The Accord LMS is a technological tool designed to store, organize and distribute learning content for employees and external learners. It has additional features, bells and whistles, but at it's heart the Accord LMS primarily functions to assign selected types of training content to learners, as well as having the ability to track and report any associated activity.
Traditional Learning Management Systems require administrators to manually assign content as needed to specific individuals or specific groups of people. This is a very labor-intensive process which can lead to human error and training inconsistencies which may lead to noncompliance issues.
The Accord LMS uses a rules-based system to turn your designated training plan into an automated assignment process.
The Accord LMS incorporates your chosen designated parameters; referred to as Rules. These Rules are then applied consistently and automatically to Learners throughout your eLearning system. Rule changes can be made on an individual basis as needed. At the heart of this efficiency lies the Learning Role. Continue reading to begin exploring the Learning Roles feature in the Accord LMS.
Learning Roles: A Simple Concept
A Learning Role has a lot of helpful functionality built into the feature, but is a very simple concept.
A Learning Role can be defined as a set of instructions which will determine part of a Learner’s unique learning experience.
In a nutshell, Learning Roles easily connect Learning Content to Learners.
Properties of a Learning Role include general information, an optional Discussion Forum, Important Dates (e.g. expiration dates, due dates, renewal dates, membership rules, role members, enrolled content and scheduled notifications).
Learners can have as many Learning Roles as necessary. These Roles can change over time.
For example, Cheryl, a Technical Support Supervisor, can be enrolled in one Learning Role for each Product her team supports, a management training Learning Role assigned to supervisors in all departments, and an annual recurring corporate compliance Learning Role. The combination of these Learning Roles provides a learning experience specifically tailored for Cheryl.
Though this article contains some detail; it will actually take less time to create a Learning Role than it takes to read this article.
If you’d like to skip to the summary, please scroll down to Putting it all Together.
An important job of a Learning Role is providing content to Learners
Learning Roles: A Simpler User Interface
The Accord LMS v. 2019.06 will be released at the end of November, 2019. This update to the Accord LMS has consolidated role functionality under one consistent user interface. This new Learning Role Management tool supports all Learning Role functions, including course enrollment; all on one easy to use page.
Edit Learning Roles from the LMS Admin Roles Page
The Learning Role Management interface is accessed from the LMS Admin Roles Page by clicking on the edit icon next to the name of any Learning Role. Each Learning Role now has five sections which can be modified to provide a defined learning experience for any members of this Role.
Five available sections to create and manage each Learning Role
Learning Role Management Summary
Role Details: Basic configuration of the Learning Role and any associated dates.
Membership Rules: Articulate the rules which will automatically add members to this Role. Membership rules are optional but very useful. Associated Role Members can be added manually or through data imported from an external system.
Learner Management: Manually add or remove members of the Role, edit Role dates, search for specific learners and make bulk updates to all members within this Role.
Enrollment: Assign Courses, Learning Paths and all Learning Content to members of this Role. You may provide members non-tracked training resources. Select the Learning Content which will appear in the Learner’s elective course catalog.
Notifications: Select when and if certain notifications (e.g. Due Date Warnings) will be sent.
Role Details
Use Role Details to set up basic Learning Role parameters
The Role Detail section will contain the basic configuration information necessary in order to establish a given Learning Role.
The following tasks can be accomplished within this panel. Most of this is familiar to long-time Accord LMS administrators but the new Refresh and Expire buttons offer new and convenient functionality.
Features in Role Details
- Role Name and Description.
- Role Group Name: You can change the location of your Learning Role.
- Include Social Group: This will automatically create a moderated discussion forum for members of this Learning Role.
- LE Tracking Options: How long should the LMS track a Learner’s interaction with given Learning Content?
- Learner Count: How many learners are members of this Role?
- Dates: This optional tab is used to set Role activation date, start date, due date and expiration date. The Dates tab also lets admins create rules governing date behaviors. For example, can a learner continue to access certain training content after it's due date?
- Renewal: This optional tab sets renewal information for any Roles which must be completed on a regular and recurring basis.
