Best practice forum (Archived) - Trainers get courses listed in Record of Training

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Best practice forum (Archived)

Trainers get courses listed in Record of Training

Hi,

Using Totara 2.4.8, we see that users that are added as trainers to courses get these courses listed in their Record of learning courses tab, under the My Learning menu tab.

This is confusing for both the users and their managers. A user being assigned as trainer (or any role other than Learner for that matter), is not normally "Learning" this course. Also - such a use may possibly never complete the course as they manage the course and do not do the activities as learners. Of course the same user may also be sign up to the course as learner in case s/he does need to do the learning.

Several options may be considered here, such as allowing admins to determine which course assigned roles get the course listed in their record of learning, or maybe some other way.

Would appreciate to hear what are other people's thoughts on this and Totara's team approach?

Thanks,

Amir

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I agree that this is an issue for some folks. It seems that limiting record of learning to learner role or some configurable set of roles might be prudent.

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I definitely agree, having trainers appear as enrolled learners has caused great confusion. We should be able to identify a few roles that would not appear in course reports and Record of Learning as enrolled learners.

Thanks,
Chris

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This is also an issue for us and draws numerous complaints from our trainers. We would very much appreciate a resolution to this too.

In the meantime Amir, here's how we handle it. For our admins and more frequent trainers the only work around we've been able to find is to create multiple accounts, eg: our admins will have an administration account and a learner account. The only hiccup here is that each email address can only be used once so you need your IT team to create dummy email addresses such as systemadmin1@organisationname.com and put those dummy email addresses on autoforward to the user's real email address. Fiddly but the only thing we can find at present.

Regards

Fiona

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Well this definitely seems to be an issue for many of you so I've filed an enhancement request, though a big change like this will probably be held for a future version.

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Thanks, Ciaran:

I have to plus 1 this issue as well. It is a problem to see the trainer listed in the reports for completion. It creates quite a bit of confusion.

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Thanks everyone for your feedback and suggestions. I do hope this gets resolved in future version.

Fiona as for creating separate accounts for trainers this is not really an option for this specific client as they are using SSO so logging with another account would be more complicated.

This discussion did lead me to a possible workaround that may be acceptable in certain cases, and which I think is a bit more elegant. I tried and found out that if you assign the trainer role to the user on the category, rather than on the course level, the course is not listed on their record of learning, but they still retain all trainer permissions. This would work if you don't mind the user getting assigned to the role on other courses in the same category.

Hope this helps someone.

Amir

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Hi Amir,

We assign trainers on the category level, and find that they still do have to enroll in a course in order to provide session administration. They do have the option to unenroll themselves when they are done, but if they don't they still have the problem of having the courses display in their record of learning.

Our Site Managers do use a separate login, their accounts are using manual authentication while our real learner accounts use SSO. It is possible to do the same for trainers, but we are hesitant to do that in our situation since there are a lot more trainers than managers.

-Chris

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Thanks everyone for the feedback.

There is actually another issue with record of learning which has caused some confusion and so I'm thinking it might make sense to fix both issues in 2.6.

The other problem with using role assignments is that if a user is unenrolled from a course, their role assignment is removed, which means the course disappears from their record of learning (if it's not also in one of their learning plans).

My proposed solution is to switch from using the role assignment record to using the course completion record. This should solve the trainer issue as only students would have completion records in the course.

If "Completion begins on enrollment" is enabled (the default) then students will be unaffected, except that the record will persist after they are unenrolled.

On the other hand if "Completion begins on enrollment" and "Mark as in progress on first view" are both disabled then students won't see a record in the record of learning until they have met the first completion criteria within the course.

Keen to hear if people think that sounds like a suitable solution.

Simon

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Simon: I think that solution is on the right track. I always thought it was odd, and limiting, to require users to be enrolled in a course in order for a course to show up in the record of learning. How would the historical course completions import utility be affected? Would it even be necessary to enroll users to a course during the import process?

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historical completion imports would turn up in the record of learning (because it creates records in the course_completions table. You are right that it would no longer be necessary to enrol users in the course (perhaps we could make that an option).

