The electrical training ALLIANCE has been diligently working on updating the available training resources for the LMS Instructor. In recent years, the training materials were updated from the original LMS Instructor course to a Managing Electrical Training resource area. Today, the course has been improved upon and updated to be the Instructors main stop for (more…)
PDFs not displaying all pages in Chrome browser
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
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.
A Handful of September 2020 LMS Notices
September is a busy month for training, for planning, for fixing, and then for rinsing and repeating among all the many things…As with many well-laid plans, sometimes a few things do not go according to them. Please read on to note an announcement about the best access to the Inside and Outside Transformer Simulators when using Microsoft Edge of Firefox; a note about an issue with our errata submission process from September 4th to 12th; and a quick announcement about the release of the Motor Control Simulator. (more…)
Widespread Internet Outage – 08/30/2020
An internet outage affected the electrical training ALLIANCE systems today, (8/30/20) as it did many other providers. The issue was found to be with a third-party internet transit provider incident with Century Link that then cascaded to affect many other services. This meant services like Cloudflare, Hulu, the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, Feedly, Discord, and dozens of other services, like ours, reported connectivity problems Sunday morning. Please see this post for more details.
We saw issues appear on our monitors with the LMS, TMS and the IC systems just after 6:30am EDT Sunday. These issues were intermittent but began to stabilize fully just after 11am EDT. A notice was posted to the login pages of all systems, as well as status on onlinesystemstatus.org. These notices were pulled down following recovery of the programs.
We have a team continuing to monitor the situation and will post updates as needed. We know how important these services are and will continue as always to monitor and communicate regarding site access.
LMS and TMS Maintenance Notice
Maintenance Outage Notification Saturday April 4th 4am EDT to 9am EDT
The Learning Management System (LMS) and the Training Management System (TMS) will be undergoing basic maintenance.
During this time the system may undergo a number of restarts and refreshes. Even if accessible, the system is
to be considered off-line.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.
Maintenance Outage Notification — Please avoid using the system
Saturday April 4th 4am EDT to 9am EDT
This notice is also posted on the login pages to each the TMS and LMS.
Thanks For Reading!
Adobe Flash and the Final Updates Regarding the ETS
On December 31st, 2020, Adobe Systems will officially stop updating and distributing Adobe Flash. Several industries and businesses have been built around Flash technology — including gaming, education and video. To be ready for this change, the LMS team at the electrical training ALLIANCE began planning and revising system components over three years ago. Today we are excited to share that we are nearing the day where (more…)
Support for Windows 7 is nearing the end
Machines Running Windows 7
Do you own or work from a personal computer running Windows 7? If so, keep reading. As presented at the past two NTI’s and all regional seminars, the end of support for Windows 7 has come upon us. Beginning January 14, 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide support for the Windows 7 operating system:
- No tech support for any issues
- No software updates
- No security updates or fixes
Although a Windows 7 computer will still function, it will be at a much greater risk for viruses and malware. Not good. So, we do recommend that if you own or work from a Windows 7 computer that you upgrade to Windows 10 before January 14, 2020. Optionally and depending on its age, you might consider purchasing a new computer. Can you believe when Windows 7 was released, the iPhone 2 was one of the new cool gadgets?
The landing page of the LMS will soon undergo an upgrade and while this upgrade occurs, one of the changes to note will be the devices that are considered recommended and compatible. Windows 7 will no longer show as compatible and changes to what is deemed recommended will come soon as well due to the system continuing to become more system agnostic everyday.
For more information for Windows users out there, check out this video for a full explanation of what it means when Microsoft ends support for one of its Operating Systems and how to prepare.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Holiday Season!
LMS Performance Issue – Dec. 14, 2019 11:30am – 11:49am Eastern
The Learning Management System experienced erratic performance on Saturday, December 14, 2019 from 11:30am eastern until 11:49am eastern affecting some and their interaction with the system. Sensors alarmed the support team immediately and the DB was switched from the master DB server to a backup DB. After converting over to the backup the support team then replaced the master and recovered the overall implementation to include multiple redundancy once again to the LMS DBs. During this time, and as soon as the team was able to provide a reason for the disturbance, a notice was placed on the login pages to both the TMS and the LMS to alert users that we were aware of the issue.
We are very sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. All systems began to run normally just before 11:50am Eastern Saturday and continue. As always, we continue to monitor the system and will provide details if anything ever occurs. Again, we apologize for our system issue.
Harassment Prevention Course Re-Enabled
We have resolved the technical issue we found with the Harassment Prevention course. We are very sorry for the inconvenience we caused. We understand the importance of this curriculum and appreciate your patience as we worked through the issue.