Setting up your RTO for eLearning is an important, and some would say essential step, and we believe that it should be a lot easier than it is and we are working with OzSoft on ways to make it easier.
Having said that it is worth the pain if for at least two reasons; to gain critical mass in a new market and also to access more output from your existing training resources.
All the student management software products were built before integrated eLearning was on the horizon and they have a largely common data model. Most are structured to take account for various options in setup. In our experience VETtrak is excellent in allowing an RTO to use the product the way you want while somehow managing to heard “your cats” in an efficient way – I guess that is why they are number one 🙂
Before we go into what is difficult or why we need to consider the course offering structure; in VETtrak there is a ‘folder’ to hold types of training called a ‘programme type’. The ‘programme type’ folder includes the training courses themselves, called ‘programmes’. A ‘programme’, has a start and end date, a location, one or more price types, a qual and qual code and, amongst other things, Units of Competency.
It is the units of competency or more usually the clusters of units, we call a ‘topic’ that are used to combine learning material and activities to an assessment task and then tie the student to the study and assessment plan.
When we promote a training course we have a description of the course [the program] and then we list the instances of it [occurrences] in either a list or on a calendar.
This all sounds easy … so what’s the problem?
Well … it is possible to have different units for a specific qual or qual code and often there are specialisation within a programme ie the occurrence has a different qual code and units. This makes things difficult for a mere mortal administrator to associate the eLearning with the enrolment …. unless 🙂
Only allow one set of Units for a programme ie have different programmes for each flavour/specialisation/version of a qual.
If you do this we can associate your eLearning material to the programme, the enrolment and our LMS will know what units it is being used in the learning plan even before it is set up.
The benefits of an integrated VET LMS are the reduction in repetitive course set up times and the presentation of all training data in the one place; this small discipline will make your life a lot easier in the initial setup and maintenance.
If you have any questions and queries then please let me know – John Wooding 02 85967676
Have an awesome day!
PS There are some awesome new features coming soon from Launceston that will make the setup faster and the student experience more exciting!
