Gravatars, Editors & Students – Oh My!

By now, you’ve certainly read about many of the exciting big features in VTA 7.0 like Competency Management, Personal Development Plans, Ad Hoc Reporting and Supervisor Approvals for courses.  But it is often the small additions that improve an administrator’s user experience. A number of small enhancements have been made based, in part, on feedback from administrators at the VTALive User Conference last October in Phoenix, Arizona. This document outlines those enhancements that may not take the limelight but are certainly valuable to you, the VTA administrator.

No more Employees in VTA 7.0!?!?

What do you mean there aren’t going to be any employees in VTA 7.0? The term ‘employee’ has been a core of VTA since the first versions of OTIS for DOS but has always caused some questions. Do you save contractors and employees in the same grid? What if I am training business partners or clients and not employees? As the VTA suite continues its growth from learning to talent management, the term “Employee” has been updated to “Student” throughout the system. Including student records and student reports shown below.

Gravatars

Another exciting student enhancement is the addition of ‘Gravatars’ to the student record. A Gravatar is a “Globally Recognized Avatar” that allows a person to associate an image (avatar) with their email address. Websites like blogs, product reviews and web forums can be “gravatar enabled” so that when a person posts a comment his or her gravatar is displayed on the screen. VTA 7.0 is gravatar-enabled so that once an email is associated with a student’s record, their gravatar appears at the top of record. The gravatar also shows in Learner when a supervisor or named assessor is completing an assessment, and on the Supervisor Test Approval page.  Its use could be applied to a number of pages through both the Learner and Back-office parts of the system in the future; training plans, test windows, etc. To learn more about Gravatars, go to http://en.gravatar.com/ .

HTML Editor for Test Questions

Have you ever tried to edit a test question and wanted to make a word bold or include a hyperlink to another webpage or document? Until version 7.0, html codes had to be inserted into the question text proper to make this advanced formatting work. In VTA 7.0, an html editor has been added to the test question edit page allowing for formatting like:

• Inserting Indents
• Bold, Italic and Underline Text
• Changing Text Color
• Inserting Hyperlinks and ‘Mail To” links
• Inserting Images
• Managing Text Justification

Duncan Welder IV

Director of Client Services RISC, Inc

Mr. Welder holds a Master’s of Education from Texas A&M University in Educational Technology and has more than 25 years experience in implementation of Learning Management Systems, both domestically and abroad. Mr. Welder has been recognized for his application of Learning Management Systems to manage regulatory-compliance in industries ranging from petrochemicals to finance and has provided presentations to professional organizations including the Gulf Coast Process Technology Alliance, the Northwest Process Technology Alliance and the American Society of Training and Development.
Mr. Welder’s career is founded in traditional instructional design and computer-based training development. He is a certified Development Dimensions International facilitator, a Kirkpatrick Certified Evaluator and facilitator of the Ohio State University curriculum development program. In addition to working in industry, Mr. Welder has held adjunct faculty positions at Bowling Green State University, Ohio and the College of the Mainland, Texas. Mr. Welder has been published in both Training Magazine as well as US Business Review.