Event Manager

• Module overview
• Managing resources for classroom training: trainers, buildings, rooms
• Creating a classroom training
• Mail notifications Event Manager
• Administrators managing classroom trainings
• Trainers managing their classroom trainings
• Learners booking a delivery in a classroom training

Module overview

The Event Manager allows the creation & administration of classroom trainings, integrated into blended learning approaches on Swiss Learning Hub. An overview over the most important points:

• classroom trainings created in Event Manager must be manually added in Swiss Learning Hub courses in order to be booked, graded and completed. They are considered course content in Course Manager.
• each classroom training will include one or more deliveries (which may differ, for example, according to the venue or the level of difficulty of the course). Each delivery may contain one or more appointments. Learners can book only one delivery per classroom training, and the appointments in that delivery will become mandatory for the learner.

• resources needed for managing trainings (buildings, rooms, trainers) can be managed centrally in the Event Manager - thereby avoiding overbooking and overlaps.
• once all appointments in the delivery are finalised, the trainer can grade the participants.

In the following pages we will try to show with examples what administrators, trainers and learners can do to manage the classroom trainings.

Managing resources for classroom training: trainers, buildings, rooms

In order to notice any scheduling conflicts for rooms or trainers involved in different trainings, it is important to manage them in the Event Manager:

Trainer

Any person registered in the Swiss Learning Hub who can offer courses in the classroom training deliveries.

If you access the "Trainers" page, you will see a list of all persons who have been added as trainers in the Event Manager - you can pick any of these persons to add to your appointments. If the person you want to include in a course is not present, then:

• make sure the person is present in the Person management in Course Manager & has status "active"
• in the Event Manager, go to Trainers > Edit > search by person name > mark the checkbox and Save the person.

You will then also find this person on the trainer list and can be used as a trainer for appointments.

Special cases:

• trainer status has changed after being added as a trainer: if the person has been deactivated or archived in the Course Manager, she will appear with (archived) displayed next to her/his name. These persons can't be removed from the list. Archived trainers can't be added in new appointments. If appointments where they are included are being edited, you will be forced to replace them as well.
• trainer is already included in an active delivery: the person can't be removed from the trainers list. You will need to first remove the person from the appointments, then edit her/him again in the trainers list to remove.

Buildings & rooms

Any rooms/buildings that will be used in classroom training appointments created in the Event Manager.

In order to have an overview over the locations and their bookings, the administrator needs to create the buildings and their rooms used in trainings in the Event Manager.

• Buildings only contain a name, address and an optional URL. In as far as the building contains a correct address that can be resolved in Google Maps, after the building is saved, it can be opened in a separate tab in Maps for a quick check.
• Rooms need to be configured with the maximum capacity (how many people could be seated for a training in them) and optionally, with resources on location (blackboard, projector etc). First create the building, then create rooms that can be associated with these buildings.

Please note that these resources have interdependencies which limit what can be edited in them. We noted those special cases for the trainers above. Here a few examples regarding buildings and rooms. - if a room with a capacity of 50 persons is already used in an active delivery, you will not be allowed to edit the room and lower the capacity/number of people. Below you can see the error message in such a situation

another example of such an interdependency: you are not allowed to delete a building that contains rooms already in use. If you try to do that, you will notice that the buildings in this situation can't be selected for delete action

Creating a classroom training

Step 1: in the Event Manager

Classroom training

In the Pool, admin can create a new classroom training, with following data:

• title of the course.
• a responsible person - this should be an administrator who can operate changes or answer enquiries about the course. His/her name along with the email address will appear on the booking page of the course for learners to see.

Delivery

At least one delivery needs to be added to the classroom training, with following options:

• distinctive title and an optional description
• type of training: classroom training or webinar. If the course is a webinar, then a link must be provided in the respective field, otherwise the training will be saved like a classical classroom training!
• maximum number of participants. Currently if no room is chosen, then the upper limit is 1000. However, if you already include a room in your classroom training, then the maximum capacity will be the one given by the room capacity (ex. if you pick a room with 15 seats, the maximum capacity for the delivery will also be 15 persons)
• language for the course
• registration period - the interval in which learners booked in a Swiss Learning Hub course containing this classroom training can register for the delivery. Note: the registration period must end before the first appointment of the delivery.
• default place - if selected at delivery level, it will be shown as a preset in all appointments of this delivery. This default room can be however overwritten on individual appointments. If not selected, it can be edited at a later time, but will no longer be a default entry for creating appointments.

Appointment

At least one appointment needs to be added to every delivery:

• with the appointment title
• the date of the appointment. It is recommended that for classroom trainings that take several days, an appointment is created for every single day - it allows for easier administration, changing for example the time or location of a single day, without affecting the rest of the series.
• the location of the appointment & the trainer. These 2 elements can also be left empty in the planning phase and added later.

