User Manual - Learnerships

What is a Learnership?
Working with the Learnership Module
How to Create a Learnership using Master Data
What are the Steps in the Learnership Process
Working with a Learner Group
Working with a Learnership Pipeline
Learnership Reports

What is a Learnership?

A learnership is a structured learning process for gaining theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the workplace leading to a qualification registered on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). Learners participating in a learnership have to attend classes at a college or training centre to complete classroom-based learning, and they also have to complete on-the-job training in a workplace under the guidance of a mentor. The workplace experience must be relevant to the qualification.

Learnerships are directly related to an occupation or field of work, for example, electrical engineering, hairdressing or project management.

During the learnership, learners will be required to complete assignments, tasks and practical tests and projects. They will be formally assessed in the classroom and a Portfolio of Evidence will be mentored in the workplace. A learner's progress will also be moderated internally and/or externally by a moderator.

If all these assignments are completed successfully, they will be awarded an NQF-registered qualification, that is recognised nationally. They will receive a certificate stating the qualification and the area of skill development.

Learnerships are managed by Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs). They were introduced by government to help skill learners and to prepare them for the workplace.

A learnership requires that a learner enter into a fixed term employment contract with the company whilst studying towards a qualification registered on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), which is in line with the learnership (the cost of the qualification falls to the Company). Once the qualification is completed, the learnership will also end.

How do learnerships work?

A Learnership consists of Unit Standards, Training Interventions, Programmes and a Qualification.

Unit Standards: A collection of knowledge, skills and attributes in which a candidate must prove competence (in a structured assessment) to acquire credits on the NQF.
Training Interventions: Specific goals or activities to be performed by the learner during the training process e.g. Theoretical Classroom Training and provide a Portfolio of Evidence Document.
Programmes: A grouping of unit standards will form a occupationally based learning programme.
Qualification: A group of programmes and unit standards that have been clustered together to make up a registered qualification. There are 3 types of qualifications on the NQF: certificates (120cr), diplomas (240cr) and degree (360cr). The number of credits needed to graduate varies from learnership to learnership.

Working with the Learnership Module

Steps in the Learnership Process

The following detail steps illustrate the typical Learnership process in the Signify System. A Learning Administrator will have access to perform the following actions:

Master data is created for the Learnership linked to a qualification, programmes, interventions and unit standards.
Facilitators, assessors, moderators, mentors and coaches are defined in the master data catalogue.
A learner group is created.
Create a pipeline by linking the learner group to a Learnership.
A planned schedule with training dates for all programmes on the Learnership. (Rollout Plan) is created manually. All the learners registered for the Learnership can now receive a Learnership Rollout Plan.
An automated procedure creates a relationship link between the Line Manager and Employee’s POE training interventions. The Learning Administrator can also manually link mentors/coaches to the employee’s training interventions.
Training events for all the programmes are created for the Learnership using a bulk procedure.
All the learners on the Learnership pipeline are booked on events, by using a bulk procedure.
Learner records for all the employees on the pipeline are created, by using a bulk procedure.
The learner do formal theoretical classroom training on programmes by completing the unit standards defined in the Learnership Programmes.
An attendance register is maintained per day. A paper attendance register has to be sent to the Training Department before 10:00 on the day of the event to allow phoning absent attendees. The facilitator or Learning Administrator can enter progress and comments on the learner’s classroom training progress.
After the learner has completed the formal theoretical training and is find to be competent, the learner will start with the following activities in the listed order: workplace mentoring, POE submission, assessing the POE, internal moderation and external moderation. (Only a sample of learners will be selected for external moderation).
Update the actual progress on the learner records for the above mentioned activities.
- More than one actual can be captured per activity.
- Capturing of workplace mentoring comments can be done by Mentors, Coaches or Learning Administrator.
- Capturing of POE submission, assessing the POE, internal moderation and external moderation information.
The Acadamy do the application for certificate or diploma from SETA. After the learner successfully completed all the programmes/unit standards on the Learnership. The pipeline status can be set to “Pending Certificate” by the Learning Administrator.
After the certificate was received the pipeline status can be set to “Completed”.
Learners receive the qualification.
Close the Learnership group by changing the Active Indicator = “No”.

How to Create a Learnership using Master Data

In this section you will learn how to create a Learnership by using the following steps:

Create Unit standards
Create Training Interventions and link Unit Standards
Create Programmes and link Training Interventions
Create Qualification and link Programmes
Create a Learnership and link Qualification

Learnership Master Data Mind Map

How to Work with Unit Standards

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | System Administration | Database | Standards

Unit Standard List Screen

The Unit Standard List Screen shows a list of Unit Standards.

