SMS Option Added to LMS and TMS for MFA

Greg Greiner June 20, 2024 No Comments

Can there ever be enough acronyms and abbreviations?  My take, yes, but the addition of the SMS option to the TMS and LMS is needed and has been at long last added to the ProTech Skills Institute Online Learning System. Please see important details below.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

The two existing MFA methods for receiving the authentication code, E-mail and Authenticator Application, have been joined by a third, SMS text message. Existing LMS users can access this new MFA option by clicking on their name in the upper right corner and selecting Login Preferences. When Text Message is selected, the user will be asked to input the cell number where they want the authentication code delivered and hit save. All MFA codes from that point forward will be delivered to the number provided.

New LMS users still, and always, need to initially authenticate using E-mail, but after that they can choose to select from Authenticator Application or Text Message if preferred.

E-mail remains the default MFA method unless changed by the user. Users can change their MFA method at any time.

TMS users will also see this as an option.  Once logged into the TMS, click on your name in the upper right corner to choose SMS Verification if desired.

 

Last Thing:

There are online resources that do not require MFA to be used each time you log in and then some that allow you to select how secure you prefer to be by allowing you to choose how often you must verify.  In our cases as ERISA governed organizations, we are held to a very high security compliance level.  It’s also something to note that using systems that send automatic messages charge by the quantity of messages.  With email or with SMS, the number of messages the system sends equates to a charge.  We monitor these charges to watch for concerns and will communicate those if they arise.  While we, and you, are required to have these measures in place we try very hard to make them as user-friendly as we can, meet the required security benchmarks, and keep the costs down.

 

Thanks for reading!

The 2024-25 electrical training ALLIANCE Training Essentials Catalog is Ready to View

Greg Greiner April 24, 2024 No Comments

Let the planning begin for the next school year!

The 2024-25 electrical training ALLIANCE Essentials Catalog has been sent to print and is available by clicking here for Inside Wiremen and Linemen.

You may also access and download the catalog by logging in to the member’s area of the site and locating the downloads in the resources area.

If your are looking for what’s new and coming be sure to check out the front pages of the catalog to see all of the updates!

Prices and content will be effective July 1, 2024.

While the teams are diligently working to wrap up all details for the content for this upcoming year, some of the courses that are noted in the catalog are not quite ready for use.  All courses listed though are expected to be ready for use for this calendar school year.  As these courses become available, we will announce them here and/or in newsletters.

Thanks for reading!

CML and Blended Learning Reporting

Greg Greiner August 10, 2023 No Comments

The Reports navigation has gotten an update! A new area specific to Computer-Mediated Learning (CML) courses has been added. This new area simplifies the procedures for locating CML course progress reports from Blended Learning course reports. The basic path to all reporting is unchanged to help make sure the basics of access to data are left unchanged. Read on to learn about the (more…)

Recent CML Course Updates

Greg Greiner June 5, 2023 No Comments

What happened, when did it happen, and why did it happen? Those are questions that may be wondered when reviewing new or updated electrical training ALLIANCE content. The following message shares some of the most significant updates made to the 1st-year CML courses, including a new CML course that just rolled out. Below are links to the webinar sessions that will be held to discuss and answer any questions you may have on this new course.

The courses that saw updates over the last few months are: (more…)

LMS – System Error – 10.25.2022 – Detail

Greg Greiner October 25, 2022 No Comments
At 7:45 AM Eastern on 10/25/2022 the Learning Management System experienced issues causing users to sporadically see an error message. The development teams were able to find the cause of the issue and have it rectified at 8:24 AM.


So what happened?
The system has multiple components that help it run effectively.. well.. most of the time. One of those components is a dedicated system to handle cache. (You may be familiar with browser cache.. same type of thing.) Think of cache basically like our LMS short-term memory. Users, throughout the day, make very similar requests to the system. Instead of having to calculate those similar requests each time a user asks for them, we store them in our short-term memory, our cache.
 
Unfortunately, the LMS has been telling our short-term memory space in our LMS brain, ‘hold on to this one. Don’t get rid of it. And this one too, and this one..’ They started piling up. We started to get short of space in our short-term memory.
 
The issue was experienced sporadically in various areas of the LMS as a memory error that read “Exception – OOM command not allowed when used memory > ‘maxmemory’.”
 
What did we do?
The team was able to do two things straight away:
1. Make the space in our LMS brain for short-term memory larger
2. Go through and clear out requests no longer needed.
 