- Refresh: This will update all learners to reflect any current settings of the Role. For example, if an admin decides to change a due date on this Role, this new due date will only apply to members who may have been added to this Role after the change. The refresh button immediately updates all current Role Members with the newly designated due date.
- Expire: This option will expire a selected Role for all of it's current members. This does not prevent any future enrollment.
Membership Rules
Create Membership rules to automate Learning Role assignment
Membership rules are the heart of Accord’s Learning Role Automation. LMS Admins can create rules based on user profile properties, such as job title, start date, department or any other standard or custom data fields within an LMS user's profile.
Multiple parameters can be added to a single rule to narrow the inclusion criteria for Learning Roles. For example, you could select any Supervisors hired within the last six months. You can also add multiple rules to broaden the inclusion criteria. For example, you could select any Supervisors hired within the last six months OR any Managers hired within the last year.
Any LMS users who match your designated rules will be automatically added as members of this Role when the admin clicks update. Once any rules have been updated, any new users coming online who match the established criteria will automatically be added to this Role as Role Members. For example, a new Supervisor is hired. This Supervisor will automatically be added to the system. If an existing employee is promoted to Supervisor, when their status in the profile field is updated, the LMS system will identify this change and then immediately include them as a qualified Role Member.
A given Learning Role can be set to automatically drop learners who no longer meet any specific rule criteria. This option will only drop those members who were included in the Role by virtue of matching one or more rules. Any Members added manually will not be auto-dropped.
Learner Management
Add, drop, or update Role members with the Learner Management feature
This new interface will show you all included members in the group. The search will allow you to search both member and non-member LMS users, through their username or other profile properties. The Learner Grid supports lightning fast filtering and direct cell editing. For example, we can change Role member Becky M’s start date by simply editing the current date and clicking the save data button at the lower left corner of the page. The arrow in the blue circle to the right of the grid will expand the grid to full-width to minimize horizontal scrolling. The check-boxes to the left of the member list allow for the selection of multiple learners. Clicking on Bulk Update will give you the opportunity to change the status or Role dates of any selected members. For example, one could add several members or change the due date for several members by using the Bulk Update Feature.
This new Learner Management feature makes it easy to manually add or remove learners, review the membership list, search for members or non-members, as well as update any user specific Learning Role dates.
Enrollment
Assign content and offer curated elective courses to Learning Role members
The Accord LMS Learning Catalog is a hierarchical structure that is similar to the folder model used in most personal computers. Learning Paths and Courses are specific types of folders within the catalog. Learning Elements are the specific content (SCORM modules, Videos, Powerpoint Presentations, etc.) contained within these folders.
Enrollment allows you to select specific folders or learning elements from the Accord LMS Learning Catalog which will be assigned to or offered to members of a given Learning Role.
There are two tabs on the enrollment interface; the first tab, Learner My Courses, will assign any selected folders and learning elements to all members of this Learning Role. The second tab, Learner Catalog, will make any selected folders and learning elements available within each member’s Learner Catalog for any optional self-enrollment.
Notifications
Select automatic notifications to send to this Role's members
The final section of the Learning Role Management interface is the notifications section. This section controls what, if any, notifications will be sent to any Learners based on this Learning Role. The actual content of any notifications is determined from notifications templates and set from the LMS Admin configuration page.
Putting it All Together
It takes longer to read this article than it does to set up any Learning Role automation within the Accord LMS. This process improves consistency through ensuring that custom rules are followed consistently by every Learner. Learning Role Automation reduces administrative efforts by placing selected Learning assignments on easy-autopilot. Each learner will receive the training they need, when they need it.
The most important step in automating your LMS assignments is to fully articulate your training plan prior to establishing your designated Learning Role. Once you know which learning experiences you wish to provide, it is a simple matter to create the specific Learning Roles which will assign the learning content to your learners. This short video demonstrates one easy and quick scenario.
If you would like more information about this friendly and efficient new version of the Accord LMS or would like to evaluate how the Accord LMS can save you time and money while significantly improving any training programs, please contact Accord Sales. It will be worth your time.