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What are the different types of courses in the LMS?
Courses are the basic learning object of the LMS system. There are four types of courses supported within the system; instructor led classes (classroom as well as virtual), web-based courses (online), manual entries and historical.
Classroom/Instructor Led
Classroom courses require that course shells be created and in addition instances of the course (class dates) be set up as well. Without dates being assigned to classroom course(s) they are not accessible by users of the system. Instances allow for flexibility by setting parameters that can be associated with one instructor-led class. For example, a “Leadership management” class on the 15th of September may have a limit of 12 students, but the same course that is being held on the 30th may have a limit of 20 students – and may be held in a different location.
Virtual classes are those set up utilizing web conference options such as WebEx and GoTo Meeting. They are scheduled in the same way as live classroom classes – but are initiated via a web conference.
Online/Web-based
Online courses are one or more web pages that can be SCORM or AICC compliant and/or digital documents that provide a self-paced learning experience to the learner. The learner can begin the course at any time, stop it and resume it at a later time. The learner decides how quickly he or she will move through the course material. The LMS supports a feature whereby a learner can come back and review the course after it has been completed, by launching it from their Transcript.
Manual Entries
Manual Entries are utilized to ‘post’ a completed course (or other) entry to a user’s transcript without the user having to follow the normal procedure of enrolling, attending and completing the course within the system.
Manual entry courses can be created on the fly and students associated with this entry will their transcripts updated. An example could be students that have taken a course outside the organization but need the credit. It is recommended that only administrators, managers and supervisors have the policy to manage manual entries.
Manual Entries can also be used to create a cross reference table where for example a user has taken a course at another (previous) location/health system but under a different name than that which is listed in the current LMS. By updating the cross reference table, the Assignment Scheduler will recognize the ‘foreign course name’ and not re- assign the course to this user, even though the transcript listing for this course, for a user may be different from the course name in the LMS – where they are in fact the same courses – just listed under different names.
Historical
Historical courses are added when an organization converts from another system to Learnsoft, and user or employee profiles contain references to these courses that may not appear in the list of courses. This is usually done only once – when setting up Learnsoft for the first time.