* within a delivery, the dates of appointments can't overlap. However, overlaps of appointments for 2 different deliveries are possible and will not be signaled as errors. This allows for the same course to take place in 2 locations at the same time, with different instructors, if they are set up as 2 distinct deliveries in the course.

* if the room you define for a delivery as a standard room has less capacity than the delivery, an error message will prevent saving the delivery. You will need to adjust the maximum capacity to the capacity of the chosen room.

* if the room or trainer you plan in the appointments are already booked for other classroom trainings taking place at the same time, you will also be prevented from saving the delivery. Rooms and trainers can't be booked in the same interval for several deliveries.

* appointments and deliveries can be edited and added at any time. If you are in the planning phase, you can create just the mandatory objects to allow saving the classroom training: one delivery with one appointment. Once you can clarify all further details, you can add details and other dates in the course.

Step 2: in the Course Manager

Once you have created the training, now you need to include it like any other learning object in a Swiss Learning Hub course. This works like this:

• go to the course you want to add the classroom training to
• go to Used content tab > click on Add and search by the classroom training name > add it to course

All learners that are assigned to this course, or who book the course, will be able to chose the delivery they want to participate in. Note: enrollment through learner or an administrator for a specific delivery is still a needed step! It is described here for a learner and here if done by an administrator.

• a classroom training that is included in a SLH course cannot be deleted
  * a classroom training that is included in a SLH course should not be edited on the Course Manager side - the needed changes must be done on the Event Manager side!
  * also, after being excluded from the SLH, a classroom training with valid deliveries and appointments cannot be deleted as well - first you need to remove the appointments, then the deliveries, before being able to delete a classroom training itself. The order must always be kept in mind

Mail notifications Event Manager

There are some default mail notifications for classroom training and some that can be managed by the administrator in the course of editing the event. These latter will be marked with an * and explained below

Participants will receive an email notification

• on booking a delivery
• on delivery cancellation by admin
• on an appointment being added in booked delivery*
• on an appointment being deleted in booked delivery*
• on location, date/time or trainer change for appointment*
• on being removed as a participant from a delivery

Trainers will receive an email notification

• when added as trainer to an appointment
• when removed as trainer from an appointment
• on an appointment (in which they are a trainer) being added in a delivery*
• on an appointment (in which they were a trainer) being deleted in a delivery *
• on location or date/time change for an appointment in which they are a trainer*

Cases marked with *: in those instances, when the administrator makes the needed changes in the delivery/appointment, he will see a prompt asking whether an email notification should be triggered. He can control if these informations go out to booked learners or trainers or if he prefers to not send any (ex. if he still is in the planning phase).

All emails containing appointment dates and/or locations will include .ics calendar files for inclusion into the learner's / trainer's own planner.

Administrators managing classroom trainings

Edit a delivery

Deliveries can only be edited while they are active - once the gradings have been completed and the delivery status thereby automatically switches to complete, editing will no longer be allowed. Also, once the delivery has been cancelled, no further edit actions can be performed for it.

Cancel a delivery

You can cancel a delivery by clicking on Edit > in the edit form you will notice a button for cancellation. Note: such an action will trigger an email notification to all participants and trainers involved. Also, all resources that were bound in the cancelled delivery (trainers, rooms) will now become available again for booking in the time interval previously locked by this delivery.

Change dates (registration dates for delivery, appointment dates)

You can update the registration dates, but remember: you can only offer a registration period (the "until" date) to one day before the first appointment in a delivery occurs. If you need to extend the period beyond that, you will also need to edit the appointment dates in the future to accommodate.

You can edit the appointment dates also - but no further back than one day after the registration period ends. Also, for changing the dates of appointments you can select whether to send an update email to the participant list or not. For more information, see the section Mail notifications Event Manager.

Add / remove participants to a delivery

Participants can book themselves the deliveries they want in a course, but you can also do the same thing in the administrative interface. Bookings are always done on level delivery, so search for the intended delivery, go to the Participants tab and there you can search for the participants you wish to add. Then you can either slide them over to the right hand side individually or in a bulk action (see the 2 arrowed buttons on the left) and then save. Upon saving the change, the participants will be notified via email about their enrollment. 

 

Removing participants is done on the same level, by moving the intended persons from the right-hand side list to the left-hand side container back again. But please remember - this action will only remove the participants from this delivery! This action will not affect the assignment of persons in the SLH course!

Note: while participants are free to book a delivery, they can't remove themselves from one. This is the reason why the responsible person's email, which must be an administrator, is mentioned on the learner delivery page, so that the person can be contacted in case such a removal becomes necessary.

