Before doing anything else in your LMS account, it is good planning to identify who your learners will be, how you plan on packaging your content and for which groups of learners you will want to be able to generate reports. There are many options and features that you can choose to activate as part of your LMS set up.  This section attempts to help you understand the implications associated with each option in order to assist you with selecting the best configuration to meet all of your learning management requirements.   A few items to consider include:

How will learners be added to the LMS account? Options include:

• Created through learner self-registration.
• Manually added to LMS by an administrator (individually or by batch).
• Automatically imported into your LMS via integration with an HR system or Enterprise application (Contact Info@udutu.com for more information.  Additional costs may apply).

How will you organize your learners?  Should you set up Roles and/or Groups?

• Setting up roles and groups and assigning these to each of your learners may seem like a lot of work, but the benefit of doing this is that you can then assign training and generate reports by groupings– and that’s one of the key benefits of using an LMS!
  • If you have a course that is intended for only the managers, in one step you could assign everyone with the role of “Manager” to the same course. If you have a course that is intended for an entire district, in one step you could assign everyone linked to the group “District #1” to the same course.
• Think about your reporting requirements.  If you set up roles and/or groups, it would allow you to generate results for all learners associated with the same role, or group.
  • If you want to know if all of your managers have completed their training, you could generate a report that includes the completion status for all “Managers” (by role). If you want to know if everyone in a district has successfully completed their training, you could generate a report that includes the completion status for everyone in “District #1” (by group).

Would you like your learners to have to ask for permission to access course(s) or Learning Path(s)?

• Using the Classroom feature allows the administrator to select whether a course or Learning Path can be accessed freely, or if permission must be granted by an administrator before access is allowed. This can be used to make courses visible to your Learners, but control who has access to complete them.

What types of learning content will you need in your LMS?

• Determine what content will need to be uploaded (online courses) and what content will need to be created directly within the system (additional activities such as Tasks, F2F sessions and GoToMeeting sessions)
• Establish which learner groups need what content
• Define learning activity options (prerequisites, expiration settings, passing grades)
• Define what activities could be packaged together into Learning Paths (or curriculums)

How will learners access content?

• If you want to assign content to your learners so it’s visible when they log in, you must set learner permissions for each course/learning path.
• If you want learners to be able to self-enroll into courses or learning paths, you’ll need to set up classrooms.