Instructor's Guide
The following section describes the features in the learning environment that related to "teaching" tasks. They are typically done by an instructor, commonly referred to as "teacher", "facilitator" and/or "coordinator", although some of them might be restricted to a higher level administrator or course creator. (Note that in many smaller hospitals and healthcare organizations, the same person plays the role of administrator or instructor.)
The Object Model
It's important to understand the object model of the learning environment. These are basically 3 object types that need to be created in the learning environment in order to implement a full eLearning program:
- Programs
- Courses
- Activities and Resources
Programs
A program, sometimes referred to as "curriculum", "learning plan", or simply "bundle" of courses, is an entity that allows you to plan learning for a group of users, such as a team or department, usually over a long period of time. Programs allow you to specify which courses individuals have to complete, and when.
It's important to understand that programs reference courses (unlike course categories, which contain courses). As such, it's possible for multiple programs to point to the same course as per the illustration below.
Courses (or Course Shells)
A course is essentially an empty shell meant to contain learning activities and resources. Once a course has been created, you need to add activities and resources as a second step.
It's important to understand that courses contain activities. As such, an activity cannot be re-used across multiple courses. If you want to re-use an activity in another course, you must duplicate that activity. That copy then becomes its own separate instance and modifying the first activity will not modify its copy.
Activities and Resources
Once a course has been created, someone with "teacher" permissions can then add activities and resources to this course, including SCORM files, Microsoft Office files, Adobe PDF files, videos, quizzes, surveys, or forums / discussions board to name a few.