Add, Edit and Delete functionality exists in order to maintain Unit Standards.
The System Administrator is responsible to maintain the Unit Standards catalogue.

Unit Standard Details Screen

Note on the following when adding or editing the Unit Standards:

The accuracy of the credits field is important, because this field will be used to calculate the total credits (to be earned/completed) for programmes and learnerships.
Training Intervention Sync Mode should be "Do not create/update learner record"

How to Work with Training Interventions

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | System Administration | Database | Training Interventions

Training Intervention List Screen

Training interventions will represent any activities for which events or learner records should be created e.g. formal theoretical training session and POE submission. A descriptive naming convention should be followed for example “WRMO/L2/58206 - LEARNING 1 Theoretical Training” or "WRMO/L2/58206 - LEARNING 1 POE”.

The Training Intervention List Screen shows a list of Training Interventions.

Add and Edit functionality exists in order to maintain the Training Interventions.
The System Administrator is responsible to manage and maintain the Training Intervention catalogue.

Training Intervention Detail Screen

Note on the following when adding or editing the Training Interventions:

All the mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk(*).
It is important to note that the Pathway Step Type field on the intervention have to be defined as “Classroom” for all the Theoretical Training Interventions. The classroom interventions will be used in the "Create Events" procedure, later in the learnership management process.
The intervention credits field will only be used in reporting by the Learnership Module, only the unit standard credits will be used in credits calculations.
Tick the Mentor Manual Update check box for training interventions that should not be included in the automated procedure to assign the Line Manager as a Mentor on the Training Interventions. (A classroom intervention will be marked, because it will not be mentored by the Line Manager)
Check the "Add to Learner Record" check box.

Link Unit Standards to Training Interventions

Link the predefined unit standards to the training interventions using the “Link Unit Standards” tab.

How to Work with Programmes

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | System Administration | Database | Programmes

Programmes List Screen

The Programmes List Screen shows a list of Programmes which consists of a number of Training Interventions.

Add, Edit and Delete functionality exists in order to maintain the Programmes.
The System Administrator is responsible to manage and maintain the Training Programmes catalogue.

Programme Detail Screen

Link Training Interventions to Programmes

Link the predefined Training Interventions to the Programmes using the “Link Training” tab.

How to Work with Qualifications

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | System Administration | Database | Qualifications

Qualifications List Screen

The Qualifications List Screen shows a list of Qualifications.

Add, Edit and Delete functionality exists in order to maintain the Qualifications.
The System Administrator is responsible to manage and maintain the Qualifications catalogue.

Qualifications Detail Screen

The important fields to be entered on the Qualification screen are shown above.

Note: Skills Programme Synchronisation Mode should be set to "Automatically update the status of an existing learner record if all conditions are met".

Link Programmes to Qualifications

Link the predefined Programmes to the Qualification by using the “Link Programmes” tab.

How to Link a Qualification to a Learnership

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | System Administration | Database | Learnerships

Learnerships List Screen

The Learnerships List Screen shows a list of Learnerships.

Add, Edit and Delete functionality exists in order to maintain the Learnerships catalogue.
The System Administrator is responsible to manage and maintain the Learnerships catalogue.

Learnerships Detail Screen

What are the Steps in the Learnership Process

Continue with the following steps after the creation of all the learnership master data and catalogues. The detail description and function of the learnership management steps are as follows:

Create a Learner Group:

A learner group is a group of learners that is going to be trained as a group.

Create a Learnership Pipeline:

A learnership pipeline is defined by a learner group linked to a learnership for a specific time period.

STEP 1 (Planned Values):

The manual capturing of planned values (rollout plan detail) for all the programmes on the learnership pipeline.This action can be done as soon as the planning information for the learnership and programmes are available.

STEP 2 (Create Events):

The bulk creation and scheduling of all the "Theoretical Training" events for all the Programmes on the learnership pipeline. Events will be created for classroom type interventions only. It is important that the planned values (STEP 1) are entered first before events can be created because the planned start dates and planned end dates will be used to schedule the events.

This action can ideally be done a month before the course start date.

STEP 3 (Book learner group on events):

After events have been created in Step 2, a group of learners can now be booked on the events. It is important that the events were created correctly before the bulk procedure is used to book all the learners on the learnership on events. An email can be send out to the learners reminding them that they have been booked on a course.

This action can ideally be done a week before the course start date.

