Oracle ERP Professionals: Oracle Learning Management (OLM)

Oracle Learning Management (OLM)

1:46 AM | Posted by Muhammad Faizan Karim | Edit Page

What is Oracle Learning Management ?

Unlike other applications Oracle Learning Management(OLM) is an application bundled with Oracle e-Business Suite.

OLM is designed to support all educational trainings provided by an enterprise to their employee, applicants, customers and business partners. Training can be anything like a company training new employees on ‘HR Policies’, a construction company offering a training on ‘Strength of Materials’ or an enterprise training their employees on ‘Marketing Skills’.

OLM system automates the process of training and lets organizations manage, deliver, and track training participation in online or classroom-based environments. Learners can find the learning they need, and take the learning in the most appropriate delivery mode (in a classroom, in a virtual classroom, or elearning). Managers can automate key business flows right from order processing to training delivery and from performance appraisals to training assessments.

OLM is integrated with other applications like Talent Management, Oracle Financials and Oracle Order Management to administer the financial and commercial aspects of learning business.

Benefits of OLM

To Develop the workforce by training them on the organizational needs.
Tie Training to Organizational Goals
Reduce Costs through Online Learning Delivery
Simplify Administration of Training process/flow through a Unified Catalog
Increase Efficiency by Managing Learning Content
Extend Solution Value by Providing Learning to Customers and Partners
Simplify Administration by Efficiently Scheduling and Managing internal/external Training Resources

Basics of OLM

As you got to know about the purpose of OLM, lets now get into the basic functional concepts of OLM.

Catalog Objects

The above screenshot is the Catalog page of ‘learning Administrator’ responsibility. Catalog is a user interface for an administrator to setup, manage and execute the process of learning/training. A catalog consists of several learning objects like

Categories
Sub-Categories
Courses
Offerings
Classes
Sessions
Sub-sessions

Category: A category is a first level hierarchy which classifies a catalog and differentiates different courses and helps to find all related information of a learning in one single area. A category is nothing but a folder as shown in the above screenshot. A category can also consist of sub-categories. Eg:- ‘New Hires Induction Program’

Course: A course is a second level of hierarchy which discusses a brief information of subject matter which is to be taught to a trainee, courses are grouped into a category. Eg:- ‘HR Policies’, ‘Leave Policies’, etc.

Offering: An offering is a third level of hierarchy which determines the mode of learning, i.e the way how a training is delivered and in which language the training will be delivered. Additionally Offering consists of Pricing, Costing information and number of people who can attend the learning program. Here is some information on delivery modes:

Delivery Mode	Online	Synchronous	Description
Instructor Led Training (Classroom)	No	Yes	Its similar to class room training where trainer and trainees come together to a specified location for training.
Self Paced Online	Yes	No	Where a Trainee himself reads and learns online. Eg:- learning from a recorded webinar, reading online documents
Self Study Offline	No	No	Where a trainee learns by himself. Eg:- learning by book reading
Web Conference Training	Yes	Yes	Trainer and Trainees meet online through a conferencing tool. Eg:- Webex

Key Notations of Delivery Modes

Class: Class is fourth level of hierarchy which defines where and when a class happens. A class is a learning object to which a learner(Trainee) enrolls and attends to take learning. This is the only activity in the hierarchy which happens physically.

Session: A session is a lowest level object of catalog hierarchy which is sub division of a class. Session is a discrete topic or time slot within a class. A class may last from couple of hours to days in which the discrete topics are divided into different time slots. Eg:- A class is for one hour a day for one week where each day’s class is called a session.

Key Notations of Catalog Objects

Learning Paths:

A learning path is a catalog object that is used to group sequence of courses together and tracked as a whole. Learning path shows the way to achieve goals of a learner. Eg:- A new employee on board learning where the learner needs to complete a set of courses, by a relative targeted date (for example, 3 months from the date they are subscribed to the path).

Learning Certifications:

Learning certifications are very similar to learning paths, with the added ability to allow renewals and enforcing due dates. An administrator can make a certification as one-time or a renewable certification and he can also add a validity period for the certification.

Subscriptions and Enrollments:

As discussed in this post, a Certification comprises of one or more sequenced learning components (referred as courses) and each course can have one or more classes and each class can have one more sessions.

A person to take a certification should subscribe to the certification. A subscription can be uniquely identified by a subscription number. A subscription enforces the start date, target completion date for the certification and also a provides the duration until which the certification is valid.

Subscribing to the certification alone will not give access to attend the classes of a course. An individual should again enroll to the courses to attend its related classes. The process of enrolling to a class is called Enrollment, it can be uniquely identified by a enrollment number.

In short Subscription is for Certification and Enrollment is for Course.

Learner Access:

A learner access determines who can view and take a learning object. A learner access can make restriction at Organization level, Job level, Position level and at Learner Group level or at individual learner level.

Note: To restrict the access of a certification through Learner Access the certification should be marked as ‘Restricted’ while creating the certification.

Resources:

A Resource is an individual or an object which facilitates the process of teaching on some subject.

Eg:-

A trainer who trains people on some subject
A venue for taking training
A Projector to show some presentation (Both the projector and Presentation files are resources)

A resource can be utilized by booking the resources against the learning objects.

Content:

Content in OLM is e-learning material associated with different catalog objects. Content can be in different web-playable format such as slides, text documents, html pages, video clips, or other multimedia format.