Summary
End-to-end example showing:
- An applicant register and submit an application
- An administrator assign a reviewer
- A reviewer approves the application
This does not dive deeply into any of those areas, it just provides an all-in-one sample of the overall flow through the system to provide context for later training modules.
Sample Scenario
The TRAINING system features the American Society of Office Dogs, a credentialing program that awards specialty credentials to canines with a demonstrated ability to behave in an office environment.
In this module, we will register as a new applicant (a dog wishing to earn this credential) and will go through the entire process of submitting an application, having that application reviewed by the credentialing program, and then ultimately awarded the credential.
http://training.learningbuilder.com
Getting Started
You begin this journey as "Fido", a lovable mutt who hates being left at home all day.
You want nothing more than to earn your Certified Office Dog (COD) credential so that you can accompany Amy, your owner, to her day job where she goes to an office and spends 8 boring hours staring at a computer screen. You've decided that today is the day that you make your dreams a reality! (If you can't suspend disbelief this far, then just pretend that you're Amy doing all this work on behalf of Fido.)
As you continue down this page, the steps that you should take are displayed on the left. A description of what's going on is included in the right-hand pane inside a box like this one.
Step 1: Register as an Applicant
Steps
- If you are logged in, log out.
- Navigate to the login page and click the "Get Started" button in the sidebar. This begins the registration process.
- Enter your (Fido's) account information. (All of the pre-existing accounts in the demo database use "Passw0rd" as their password. Never do that on a real system; it's a terrible password!) Click the orange Submit button when finished.
- Once you click Submit, you will see a screen asking for a confirmation code. This will have been emailed to the email address you entered during registration. You can either copy/paste the code from that email, or just click the link within the email.
- After finishing the registration process you will land on your "My Account" page. Continue to the next section.
Registration
In order for someone to use LearningBuilder, two things must happen:
- They need to have an account, which tracks details about them as a person (name, email address, etc)
- That account needs to be assigned one or more Roles. Roles are things like "Administrator", "Licensed Practitioner", etc.
People can register by going to the login page and clicking one of the registration buttons.
Typically, the licensing board will have their own public-facing website that contains a link to LearningBuilder, which is how aspiring practitioners find the system in the first place.
Step 2: Tell the system you're a "Doggo"
Steps
- The popup may have opened automatically once you landed on the "My Account" page. If it did not, click the orange Become an Office Dog button.
- Select Yes, that cats are stupid, to bypass the validation rule. (This may not seem very secure, but as you know cats aren't very smart, and we think it will suffice)
- Click the "Continue" button to finish the process and grant the "Doggo" Role to your (Fido's) account.
- Upon successful granting of the Role, you will be taken to the list of applications that you're able to start.
- Click the "Begin" button to begin the Certified Office Dog application.
Roles in LearningBuilder
Now that Fido has registered, the system needs to associate him with a Role in the system.
Roles determine lots of things, including:
- Which Applications a user is allowed to start
- What parts of the system a user can access
Before Fido can start the "Certified Office Dog" application, he must be assigned the "Doggo" role. (After all, we don't want to allow cats to apply for the Certified Office Dog credential!)
Roles can be started using the orange buttons on the My Account page. They can also be launched automatically following registration, which is what should happen during this training.
Step 3: Begin the application & review the requirements
Once you've been granted the Doggo role, you should see a list of applications that you're able to start. Click the "Begin" button to start the Certified Office Dog application.
The American Society of Office Dogs wants the "Certified Office Dog" credential to mean something, so they've established a couple of hoops you need to jump through before you can officially submit your application. These requirements are displayed visually on the application itself.
The Application Process
A simple application process typically involves these steps:
- Applicant fills out the application by providing some required data. This is analogous to filling out a paper application form.
- Applicant submits the application by paying a fee and indicating that they are finished. This is analogous to mailing the paper form along with a check to cover the fee.
- Credentialing organization reviews the application and determines if the applicant meets the criteria to earn the credential.
- Credentialing organization approves the application which results in the credential being "granted" to the applicant (who is now referred to as a "Practitioner").
What about the exam?
In licensing systems, the applicant will typically need to pass a proctored exam as part of the application process.
Exams are not included in this initial training exercise but are covered in later modules.
Step 4: Upload your vet records
You can fill out the application in any sequence that you'd like. For simplicity, we'll work through it top-down, starting with Vet Records.
Steps
- Click the "Upload Records" button in the "Vaccination Records" Task Group and then fill in the form that appears. You can upload any sort of file for the purposes of the training exercise.
- After submitting the record, the Task Group title will turn green, indicating that you've fulfilled the requirements for that section. Nice job! You can also see that the current status of your upload is that it's being reviewed by someone, but that you yourself don't have anything else that you need to do.
"Activities" are how data is entered
LearningBuilder collects data on an application using Activities. Activities are like "sub-forms" that break the overall application form down into smaller, bite-size chunks.
In this example, every time you add a new Vet Record, the data that you enter is assigned to a "Vet Record" Activity, and then that Activity is added to your application.
Activities are often used to capture data such as:
- Jobs that someone has held
- College degrees that someone has earned
- Training someone has taken
- Notable achievements someone wants to document
"Applicant-defined Activities"
The "Vet Records" Activity is an example of an "Applicant-defined Activity", because all of the relevant information is coming directly from the Applicant.
Since there's no approved 3rd party that can provide this information, the information must be manually verified. You'll see a different model in the next step...
Step 5: Document the training you've completed
In order to submit the application, you must have completed a certain amount of approved obedience training. Let's enter that now.
Steps
- Click the "Add Training" button, which will display a list of approved training courses.
- Click the "Select" button next to "Sit And Stay Basics", which is worth 4 hours of training. This will add the course to your application and then open a screen for you to provide more information about the course.
- Fill out the form. You'll need to enter a "Completion Date" that's in the past. For "Confirmation Code", enter any junk data that you want. (In a real implementation, the user would upload some sort of completion certificate that could be validated)
- Upon submit, you'll see that the Requirements section has updated and shows that you've completed 4 hours of basic training. You still need to complete 1 more hour of basic training and 5 hours of advanced.
- Repeat these steps and add the following training courses: "A to Z Basic Training" and "Advanced Walking". This should satisfy all of the application requirements. And, since all of the requirements are met, the submit button turns orange. Exciting times!
Training Providers
The Certified Office Dog application requires that doggos have completed at least 10 hours of obedience training, with at least 5 hours each in "basic" and "advanced" training levels.
Who decides how many hours a training class is "worth", and at what skill level?
Licensing programs often include the concept of an Educational Provider, which works like this:
- The Provider submits their course information to the licensing board.
- The licensing board reviews the course and assigns it a specific number of "units" or "hours".
- Applicants add these pre-approved Activities to their application, guaranteed to receive the specified number of units or hours.
"Provider-defined Activities"
The "Obedience Training" Activity is an example of a "Provider-defined Activity", because most of the relevant information (hours and training level) has already been assigned by the Provider that owns each course.
In this case, the applicant is choosing from a finite list of training courses, rather than filling out an empty form like with Vet Records.
In this case there may still be a review step to validate that the applicant actually took the courses they are claiming, but it still reduces the data entry burden on everyone involved.
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