Enter Mentor/Coach Relationships:

This action involves the creation of a list of employee’s interventions that have to be mentored or coached by a specific mentor or coach. A pre-defined mentor will be linked to a learners’ interventions. This action can be done any time after STEP 3.

STEP 4 (Create Learner Records):

After learners have been booked on the events, learner records will be created by means of a bulk procedure. Examples of learner records that will be created are:

A qualification learner record.
The learner’s training interventions linked to the programmes for the learnership e.g. Theoretical Training, POE Submission.

The creation of learner records can be done directly after STEP 3.

STEP 5 (Event Attendance Register):

Update learner’s attendance records on the day of the theoretical training session or soon thereafter. Attendance information that can be captured for the training intervention learner record are: competency and completion statuses, facilitator comments as well as attendance per day.

Enter Mentor and Coach Comments:

After the theoretical training session has been completed successfully by the learner, the mentor or coach can make multiple comments on a learner’s progress during the workplace mentoring phase. Comments by mentors and coaches can be captured on a learner’s training interventions.

This action can be done after the theoretical training activity has been completed successfully and the mentor and coach relationships have been created.

STEP 6 (Update Employee learner records):

In addition to the updating of attendance on learner records, additional comments can also be captured by assessors and moderators per learner record. Documents can also be uploaded on the learner records.

STEP 7 (Programmes Actuals):

The detail information on the actual progress for the Programmes per learner can be viewed at any time during the learner’s training process.

Working with a Learner Group

A Learner Group is a predefined group of learners to be scheduled and trained as a group on a Learnership. The criteria for grouping learners is the Learnership as well as the location where training will take place.

Learner Group Mind Map

How to Work with a Learner Group

HOW DID I GET HERE?

Learner Group List Screen

A learner group is defined by a descriptive name to be used when managing a group of learners that is going to be trained as a group.
A list of existing learner groups will be displayed.
Functionality to add a new group, edit an existing group and delete a group is available to maintain the Learner Groups.
A group cannot be deleted when employees have been linked to the group. The linked employees should be deleted first, before a group can be deleted.
Change the active indicator field = “No” to indicate that a learner group is no longer in use.
The Link Employees functionality is used to add new employees to the group.
The Learning Administrator is responsible for creating and maintaining the learner group catalogue.

How to Link Learners to a Learner Group

A list of learners is displayed when you click on the "Link Employees" link on the Action button on the Group List Screen.

These learners will typically be from the same region and will do the same Learnership and will therefore be booked on events as a group.
Add a new learner to the learner group: A selection screen will be displayed to filter and select employees to add to the group. Only employees linked to an organization structure can be added to the group. An employee can be linked to more than one group at a time.
A learner can be removed from a group: All history data (event bookings, learner records etc.) will not be deleted. A manual action is necessary to delete the history where necessary.
Move a learner to another group: New events, bookings and learner records will be created in the new group. Manually remove events, bookings and learner records from the old learner group if necessary. History of completed/attended events will not be deleted.
A learner can be scheduled in more than one pipeline at the same time. There can be a potential double booking of learners on events that should be manually managed by the Learning Administrator.
The Learning Administrator is responsible for creating and maintaining the learner group employee list.

Working with a Learnership Pipeline

A Learnership Pipeline is a predefined group of learners to be scheduled and trained as a group on a Learnership for a specific pipeline period.

Learnership Pipeline Mind Map

How to Work with a Learnership Pipeline

HOW DID I GET HERE?

Learnership Pipeline List Screen

The “Learnership Pipeline Screen” is the starting point for the whole learnership management process.
A list of all the learner groups linked to learnerships will be display on the Learnership Pipeline List Screen.
The list can be filtered by: Group, Learnership, Qualification, Begin date, End Date, Status and Region.
Functionality to Add and Edit of a Pipeline is available.
Note that a pipeline cannot be deleted once it has been created. It can only be edited and the learners within the learner group, can still be changed. In the case of pipeline wrongfully created, change the status to ‘Cancelled’
The System/Learnership Administrator is responsible for creating and maintaining the pipeline list.

How to Add a Learnership Pipeline

To add a new learnership pipeline, click on the Add Learnership Pipeline button on the Pipeline List screen.

The following information is available to be entered on the Add a Pipeline screen:

Learner group drop down: list of all the active learner groups.
Learnership drop down: list of all the registered learnerships.
Status dropdown: list with hardcoded values: Not Started, In Progress, Pending External Verification, Pending Certificate, Completed and Cancelled.
Learnership Region: Populate drop down list from Event Management Region.

Note: On adding of a pipeline a warning message should be displayed: “Are you sure you want to create this pipeline, because once created, the pipeline cannot be changed.”

