Totara Learn Open Discussions

A Generic Editing Trainer

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Our department has several involved in eLearning development and publishing of training materials in Totara. Our department has also seen people come and go, sometimes in short periods of time. Rather than remembering to change the name of a specific editing trainer each time someone leaves and a new person goes, I'm looking for a way to create a generic Editing Trainer that uses a group email address. That way, if we get feedback on the training materials we developed, everyone has access to the group email and can address questions/issues.

My biggest fear is a learner does not get their question answered in a timely manner because maybe that specific named Editing Trainer is out on leave and no one else has access to the Inbox to reply. It just seems like a better overall systemic approach rather than having multiple Editing Trainers and the learner has to pick and choose who to contact.

Has anyone had any success with this? How did you accomplish it?

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Hi Lori

One possibility to manage the changing of editing trainers is to create an audience with the editing trainer in it that enrols them in the course.

This will add an audience sync enrolment instance to the course and you can set the role to Editing Trainer so they are enrolled as the editing trainer in the course. This does require an admin to ensure the editing trainer is up to date but means the user doesn't need to choose the trainer and the email is current and not shared.

regards

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Thank you for your reply. We have done this; however, the issue is we are a design and development shop. We design and develop the eLearning courses and then post to Totara for the leaners. We have numerous courses to maintain and update on a yearly basis and we do not deliver any of the courses we post.

As an example, I may post a web based training course to Totara and someone copies that course and uses it as a blended option in their own customized course. I am listed as one of the editing trainers now for that course someone else created and I will often get sent messages about something that does not pertain to the course I posted but to the customized course. I won't have the answer so need to contact the actual editing training of that customized course to make sure the learner is being provided for. I just find it poor customer service.

Additionally, my name is now attached to the formal web based training course and I may just be the person who posts the course. Now my name is attached to that course even though I may not "own" the course. My name appears in the Welcome message to the learner who self-enrolls (I know I can change it but that is the default now) and it looks like I should know something about the course when I may only be the person who posted the course for learner consumption.

Seems to me it would be easier in cases where a company or organization has an instructional design and development shop that there is a way to have a generic editing trainer option where any messages or emails go to a group Inbox to avoid lapses in replies if that one person is, for example, out of town for a couple of weeks.

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Hi Lori

Thanks for explaining this more - the person who shows in the course description is controlled by the role that is ticked under Site admin > Course settings > Course contacts.

The default role for the Course Contact is Editing trainer. If you created a new role based on a copy of the editing trainer role and assigned a user with a group email address to the role and assigned the new role for the course contact then this would show in the course infor,mation and also be connected to one email.

Regards

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Thank you for this. I believe that will work nicely for our situation. I'm going to give it a try.

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