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Hi Simon,

What you're suggesting may cause other issues. There may be cases in which course completion may not be used at all, as you want to make the course learning resources available to users but not track anything as required completion. If I understand correctly, in the setting you're suggesting, if the user was enrolled as a learner in the course (no matter through which enrollment method), that course would not show up on the records of learning tab. In fact, the only way for them to get to that course is to find it again in the course catalog and remember they are enrolled in it.

I think our starting point should be what is the purpose of the records of learning tab and information. In my example above, if the purpose was to allow quick access for the users to the courses and resources they're enrolled to, your suggestion would not achieve that purpose. If the purpose is to record all course completions or completions in process, then it might be a good suggestion. If the purpose we define cannot be achieved via existing methods then we'd have to consider a new way to achieve that.

Just my 2c...

Amir

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Hi Amir,

I think you are right that the purpose of the record of learning is key. In my view the name "Record of learning" implies a record of courses taken, rather than a convenient way of accessing courses. That has always been the intent.

If you or your clients are using the record of learning for "quick access for the users to the courses and resources they're enrolled to" that implies there isn't any other good way of achieving that aim. It doesn't necessarily mean that's what the record of learning should do.

Part of the confusion is that there are actually quite a few ways to access courses, and the purpose of each is not necessarily clear. Here is a quick summary of the ones I know about:

TOTARA SPECIFIC

Record of Learning (Courses tab)

[User profile] > Record of Learning

My Team > [User] > Records

My Learning > Record of Learning

As discussed this currently shows courses where the user has ANY role assignment PLUS any course assigned to any of their learning plans. The purpose of the Record of Learning is to display a complete historical record of the user's participation in courses on the site.

My Course Completions / Course Progress 'block'

Site Admin > Front Page > Front Page settings > Course Progress to enable

If enabled appears in centre column on Home page.

The "Course Progress" block is not a 'proper' block, although it does look a bit like one. It currently displays the course completion records for a user along with some other information from the course completions table such as status and dates. The purpose of this block is a bit unclear at the moment (it exists for historical reasons).

Find Courses

Home > Find Courses

The main course catalog. This should allow the user to see any course in the site that they have access to. The purpose is to provide a user a way of browsing and searching all available courses.

Learning Plans

Home > My Learning > Learning Plans > Plan > Courses

Displays courses assigned to each specific plan. One purpose of learning plans is to allow the user to keep a curated list of courses that interest them. This may include courses they've done, are working on now or just things they are interested in. Of course it also supports a lot more like commenting, and approval, but it could potentially be used as a place to locate courses of interest.

MOODLE AND TOTARA

Available Courses / List of courses 'block'

Site Admin > Front Page > Front Page settings > Choose 'List of courses' in Frontpage or Frontpage when logged in setting.

If enabled appears in centre column on Home page.

This is not a 'proper' block. It just displays a list of courses on the site that the user is allowed to see. I suppose the purpose is to let the user quickly see some courses that they might want to take without browsing the catalog.

Courses Block

Add a block > Courses to add to page

This is the blocks/course_list/ block. Displays a list of courses. Seems to only show courses the user is enrolled in, although as admin I seem to see all courses.

Course Overview Block

Home > My Learning > Course overview

This is the blocks/course_overview/ block. Displays a list of courses and associated overview information. Seems to only show courses the user is enrolled in.

Navigation Block

Navigation > My Courses

When expanded this list shows courses the user is enrolled on.

In my view the best solution is to clarify the purpose of each area and then focus on making it do that job well. Personally I think this should be done as follows:

Record of Learning: Long-term, historic record of learning achieved (including stuff being worked on now but filterable via the all/active/completed).

Course progress block: Easily accessed, quick summary of the users current courses, with some additional information such as completion status.

To achieve this we'd need the following changes:

Record of Learning: Follow my proposal above and switch this from showing courses with role assignments to courses with course completions.

Course progress block: Change block title from "My course completions" to "My current courses". Change logic to display courses the user is currently enrolled in instead of courses with a course completion record. Still display completion status when data is available.