How to Manage the Learnership Pipeline

The steps in managing a learnership are dependent on each other. It is therefore important to complete the steps in a certain order as shown in the mind map above:

STEP 1: Enter planned values

STEP 2: Create Events

STEP 3: Book Learner Group on Events

STEP 4: Create Learner Records

STEP 5: Attendance Register

STEP 6: Update Learner Records

STEP 7: View and Update Actuals

How to work with Learnership Pipeline Programmes

HOW DID I GET HERE?

The first step in the learnership process is to create the Rollout plan with planned values. To enter planned values click on Programmes in the Actions drop down list on the Learnership Pipeline List screen.

Learnership Pipeline Programmes List Screen

A list of all the programmes linked to the selected learnership will be displayed.
The following functionalities are available per programme:
- Enter planned values that will be used for generating the rollout plan and events.
- Display learner records with the opportunity to enter assessment and moderation detail as well as upload documents.
It is important that the planned values be entered first, before you can continue with Step 2, i.e. “Create Events”.
Only the System/Learnership Administrator can execute the actions on this screen.

STEP 1 (Planned Values):

The first step in the learnership process is to capture planned values (rollout plan detail) for all the programmes in the list by selecting Planned Values in the Actions dropdown.

STEP 1: How to Work with Planned Values (Rollout Plan)

The System/Learnership Administrator is responsible for maintaining the Rollout Plan detail. There are mainly two types of interventions i.e. Classroom and POE Submission used when entering planned values.

The Classroom Intervention:

On the Rollout Plan Detail screen, select the Theoretical Training Classroom intervention from the dropdown list on top of the screen.
Only the Training Start Date and Training End Date are mandatory fields and will be used when events are created in Step 2. However all the values should be filled in for the Classroom intervention because these values will be printed on the Rollout Plan report.

The POE Submission Intervention:

On the Rollout Plan Detail screen, select the POE Submission intervention from the dropdown list on top of the screen.
Only the Training Start Date and Training End Date are mandatory fields and will represent the planned POE Submission date.
The Training Start Date and Training End Date will be used to create the POE Submission learner records later in the Learnership process.
For reporting purposes the POE submission date should also be entered for the POE Intervention.

After the values have been entered and saved you can use the Rollout Plan report to validate the inputs. This is an important step to ensure the Start and End Dates have been entered correctly because the dates will be used to create bulk events in the next step of the Learnership process.

How to Print the Rollout Plan Report

Click on the Print Rollout Plan button on the Learnership Pipeline Programmes screen to view the Rollout Plan Report.

Example of the Rollout Plan Report

STEP 2: How to Create Events

STEP 2 (Create Events):

This functionality will automatically create and schedule the "Theoretical Training" events for all the Classroom type interventions linked to the programmes in the list.

All the training start dates and training end dates for all the theoretical training interventions per programme should be entered, before events can be created.

To create events click on the “Create Events” button.

Before the actual events are created, a validation screen will be displayed, showing the outcome of the bulk event creation procedure. You can choose to continue or cancel the process.

Events will be created automatically using the following values:
- Create an event only if the intervention pathway type = Classroom
- Ref no = The next available number
- Created Date = Today
- Created User = System/Signify
- Event Status = Planned
- Status = Not Yet Published
- Training Intervention = Intervention Name
- Start Date = Planned training start date Start Time = 09:00
- End Date = Planned training end date End Time = 16:00
- Include non-working days = Yes
- Provider = Smollan L&D (This value should be pre-defined in the “Event Management | Master Data | Training Providers” master table, otherwise the event will not be created.
- Venue = blank
- Coordinator = blank
- Send event notifications from coordinator address = No
- Facilitator = Rollout plan facilitator name or blank
- Attendees allowed: Min=0 Max=100
- Attendee bookings will be accepted up to 1 days before...
- Attendee cancellations will be accepted up to 1 days before...
- Classification = Smollan - Local
- Category = Foundational (This value should be pre-defined in the “Event Management | Master data| Training | Category” master table otherwise the event will not be created)
- Region = Learnership Pipeline | Region
- Course Type = Internal
- Intended Target Market = blank
- Terms and Conditions = blank

How to work with Learnership Pipeline Employees

HOW DID I GET HERE?

The next step in the learnership process is to book learners on events. Click on Employees in the Actions drop down list on the Learnership Pipeline List screen.

STEP 3: How to Book Employees on Events

STEP 3 (Book learner group on event):

After events have been created in STEP 2, the group of learners can now be booked on the events. Click on Book Learner Group on Events button.

