priority weighting factor) =
1 in progress courses = 1 * 0.5 * 0.6 (priority weighting factor)
0 objectives met = 0
3 competencies achieved = 3
8 items in total
Progress = (1.4 + 0.3 + 0 + 3) / 8 = 58.75%
1 complete courses * 0.6 (priority weighting factor) =
1 in progress courses = 1 * 0.5* 1.4 (priority weighting factor)
0 objectives met = 0
3 competencies achieved = 3
8 items in total
Progress = (0.6 + 0.7 + 0 + 3) / 8 = 53.75%
You would have to make sure that the % doesn't go above 100% so would require the weighting factor to be applied to the total number of items too.
The problem is course duration doesn't necessarily reflect the importance of the course (priority). 'Health & Safety' might be a 5 minute course but of crucial importance!
I think we should avoid mixing the concept of priority with course duration - they serve very different purposes.
Weighting by course duration actually would make sense, but we don't currently have a consistent way of measuring course duration so there's no way to do that.
Another problem is that scales are user defined, so how would you know how much weight to assign to each scale value?
The course duration was an example - the priority scale is user defined so would be given a weighting to how important the items are considered in the learning plan
The weighting would be assigned a numeric value (out of 100) which would be used to multiply the learning plan item to get an overall progress the same way as individual assessments are weighted and multiplied to get an overall course mark.
Are you talking about the numeric score field in the priority scale values?
I suppose it's possible that they could be used in that way, but:
Simon
The intention was to give a more realistic picture of the actual progress against the learning plan so managers can quickly assess if someone is falling behind.
Managers would probably go into the course details from their team learning plans if they want to find out more on staff progress so it is not a major issue.
The suggested weighted solution also needs to be less confusing, easier to implement and needs to be requested by menagers before it is possibly developed.
Craig
Following on from this discussion, we've decided to remove the 0.5 weight for an in progress course from the plan progress bar. That simplifies the bar to be:
(complete courses + complete competencies + compete objectives) / total number of items
Hopefully that will make it more transparent to the end user until we implement something more advanced.
Simon
