Quick Start for Instructors - Plans

You can use InstructorSite to track learning for specific learners and courses using plans. This Quick Start Guide focuses on creating and managing plans.

Plans

A plan is a set of courses and/or credits that can be assigned to one or more persons. Here are some ways that plans are frequently used:

         Assign mandatory training

         Assign annual credit hour requirements

         Assign training for new hires

         Assign pre-learning for a software roll-out

Plans can be public and available for enrollment by anyone or private and assigned only by administrative action.

Creating Plans

You can create a plan by clicking Plan from the + button in the Navigation Bar

When creating a plan you can choose from a variety of options to fit your specific situation including assigning deadlines, setting up reminders, requiring prerequisite plans, and auto-enrollment relationships with other plans for graduates.

Status

Use the plan status to control its overall visibility:

         Active means that learners can see the plan in LearningSite (if Enrollment is set to LearningSite or they have been enrolled in the plan). If advanced settings regarding enrollment and deadline reminders are selected, the enrollees will begin receiving emails.

         Use the Staged status while you are developing the plan. Learners cannot see Staged plans. Enrollees will not receive any emails regarding this plan.

         Retired means learners will no longer see the plan but UniversitySite maintains all of the data associated with the plan in the Learning Plan Reports.

Tip: Use the Staged status until the plan is ready for the learners.

Deadlines

You can optionally assign a deadline to a plan.  Deadlines can be assigned globally for all enrollees or uniquely for each enrollee.  Global deadlines are often used for pre-learning, while enrollee specific, “variable” deadlines are often used for new hires.  Variable due dates are assigned on the enrollment tab.  You can even assign recurring deadlines. This is handy for situations that require compliance on an annual basis such as 12 credits per year, or a security awareness training every two years.

Courses and Credits

Courses are assigned as a requirement for completion of a plan. For example, one or more compliance courses might be added to a plan and assigned to a group of users for completion by a specific date.  Credits may also be assigned as a requirement.  For example, it is not uncommon for firms to require employees to earn 12 technology credits per year.

Enrollment

Plans can be assigned to specific individuals or groups.  Plans can also be set up to auto-enroll people based on saved search criteria you establish on the Enrollment tab. Alternatively, plan enrollment can be delegated to managers and/or learners.

Best Practice: If you are going to manage enrollment for a plan exclusively in InstructorSite, be careful not to enable enrollment in LearningSite or ManagerSite.

Audiences

An Audience is a group of learners.  When you publish a plan to LearningSite you can limit its exposure to specific audiences. For example, you may want managers and only managers to be able to see a plan that intended for managers.

Warning: Do not confuse assigning audiences with assigning enrollment.  Assigning an audience limits it’s visibility in LearningSite to specific users while enrolling an audience puts users into the plan administratively.

Departments

By default, if you can create or edit a plan, you can create and edit every plan.  When multiple departments are using InstructorSite this may be undesirable.  You can assign departments to a plan to prevent InstructorSite users outside of those departments from being able to make changes to it. If you do this, make sure you have the correct members assigned to the department so they can make use of that plan, course, event, etc.

Sharing

It’s easy to get links to plans for your emails and your intranet.  For example, you can share a link to a plan to invite learners to opt-in.  You can also send messages to people who are enrolled, have completed, or have not completed a plan.

Reports

It is important to know who has completed a plan and who hasn’t.  Reporting is extremely important to plans.  The plan page in InstructorSite is an excellent interactive report that you may find yourself using frequently.  There is also a report generator for plans that provides a variety of filtering options along with access to the data in Excel.

Plan Communications

By default, when enrollees are added to an active plan, they will receive an enrollment notification email. They will also receive an incomplete plan reminder once a month. 

As you schedule events, if that course is in a plan and an enrollee needs to complete the course for the Plan, they will be notified that a course they need is available for registration.

While some of the notification settings can be changed at the Plan level, most of them are global settings and are found under Mail Setup & Customization | Learning Plans.