Managing Programs

A program, sometimes referred to as "curriculum", "learning plan", "training tracks" or simply "bundle" 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 learners (and optionally their supervisors or additional recipients) when deadlines are approaching, past due, or if a recertification is needed.

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-enrol in these courses simply because they want to get their certification for personal reasons.  

When tracking your organization's compliance, you only want to report on users who MUST complete the course. You don't want a worker who self-enrolled in First Aid for personal interest to show up in your compliance metrics. For example, if Debbie, a volunteer working at the information desk, 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 between users who MUST complete a course and users who don't? The answer is by using 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), when they're overdue, or when they need to get recertified. The 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 supervisor, track compliance.

The following sub-sections describe how to manage programs in your learning environment.