How does that sound?

Simon

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Thanks Simon for the detailed reply.

I wasn't suggesting that the courses tab on records of learning should necessarily list all courses. I was merely trying to say that functionality should be decided upon once we are sure about the desired behavior and uses.

I agree that for some of the needed links may be available through the list you provided. Still, I suggest we invest a bit more in figuring out how this should work for different Personas.

Learner point of view - "My Learning" menu tab for many users indicates that that is the place all my learning is concentrated. And indeed that is where a user may find their programs, competencies, courses, and recently also certifications, goals, appraisals and feedback, as well as face to face session (in a separate sub menu). According to your suggestion above, the user would only see courses that have completion turned on. To find other courses they are enrolled to they'd have to use the navigation block. I find that confusing for users. organizations will use course completions in different ways, and we need to take various possibilities into account. A possible solution could be to have another sub-menu or with "All courses I'm enrolled in" or similar. A different option is to allow admin settings to determine if the courses tab in record of learning shows just courses that have completion (e.g. via completion logic) or all courses user is a Student in (e.g. enrollment logic).
Manager point of view - there may be several situations in which managers might be interested in all the courses their team members are enrolled in, not just those with course completion on. In this case navigation block cannot help as it is for their stuff member.
Trainers point of view - this was the original reason I started this discussion. I think we need to provide quick access to trainers to the courses they are listed as trainers on, but NOT to confuse that with a records of learning.

Hope I am clear on why I think this is important, and that I do not over complicate things. Glad to hear thoughts of other users.

Thanks,

Amir

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Hope this isn't muddying the waters, but it's probably related to this discussion and may be an interesting train of thought.

We are discussing building a new users' dashboard for a client who just want a really simplified learner experience. Their point is that the end-user doesn't care if they are required to complete a Course, a Program, a Certification or whatever; the terminology is unimportant, it's more important to highlight what needs to be done first.

Learners just need a list of links to required learning content; with soon-to-expire enrolments and certifications at the top; with progress indicators; and with the date of completion or certificate expiry as appropriate. Whether the learning content is in the form of a Certification, Program or a single Course it needs to appear in the same list with similar progress bar etc. If they are enrolled in a course because it's part of a program, then they don't need to have a separate link to it - this is a frequent source of confusion.

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Hi Alan

We did a similar customization to a client by way if a new My Required Learning block. The rationale was exactly the same ie show then what is most rekevant and needs their attention and provide direct links to action or more info.

In addition to courses and programs (2.4 so no certifications yet) we also have user's upcoming face to face sessions with their date and location.

Love to see something of that sorts coming into core.

Not sure it resolves the trainers issue as trainers may still see the courses they train in this block unless you build the logic to see courses enrolled as student role.

Amir

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Unfortunately we didn't have time to implement this feature in time for 2.6 (the feature freeze date has now passed). I will collate all the feedback from this thread and hopefully we'll be able to implement something for 2.7.

Simon

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There is a Suggest Features forum topic here for further discussion of this functionality if needed.

This request, ttracked under request ID TL-4484, has been deemed medium priority and is not currently planned for development by Totara core.

If you wish to pursue this functionality further your options are

custom development - If you are considering contributing the completed customization back to Totara core, please refer to our guide to contributing code to Totara LMS here and contact Simon Coggins, our Chief Technology Officer.

OR

provide funding for development by Totara core - If you are considering providing funding for development by Totara core, please contact your Totara Channel Partner Manager to discuss further.

Development priorities are reviewed regularly. If you wish to escalate your market need for this functionality, please contact your Totara Channel Partner Manager.

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Hi Simon,

+1 for your proposals.

Maurice

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+1 for this requirement. Editing trainers, trainers should not have completions tracked in Totara reporting. We have many complaints globally about inaccurate reporting. We also have requirements where a trainer may also be required to complete the course but not always. If a person is all allocated as a learner they are tracked, if they are assigned as a trainer they should not be, however if it is a combination of the two then they should be.

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I +1 this for resolution.

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