Grade participants in a delivery

Grading can be done by trainers, but there is also an option for the administrator to do it in the administrative interface - again, on delivery level. The grading options & mechansim (invididual or bulk) are of course the same as for trainers, all done in the tab Participants of the delivery.

 

Please keep in mind - adding / removing & grading of participants need to be done in synch with the classroom training being included as a learning object in a SLH course. These actions will only offer the intended results when the pre-requisite action of assigning learners to the SLH course has been done, as described here 

Trainers managing their classroom trainings

Trainers are persons that are part of the SLH person administration and that have been specifically added to the Trainers list in the Event Manager module. They are the ones who deliver the in-person trainings or the webinars, but also the ones who can prepare additional material for the learners and who are responsible for the grading of enrolled participants.

Trainer - dashboard widget

When they login to the dashboard, they will see the widget which lists all appointments where they act as a trainer (Note: please remark that they can enroll to other trainings like regular participants. This is why in this situation, they need to look at the second widget tab "as trainer"). If they click on the All trainings button, they can go to the page that lists all their deliveries and their grading status. If the delivery is still in progress, then the grading will be shown as still open and no grading can be performed. If the delivery has been finished, meaning that all appointment dates lie in the past, then grading is possible and once done, the grading status will be shown as "completed" for the trainer, like in the examples below

Note: The counter next to the tab name will always show only the current & future appointments. The trainings page though will always list all deliveries in which the trainer was involved, past, present and future. Don't be surprised if the number in the widget tab does not match the number of listed deliveries on the "All trainings" page!

Uploading / removing course material

The trainer can upload files on the delivery detail page. The permitted files are of type pdf, office formats (doc, ppt, xls), images (png, jpg) and zip files with a maximum size of 10MB.

To remove any uploaded files, click Edit and then the remove icon will appear next to each uploaded file.

Grading participants in a delivery

Grading can start after the last appointment in the series has also been finalised. In the example from the screenshots above, a regular grading through the trainer would only be possible after 24.02.2021, the date of the last appointment. Also, it is important to note that the trainer will grade the whole delivery - meaning the performance of each participant across all appointments and not singular appointments! 

The grading options are listed in the left hand side column of the table below. We also listed the equivalent status in the SLH course - remember that classroom trainings behave like learning objects/course items. In order to set this type of learning object to completed, you can use the grading "Passed" or "Dispensed/Excused" (ex. the training is mandatory, but the participant has recently taken the training and already has a certification to prove it). If you want to mark the training as failed, then you can pick either "Not passed/Visited" (person attended the appointments, but did not prove the needed qualification level at the end of it) or "Not visited" (ex. did not attend). 

Grading for classroom training	Equivalent LO status in the SLH course
Passed	Completed
Not passed/Visited	Failed
Not visited	Failed
Dispensed/Excused	Completed

Grading can be performed in 2 ways:

• if all enrolled participants would get the same grade, then you can use the dropdown for "Rate all" - the selection made will be applied to all participants in this delivery
• if you want to do separate gradings, you can do so for each participant in turn by selecting a value in the dropdown next to her/his name

Important: when the trainer grades the participants, the delivery status switches to "complete". This is also the reason why the grading can't be done on separate sessions! Once started, the trainer will need to perform the grading of the whole participant list in order to save them. Also, once the grading has been performed, there is no possibility to edit the grades again. The trainer will only see a listing of all delivery participants and the grade she granted them

Learners booking a delivery in a classroom training

Prerequisites: the course is assigned or was already booked by the learner. Deliveries can't be booked outside of SLH courses.

Once included in the course, the classroom training will appear like any other learning object on the course overview page, but its button will signal to the learner he needs to enroll in it and the icon will indicate it is a classroom training.

On the detail page of the training the learner can book any delivery present in the course as long as there are still available seats. Note: if the start date of registration is still in the future, then the Enrollment button will not be shown! If the delivery registration time is expired, then the same behavior is expected.

The learner can only book one delivery of the existing ones. This is the reason he sees all details of the appointments before commiting to the delivery. As soon as a booking on one delivery is made, then the presence to the appointments in that delivery become mandatory for the learner.

Every booking will decrease the number of available seats and once all are taken up, the booking button will be blended out, thereby avoiding any overbookings.

Once he enrolls, he will only see the details of his delivery and a new container appears on page on the right side, Course materials, where he can find any files that the trainer might have uploaded for the learners taking this training.

As soon as a training is booked, on the dashboard the learner will discover an appointment widget, either in list or calendar form, or both (this is a configurable option). The dates with an appointment will be marked in the calendar, showing the location and trainer details on hover. The list will also show all needed information for each appointment included in the booked training.

Here an example where both the list and calendar widgets are enabled on dashboard: