Using eLearning for your students -

Do you know how to get your students into an eLearning course?

Article by Wes Kilgore

How well do you know all of the ins and outs of the SDI eLearning system? Are you a facility administrator who needs to purchase and assign eLearning to your customers or are you an independent instructor who wants to make sure that their students use eLearning and need to coordinate with the student to get them enrolled? In either case, this article will cover the ins and outs of how to make sure that your students are being taken care of and that you have all of the information that you need in order to make that happen.

First let’s start off with the different categories you might be in. This is important because each scenario has a different way of dealing with acquiring the codes and assigning them out. It may also have different methods to monitor student progress as well. The two categories that we will primarily focus on will be Facility Administrated eLearning and Independent Instructor based eLearning. There is a third category that we will discuss as well. That is student direct purchase from the website, but it will affect each of the first two categories differently.

We will discuss the facility administered eLearning category first. By far this is the most resource abundant eLearning category since eLearning has to be affiliated with a facility. We will discuss how eLearning facility affiliation works with independent instructors later. If you are a facility contact or a facility administrator, you will have access to several resources through your facility administrator login level. One of the coolest features is the ability to instantly purchase eLearning codes through the website which will go directly into the facility’s available codes. This is a great feature because it allows you to purchase the codes without having to wait for the headquarters or regional office to generate the codes for you on the weekends, holidays or in the evenings when they are closed. In order to purchase the codes, go to the “manage eLearning codes” section of your facility administrator dashboard. Then click on the “purchase eLearning” button in the upper right corner. On this screen, you will have the ability to add the codes that you wish to purchase to a “shopping cart”. You will also have the ability to purchase registration credits at the same time for a discounted bundle. Once you have all of the codes that you need selected, you will be able to go to the next page where you can then check out using a saved payment method or enter your preferred payment method.

Once the codes have been purchased, you will be able to manage the available codes by using the manage eLearning codes tool in your facility administrator login. You can select any of the codes that are listed on the table under the “Available” tab and then click on the blue assign button under the table. The system will then ask for you to search for a user. This feature is present to keep you from creating duplicate accounts for the same user, so you will need to search for them even if you are pretty certain that the student does not already have an account. You will have several options available for the search. If the student cannot be located, you will be able to create an account for the student with just three pieces of information. You will need to enter the students’ name, date of birth, and email address. Once you click the create user button at the bottom of the screen, the student will receive an automated email from the system which will give them directions on how to finish setting up their account and how to enter their eLearning that you just assigned to them.

Once a student is assigned an eLearning code and they have logged in to their account and initiated their eLearning, you will be able to monitor their progress through the facility. You have a couple of options to monitor their progress. You can use the reports tool or the user manager. If you use the user manager, you will need to pull up the student in the user manager and then select the reports tab under the individual student. You will then see a dropdown menu for the eLearning reports. Select the course that you want to check for the student and then you can click on the get course certificate button or the get course report button depending on which option you want. If you choose to use the reports tool instead on the facility administrator dashboard, you will need to select the facility, then you can select the student from the “Student eLearning Report” drop down box, once the “User” is selected, it will show you the available courses that the student has. Keep in mind that it will only show you eLearning that is affiliated with the facility selected. So, even if you know the student has other eLearning in their profile, if that eLearning was generated through a different facility, you will not be able to see it. Therefore, you will need to work with the student to get them to send you the eLearning report if you need it.

Facilities will also have liability waivers that will be part of the course completion for eLearning courses that the student takes through the facility. The liability waiver will be downloaded as part of the course report as long as the student has completed the waiver and has finalized the course.

We have discussed how to purchase, assign, and monitor student progress as a facility administrator, but what happens if you have a student that has to withdraw from a course due to some unforeseen circumstance such as a medical issue? Is that eLearning code just wasted? Not necessarily. We normally do not want to remove eLearning from an account. However, we do recognize that sometimes the student has an unforeseen issue that may warrant this. If that is the case, you can send an email to our customer service or training at cs@tdisdi.com or training@tdisdi.com explaining the situation and we can determine if we are able to place the code back into the facilities available codes.