Before the learners are booked on the events, a validation screen will be displayed, showing the outcome of the bulk event booking procedure.

STEP 4: How to Create Learner Record

STEP 4 (Create Learner Records):

After learners have been booked on the events, learner records for all the learners can now be created.

The following learner records are automatically created for all the learners in the Learnership Pipeline when clicking on the Create Learner Record button:

A Qualification learner record that will show total progress of the learner on the Learnership Qualification.
A Programme learner record will indicate the progress on the Programme.
Training learner records for all the interventions (Theoretical Training and POE submission).

How to View Learner Records

Using the Learnership Pipeline Screen:
- System Administration | Modules | eLearning | Learning Management | Learnership | Pipelines | Programmes | Select a Programme | Employee Learner Records
Using the Manage Employees Screen:
- Manage Employees | Select an Employee | Employee Development | Learner Records

How to Update Employee Attendance

HOW DID I GET HERE?

System Administration | Modules | Event Management | Training Scheduling | Manage Training Attendance Register

After the learners have been booked and scheduled on an event and training has started. The attendance should be captured for the learners.

Attendance is captured by a System/Learnership Administrator.

STEP 5: Update the Attendance Register per Event

STEP 5: (Attendance Register):

After learner records have been created in STEP 4 the attendance on training events can be captured.

Note: Classroom Training Intervention's Attendance Type and Competent fields can only be updated in the attendance register and NOT from the Learnership Pipeline Module.

Update the following fields in the attendance register for the whole event (that can stretch over more than one day):

Attendance Type:Attended, No Show, Cancelled and Not Selected
Competent: Competent, Not yet Competent,
Facilitator Comment.

Update the Attendance Register per Event per Day

The Monitor Attendance functionality gives the user the opportunity to enter employee attendance per day. This screen will only be populated when the Attendance Type on the Attendance Register is "Attended". The attendance per day will enable capturing data for reporting purposes only.

How to Update Learner Records

HOW DID I GET HERE?

After the attendance for Classroom Interventions have been entered, the POE Submission training intervention's status can now be updated.

STEP 6: How to the Update Learner Record Status

STEP 6: (Update Status for Learner Records):

The following information can be captured per learner record:
- Assessment: Assessor Name, Assessment Date and Assessor Comment.
- Internal Moderations: Internal moderator Name, Internal moderator Date and Internal moderator Comment.
- External Moderations: External moderator Name, External moderator Date and External moderator Comment.
- Comments: Additional comments.
- Documents: Upload of documents.
- Classroom Training Intervention status Update:
  - The user cannot update the status to "Competent" for classroom training interventions from this screen. The status will automatically be set to "Competent" when the complete and competence status for classroom interventions is updated from the Events | Attendance Register or Manage Employee | Learner Records or Attendance Register.
  - The user can however update the status to ‘No Book, Absent or TBA’.
  - The user cannot update the Status from Competent back to any other status on this screen. In the event that this is needed, the values should be updated from Manage Employee | Learner Records.
- POE Training Intervention status update:
  - The user has the opportunity to update the status of the POE submission training intervention learner record to ‘Competent, No Book, Absent or TBA’ on this screen.
  - When the Competent option is selected and saved, the Manage Employee learner record will be updated with values: Completed = ‘Y’ and Competent = ‘Y’ and Complete date = Today’s date.
  - The user cannot update the Status from Competent back to any other status on this screen. In the event that this is needed, the values should be updated from Manage Employee | Learner Records.
  - When a learner record’s status is updated to ‘Completed’ and ‘Competent’ from the learner record or attendance screen, the learnership status will automatically be set to ‘Competent’.

STEP 7: View and Update Employee's Programme Actuals

HOW DID I GET HERE?

STEP 7 (View and Update Programme Actuals):

View actual progress on the Programme by clicking on the “Actuals” link in the Actions drop down list.
The learner’s programme status update on this screen will work in the same way as updating the status on the learner record discussed in STEP 6.
A detail progress screen is displayed on screen “Employee Programme Actuals Detail”.

Employee Programme Actuals Detail Screen

Learnership Reports

Attendance Report

A report showing employee event attendance per day for the selected Learnership.

Learner Profile Report

A report showing the detail progress of a learner on a Learnership.

Full Learnership Report

A report showing detail of all the learners on the selected Learnership.

Learner book Control and Achievements Report

A report showing the number of credits obtained and percentage complete for all learners on the selected Learnership.

Rollout Plan Report

A report showing a schedule of all the training programmes on a Learnership with planned dates.