We have also added more intelligence in the systems conversation about what should be held onto in the cache and for how long as well as better alerts when our short-term memory space begins to look like it might be getting full.
We apologize for any interruptions you may have experienced during this incident. We strive to be sure the system is available and performant for you and the training you deliver, and we will learn from this incident to improve on that commitment.

CML – Labs and Updates

Greg Greiner August 16, 2022 No Comments

One of the key components of delivering computer-mediated learning (CML) is the ability to support more time utilizing labs and allowing the apprentice to apply the theories to real world tasks and scenarios.  As we add more support to each course for optional in-class participations, we wanted to share with you where (more…)

July 3, 2021 – System Maintenance Reminder

Greg Greiner July 1, 2021 No Comments

LMS & TMS System Maintenance Notice

Summary

The Online Learning System has a scheduled maintenance outage.

Date: July 3rd, 2021 from 9am – 9pm Eastern.

Affected Systems: The Learning Management System (LMS) and Training Management System (TMS) will be offline during this time.

Detail: This outage is to apply updates and improvements to our enterprise system.  As the system has evolved, and continues to do so, this and other proactive procedures are applied to ensure that the foundation that our system relies on remains powerful, scalable, and secure.

Extra Important Details:

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PDFs not displaying all pages in Chrome browser

Greg Greiner September 30, 2020 No Comments

The Chrome browser has made a recent change affecting how PDFs are displayed.  This is true when accessing some of our linked PDFs from our site just like it is from other internet sites.

The issue is that users are unable to view the entire document when opening that document in a Chrome browser.  The user may be limited to seeing the first page of the PDF and not being able to scroll to other pages.  The entire PDF may be viewed by downloading it to the user’s local device and opening from there.  Currently, this issue is specific to Chrome browsers.  We have found a solution to the problem and are addressing the issue as we find PDF documents showing the described symptoms.  If you or your students encounter this issue of not being able to view all pages of a PDF, please submit an errata ticket from within that particular lesson and then download the PDF for viewing or view it from within a different browser.

Thanks For Reading!

Review Mode Access Implemented

Greg Greiner September 25, 2020 No Comments

The following message was shared by Executive Director Todd Stafford to all programs on September 17, 2020, via Broadcast Memo.

As a reminder of this change happening, here is that message again, coming to you via the Blended Learning Blog. – Please have a wonderful weekend.

The electrical training ALLIANCE strives to meet the daily needs of our JATCs by continually improving curriculum content and delivering tools for the benefit of the apprentice. Following vNTI, we were asked by Training Directors about modifying some of the available settings in the Learning Management System (LMS). Our goal, just like yours, is and always has been to help the apprentice engage in quality learning during their apprenticeship and throughout their careers. With that in mind, last month, we sent out a survey to get feedback from you regarding two LMS settings: Activity Access Locking and Review Mode Access Locking.

  • Setting 1: Activity Access locking is the minimum proficiency level a student must achieve to complete the lesson practice or items to advance to the next lessons or items.
  • Setting 2: Review Mode Access locking is the minimum effort level required for the student to access and review lesson practice performance.
    • In Review Mode, the student can review their answers to questions, how it is scored (correct, incorrect, partially correct), and reveals what the correct answer is to each question and any provided solution notes or descriptions.

For a review of the full descriptions of these settings, please access this link. (Be sure to click on the image to view the full 2-page PDF)

The results are in. Thank you to all those who participated in the survey. We heard you, and we are taking action. The positive responses and thoughtful comments that we received regarding both features were outstanding and appreciated. It is together that we will best provide solutions to help in training within this industry.

The two settings that we were asked to survey you about require different levels of effort to enact and maintain.

  • Setting 1: Activity Access Locking will NOT be administered at this time, but at a later date following SME input per topic, Training Director input, and follow-up communications. Please note, no setting will be administered without clear communications about the timeline and any program or user impact.
  • Setting 2: Review Mode Access Locking will be available for all courses that do not currently have this setting starting on September 26th. There are a few details to share regarding how this setting will be applied.

Based on your feedback to the survey, we have determined to begin using this setting at a 60% level. This setting is not at all to state that anyone believes 60% is an acceptable value of proficiency on coursework; however, we are merely modifying what is currently set at
0% and raising the minimum level of effort on quizzes to access a quiz review to 60%. This, in turn, continues to allow you and your programs to administer local policies on performance requirements. The use of the report data continues to enable you to administer your own local response to performance requirements.

To say it another way, your JATC’s local policies and procedures should still dictate the successful coursework completion requirements as this setting does not make any changes to the construct of what you have made for your apprentice requirements.

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