Totara Learn Open Discussions

Are you using competencies to create programs?

 
Ran G
Are you using competencies to create programs?
by Ran Gilboa - Thursday, 2 February 2023, 4:21 PM
Group Totara

A question for Learn users, specifically those who create and manage programs.
While working on future enhancement in program management, the question of competency course sets came up. 
If this sounds familiar to you, we'd love to chat about it.

  • If you are using competency-based programs, can you share your experience?
  • If you remember using it in the past, why did you stop?

Thank you.



Paul Lowndes
Re: Are you using competencies to create programs?
by Paul Lowndes - Friday, 3 February 2023, 8:22 AM
Group Most Helpful Contributor 2021

Hi Ran

We looked at competencies a few years ago but my recollection was it became over complicated for both managers and learners.


We may not be typical users and things my have changed so this is very general over view.

Our online courses are mapped to approved NOS competencies. What we wanted was to use our existing course enrolment set up and manager sign off to populate the competency framework so in addition to course completions the learner and manager could also report on competencies.


We wanted to link competencies to the courses but without disrupting their normal enrolment onto courses.

What we discovered was that using competencies opened up a whole new navigation pathway for learner and manager to learn and which was not very intuitive  


As a result we ditched competencies and stuck with our existing course enrolment pathway with a simple PDF download showing the competencies achieved by the learner when they successfully completed the course.


In our world anything that requires the learner to do more than click on a link from their "Current Learning" block and complete a course does not land well !

I hope this helps. 


Thanks

P





Ran G
Re: Are you using competencies to create programs?
by Ran Gilboa - Tuesday, 7 February 2023, 7:33 PM
Group Totara

Thank you for sharing your experience, Paul. This is the sort of feedback we were looking for.

A couple more questions:

  • What version of Totara were you using at the time? Did it include Totara Perform, or just Learn?
  • Are you familiar with Learning plans in Totara?