ProgramsA program, sometimes referred to as "curriculacurriculum", "learning plansplan", or simply "bundlesbundle" of courses, is an entity that allows you to plan learning for a group of users, such as a team or department, usually over a long period of time. Programs allow you to specify which courses individuals have to complete, and when. Programs automatically notify users (and optionally their supervisors) when deadlines are approaching.
Why Use Programs?
As an organization you most likely have courses that ALL users have to take (e.g. WHMIS) and courses that only SOME users have to take (e.g. First Aid, Privacy for Clinicians). Even though some of your users may not have to take the "First Aid" course, it's sometimes possible for them to self-enroll in these courses simply because they are interested in the topic and want to learn more. For example, it's common for someone who wants to be promoted to a management position to take leadership courses even though their current role doesn't require them to complete a leadership course.
When tracking your organization's compliance, you only want to report on users who MUST complete the course. If a cafeteria worker self-enrolled in a First Aid course because of their own personal interest and don't have to complete the course, then you don't want them to negatively affect your compliance metrics. In other words, if Debbie, a cashier in the cafeteria, self-enrolls in First Aid but never completes it, you don't want your compliance report to show that Debbie is non-compliant because Debbie doesn't actually need to be First Aid certified to perform her duties at work. So how do you differentiate because users who MUST complete a course and users who don't? Programs.
When users are enrolled in courses via programs, it means they must complete the course. As such, the system will sent a reminder to the user as the deadline approaches (assuming they haven't yet completed the course). The following section describes user will also show up in key reports, such as the Compliance Summary and the Program Completion reports. This is to help you, as an administrator or manager, track compliance.
The following sub-sections describe how to manage programs in your learning environment.