Welcome to the LSO Overview for Commonwealth Learners. As a commonwealth employee, you are required to enroll in and participate in various training activities. Currently, you do this through our enterprise e-LMS. In January 2013, the commonwealth will be implementing a new learning management system that is part of Employee Self-Service (ESS). The new learning management system is called LSO, which is short for Learning Solution. In other words, LSO will be the new e-LMS. You will use LSO for the following training-related tasks:
· Enroll in (Book) training courses
· Launch web-based training courses
· Un-enroll from (Cancel) training courses
· Express interest in attending (Prebook)courses that are not currently scheduled
· Cancel prebookings
· Access qualifications-We’ll talk about qualifications later in the training-what they are, and how you can acquire and view them
· Access personal training history
Let’s get started!
First, let’s talk about how you access LSO. It’s really simple. Just go to www.myworkplace.state.pa.us the same way you would for any Employee Self-Service Transaction, such as submitting leave or updating your personal information. You don’t need to log-in again or enter another password.
On the left hand menu, you’ll see the My Training link. Just click on that and you’re in LSO…it’s that simple!
Here’s a brief overview of the different sections on the My Training home page. We’ll cover how to use these in more detail throughout the training.
The Navigation sidebar on the left side of the screen contains the following:
Training Home
You can use these links to get additional information about LSO and view/print your training history.
Find
Use the search tool to quickly find available training offerings in the course catalog. This dynamic search engine will bring up all offerings containing, either in the course title or description, the term you type in the field. No luck with the simple search? You can use the Extended Search to enter more specific variables that might narrow your results.
Course Catalog
This is where all of your available training courses are located. You’ll have access to your specific agency catalog in addition to enterprise training, such as Keystone Academy for Learning, that are available to all commonwealth employees. You can use these links to “drill down” into the catalog, and view all available offerings.
The My Learner Account is at the bottom of the Navigation sidebar section. You can use these links to access your current training activities, as well as completed and cancelled activities, review and edit “prebooked” courses, and access and search for qualifications acquired through training.
The main page contains the following:
The Messages and Notes section contains Mandatory Courses that have been assigned to you by your agency training officer or supervisor. Please do not confuse these with the required web-based trainings issued by the Office of Administration. The OA courses will appear in your My Training Activities section.
It also will include updates for courses you have “prebooked” interest in attending, and courses that have qualifications required for your job. Be sure to check this section every time you enter.
The My Training Activities section contains all of your current training activities-courses that you are enrolled in, or “booked”, and courses you “booked” and are awaiting approval. It also allows you to access your training activities by delivery method, such as classroom or web-based, by using the tabs.
Now that you’re familiar with the My Training home page, let’s cover the basic tasks you’ll be asked to perform in LSO.
Enrolling in, or “booking” a classroom course
Depending how a course is set up by your agency training administrator, you may be able to self-enroll, or “book” the course. If the course is designated as self-enroll, use the following steps:
1. Search for the course using the find tool by typing in the course title or keyword.
Helpful hint: Try to be as specific as possible when entering your search term. The course title, or partial course title, works best. This will narrow your search results.
2. Click the “Find” button.
3. Click on the course title link.
The course page will appear with detailed information about the course.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the course page.
Details for the scheduled sessions will appear.
Helpful hint: If there are no courses scheduled or if the scheduled dates do not suit you, you can express interest in attending the course in future by clicking the prebook link. You will be notified in your messages and notes section when courses are scheduled. We’ll discuss the details of prebooking, and how to manage your prebooked courses, later in this training.
5. Click on the “To Registration” link associated with the date and time you would like to attend.
The details for the date and time you selected will appear.
Helpful hint: Some courses require manager or administrator approval. You will have different options for booking based on approval or no approval required.
For courses that do not require approval:
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Book section and click the “Book this course” button.
The “Do you want to book this course?” pop up window appears.
For courses that require approval:
Scroll to the bottom of the page to the Book section and click the “Request participation” button.
The “Do you want to request participation in this course?” pop up window appears.
Helpful hints: The Book section at the bottom of the page contains details about prerequisites that may impact your ability to book or request participation. Please review before proceeding.
For certain courses that have reached maximum capacity, you can click the Waitlist Booking link to join the waitlist, which works on a first-come, first-served basis. If you are at the top of the waitlist, you will be automatically booked when a place in the course opens up due to cancellation.
7. Click “OK”.
Helpful hints: The “Participation was successfully booked” message appears at the top of the page for courses that do not require approval.
“The participation request was submitted” message appears at the top of the page for courses that require approval.
Both types of bookings will appear in your “My Training Activities” section. For courses requiring approval, “Partic. Requested” will appear in parentheses until the course is approved.
You will receive an email notification confirming this transaction.
So now you know to self-book classroom courses. Next, let’s talk about how to self-book and launch web-based training courses.
Booking and Launching Web-Based Courses
Self-booking a web-based course is very similar to booking a classroom course that does not require approval.
1. Search for the course
2. Click the course title link
3. Click the “Book this course” button
The “Do you want to book this course” pop up window appears.
4. Click “OK”.
The “Participation was successfully booked” message appears at the top of the page.
Helpful hint: At this point, you can either click the “Start Course Now” button at the top of the page, which will launch the course content, or if you want to start the training at a later time, click on the “Start now” link from your “My Training Activities” section.
Please keep in mind that you are often automatically enrolled in web-based trainings, especially those issued by the Office of Administration. This will still be the case with LSO. Web-based trainings from OA will automatically appear in your “My Training Activities” section, so it’s not necessary for you to book these courses. You can simply click on the “Start now link”, which will launch the course content.
Helpful hint: Your progress for a specific web-based training is located on the course details page. After finishing a course, “The course was passed successfully, but it has not been set to completed” message populates in the Learning Progress section, Completion Status field. Don’t worry. The course will be automatically set to completed within 24 hours.
Booking Mandatory Courses in the Messages and Notes Section
Mandatory courses in your Messages and Notes section are assigned to you by your agency training officer or supervisor. You are not automatically booked into these courses. You must click on the course title link and follow one of the standard booking procedures, either classroom or web-based, we just described.
So far, you’ve learned how to book classroom and web-based courses, and launch web-based content.
Next, let’s review how to un-enroll from, or “cancel” a course.
Un-enrolling from, or “cancelling” a course
Depending how a course is set up by your agency training administrator, you may be able to self-unenroll, or “cancel” the course. If the course is designated as self-unenroll, use the following steps to cancel.
Helpful hint: You cannot cancel courses awaiting approval, indicated by “Partic. Requested” in parentheses under the course title link. You can only request cancellation after they have been approved, and the “Partic. Requested” has been removed.
From your “My Training Activities” section:
1. Click the course title link.
The course details page appears.
2. Click the “Cancel Participation” button next to your name in the Participant section
Helpful hint: For Web-based training courses, you must scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Cancel booking for this course” link.
The “Do you want to cancel course participation?” pop up window appears.
3. Click “OK”.
“Your booking was cancelled” message appears at the top of the page.
The course is removed from the “My Training Activities” section.
You will receive an email notification confirming this transaction.
You can book. You can cancel. You can launch web-based training content. Now let’s talk about prebooking-what it means, how to do it, how to cancel them.
Prebooking a course
If you recall, we briefly discussed the prebooking option when we were reviewing how to book classroom courses. You can use prebooking if there are no courses scheduled or if the scheduled dates do not suit you. By prebooking, you are simply expressing interest in attending the course at a later date. You will be notified when new sessions are scheduled in your “Messages and Notes” section.
To prebook a course:
1. Search for and find the course.
2. Click the course title link.
The course details page appears.
3. Scroll down to the Course Dates section and click the prebook link.
The prebook page appears.
4. Select a date range for the time period in which you would like to participate.
5. Click the “Select Location” button to choose a specific location where you would like to attend.
The “Select Location” pop-up window appears.
Helpful hint: You can leave the location field set to the default “No Restrictions” if you would like to be notified about all available courses, regardless of location, that fall within your established date range.
6. Scroll to the desired location.
7. Click the Location link.
The location field populates.
8. Click the “Prebook” button.
“Your prebookings have been updated” message appears at the top of the page.
Helpful hints: Courses that meet your prebooking criteria will appear in your “Messages and Notes” section when they are scheduled.
You are not automatically booked into courses that you have prebooked.
You can book by clicking on the course title or date link for the session you wish to attend, and following the standard booking procedure.
Only one prebooking may exist for a given course in a specified time period. Your Prebook list will reflect the most recent data entered.
To cancel prebookings:
1. Click the “Course Prebookings” link in the My Learner Account section.
My Course Prebookings page appears.
2. Select the prebookings you would like to cancel by clicking the appropriate box(es).
The boxes for selected courses will turn orange.
3. Click the “Cancel Prebookings” button.
“Your prebooking was cancelled” message appears at the top of the page and your list of current prebookings is updated.
The next thing we’ll cover is accessing qualifications.
Accessing Qualifications
Qualifications within LSO represent skills or competencies relevant to your job that you have acquired through completing certain training courses. Qualifications are assigned to courses at the discretion of your agency training officer, and have a proficiency level and “valid to” date. Qualifications are a convenient way to track and maintain certain requirements for your job, especially certifications and licenses.
To access qualifications you have acquired through training:
1. Click the “Qualifications Profile” link in the My Learner Account section.
The “My Qualifications” page appears. Qualifications you acquired through training are at the top of the page.
Helpful hint: Click on the “Explanation of Icons Used” link to review detailed information about proficiency levels.
You can click the “Perform Profile Matchup” link to find courses that can satisfy certain training requirements for your job.
Helpful hint: The Profile Matchup feature works only if a requirements profile is assigned to your position by your agency HR office. If your position does not have a requirements profile, you will receive the following message: “The system was unable to find a requirements profile for a job you hold. Consequently, no profile matchup is possible.”
You’ve done a great job thus far…and we only have one more thing to cover: your commonwealth training history.
Accessing Commonwealth Training History
Accessing your commonwealth training history is easy:
1. Click the “Training Activities” link in the My Learner Account section.
This will bring up all of your current training activities, completed courses and cancellations. It also includes a summary of costs incurred for courses you requested, booked and cancelled.
Or, if you’d like to access a copy of your commonwealth training transcript:
1. Click the “My Transcript” link in the Training Home section at the top of the Navigation sidebar.
Your transcript will appear in a separate window.
2. Click the printer icon in the upper left corner to print.
Helpful hints: You can enlarge the Transcript window by minimizing the window, restoring it and pressing the F11 key. Press the F11 key again to reduce the window to its original size.
If the toolbar containing the printer icon is missing, press the F8 key to restore the toolbar at the top of the window.
So that’s it! Hopefully you learned a lot about our new learning management system today. To recap, you learned how to:
• Book classroom courses
• Book and launch web-based courses
• Cancel courses
• Prebook courses
• Cancel prebookings
• Access qualifications
• Access personal training history
If you have questions about LSO, or this training, please contact your agency training officer.
This version of the course is intended for individuals who require an accommodation for a disability. Once you have fully reviewed the information in this training, contact your Human Resources Office to request credit for completing this course.
You will not receive credit for completing this course until you do so.