Some other available resources for facilities are also the ability to have facility eLearning referral links directly on your website. These links allow your students to buy eLearning codes that are specifically tied to your facility. Facilities also have the ability to use specific point of sales software that integrates with our website now and allows students to purchase eLearning from your website that ties directly back to our website.

Now that we have discussed eLearning for facilities, how do independent instructors use eLearning with their students. We already stated that eLearning has to be generated under a facility, so how does this work as an independent instructor. Well, the easy answer is that we generate the eLearning under the headquarters facility or one of the regional office facilities. As you can imagine, we cannot give independent instructor administrative privileges for headquarters or the regional offices. So, how do independent instructors purchase the eLearning codes then? There are a few options. If you are an independent instructor who is assigned to a region that headquarters services, you can call into headquarters during business hours or use the chat feature when it is available during business hours to order eLearning codes. The third option is that you can email us at cs@tdisdi.com to place an order for the eLearning codes as well. We will then generate the codes under the headquarters facility for you and send them to you via email. This is the same procedure for independent instructors outside of the headquarters region as well, but you will need to call or email your regional office for right now since the chat feature does not currently incorporate the regional offices for right now.

Once you, as an independent instructor, have been sent the eLearning codes that you ordered, find a way to organize them, either on a spreadsheet or in a separate folder in your email so that you can locate the codes again later. The codes are not able to be stored in your instructor profile online. You will then coordinate getting the codes to your students. You will need to instruct them to log into their Tdisdi.com account or their Firstresponse-ed.com account if they are taking one of our first aid courses. If they do not have an account yet, you will need to walk them through creating an account on the website and adding their eLearning code. If you ever have any questions on this, you can contact the training and membership service department or your regional office on more in-depth directions on creating accounts or adding eLearning to an account. We also have a video tutorial available on our YouTube channel by clicking on this GUIDE.

Once a student has enrolled in eLearning, you will need to work with that student to get them to email you a copy of their course progress report. This can be obtained in the student’s account by the student navigating to their “My eLearning” section by clicking on the “My eLearning” tab under the SDI logo near the top of their user dashboard. Once in that area, the student will be able to locate their course in the courses in the completed courses section. The students cannot retrieve their course report until they have completed the course. They will need to click on the course name for the course they want to get the report for. The student needs to click on the course name even if it is the only course in the table. Once the course has been selected, they will see the ability to click on the course report button or the course completion certificate button. The students will also be able to review the course. You will need to collect a copy of the eLearning report from any student who uses eLearning in one of your classes. This report must be maintained by you for 7 years per standards.

Now that we have discussed how to purchase, assign, and monitor a students’ eLearning both as a facility administrator and an independent instructor, there is one more way that a student may obtain eLearning independent of both methods previously discussed. That method is for a student to directly purchase eLearning from the TDISDI.com website or the Firstresponse-ed.com website. When a student does this, they will be directed to select a facility that they would like to use to complete the course. The student does not necessarily have to select a facility if they have an independent instructor that they would like to work with. If a facility is selected, the facility will get a portion of the total cost of the eLearning applied to the facility as a credit which can be used by the facility on a future order. Unfortunately, the student does not have a way to select an independent instructor to assign the eLearning to, so there is no way for an independent instructor to receive the credit.

At this point, you may be asking yourself whether it would be beneficial for you as an independent instructor to have your own facility based on all of the additional benefits that facilities have over independent instructors. Remember that there is an additional fee to have your own facility that must be renewed annually but there are also cost savings when purchasing eLearning codes through a facility as well. So, the rule of thumb is that if you are going to certify at least 10* students per year who will use eLearning for their course, then you may want to look into having your own training facility. You can find more information on starting a training facility through SDI as well as an online application here, Become an SDI TDI ERDI PFI Facility.

As always, we are an available resource for any questions you may have and please feel free to contact us in the training and membership services department or at your regional office with any assistance you may need.

*This number is based off of early renewal pricing.

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