Frequently Asked Questions
1.
What is the MC
Strategies/College of Direct Support Client Services Team?
The Client Services Team is responsible
for coordinating all actions necessary to enable startup and ongoing support of
your training web site. They are the
persons to contact regarding all aspects of your
site.
2.
How long
will it take to set up my account?
We establish your account in two phases:
Site setup – physical web site setup usually occurs within 3
days of receiving a fully executed contract
Training – we will contact the designated administrator(s)
and schedule training within a week of site setup.
3.
Do you provide documentation for the System?
Yes. The documentation is available online from
the Administrator Home Page. The
documentation explains how to use each administrative application. Because
learners may be widely distributed, printed documentation is impractical. The System contains online help for both
learners and administrators.
4.
What is a
CDS Learning Administrator?
When we speak of the CDS Learning Administrator, we are
talking about the person within your organization who is responsible for
overall system administration. Depending
upon the goals of the organization, this person may be responsible for all
lesson planning. They may also elect to delegate that responsibility and retain
control of overall learning administration.
In any case, this person is our key contact for all matters relating to
the College of Direct
Support.
5.
What if my learners have a question?
There is Help Documentation available to all learners on their Learner
Home Page. Obviously, the CDS Learning
Administrator is the person who contacts us regarding all CDS issues, but there
will be occasions when that might not be feasible. The CDS Support Team is not to be used as
your ‘backup’ while out of the office for vacations, etc. so we encourage the
CDS Learning Administrator to train a ‘backup’ and provide CDS with their name
and contact information.
Trouble-Shooting
I can't get to the web site
Check your internet connection - see
if you can access another internet site such as www.microsoft.com or
www.yahoo.com. If you:
Still can't get to the web site….
Contact us at
cds-info@mcstrategies.com
I can't log into the system
Make sure the learner ID and password
are correct. Lowercase/uppercase does
not make a difference. Make sure you are
at the correct web site. www.collegeofdirectsupport.com
is our demo site. Your web address will
be www.collegeofdirectsupport.com/YourFacilityName
or the abbreviation for your state if you are a facility on the state
site. You should only be prompted for a
Learner ID and password.
I have put in the right
answer, but it scored me incorrectly.
·
If you leave an answer blank,
it will be scored as incorrect.
·
If you leave (intentionally or
un-intentionally) a test in the middle, it will grade the unanswered questions
as incorrect.
·
Have your CDS Learning
Administrator go into Online Learning Reports and run a Learner Test Summary
Report. This will give a summary of your
answers and a listing of the correct answers to your CDS Learning Administrator.
·
If you and your CDS Learning
Administrator still believe that the answer we have is incorrect, your CDS
Learning Administrator can email content@mcstrategies.com or cds-info@webinservice.com with the
issue.
·
Your post-test summary report
shows the answers you submitted, not the correct answers.
When I
login to College of Direct SupportÒ the screen says "Personal Page for John
Smith," where does the system get my name?
The learner demographics that the CDS Learning
Administrator has completed for each learner is the source of your name. Whatever
is typed in the first name field is the name the system uses to communicate
with the learner. If the name is
incorrect, contact the CDS Learning Administrator, and they will be able to
make the change.
What is
the Learner ID?
The Learner ID is what the system uses to identify a
learner, what lesson(s) they have completed, what tests they have taken, and
all of the other information in the system.
It is extremely important to login to the system using the same Learner
ID each time to ensure that the learner receives credit for all that he/she has
accomplished.
What do I
click if I want to see all of the lessons and my progress?
Click My E-Learning Lessons on your personal page. You will see several tabs that allow you to
select the lesson information you want. Your lesson plan will list each lesson
that has been assigned, show the completion date and
score of completed lessons, and will show the lessons that need to be
completed.
Are there
completion certificates? I noticed that the learner name shows up on the
learning transcript page, so really, someone could just print this out as proof
of completion.
Yes, the
learner can print out their transcript and/or completion certificates. The “Report” button on the Learner Home Page
allows access to E-Learning Credits Earned.
There is a link titled ‘CDS’, which is the completion certificate for
the lesson listed.
What is
allowable to print?
Completion Certificates
E-Learning Transcript Page
Reports
Assessment Event Checklists
CEU Application
Can you
bookmark to one of our pages?
The system has an automatic bookmark feature that returns
you to the same place you were in a lesson before you left, but you cannot use
‘Favorites’ in the browser to bookmark a lesson page. In order to bookmark a page in a lesson, you
must click the ‘Personal Page’ icon at the top of your lesson page, and then
click the ‘Logout’ button on your personal page.
I have completed all my assigned lessons. How do I get more lessons added to my lesson
plan?
Check the self-enrollment section to see if there are
additional lessons available. You may
view courses available for self-enrollment, by clicking the ‘Self-Enroll E-
earning’ quick link on your personal page, then select ‘E-learning self
enroll‘. You may also contact your CDS
Learning Administrator and ask for additional lessons.
I'm
looking at the administration portion, and I can't figure out how or where the
option to reset lessons is located.
To
re-assign lessons, go to E-Learning, Assign Training, choose the option for
individual/learner/group, then when the assignments come up, look over on the
far right-hand side and you will see a "reassign" button. You'll simply click that and follow the
instructions from there. DO NOT ‘REASSIGN’ WITHOUT CHECKING WITH CDS CLIENT SUPPORT
FIRST.
How can a
CDS Learning Administrator set the passing score?
Minimum passing scores for both pre-testing and post-testing
can be set by the System Administrator through the System Option. The System Administrator may also set the
pre-test and post-test score for each module created if your training goals are
different from the system-wide settings.
How can I limit a learner from taking a test repeatedly
until they are able to determine correct answers by process of
elimination?
When you are editing your modules, you will see an option
called retake frequency. This allows you
to set a number of days the learner has to wait between taking tests.
I
see references to e-mail addresses throughout the system. Will the staff have
to supply an e-mail address?
No, they
are not required, but if you want to take advantage of the e-mail features in
the system, you will need them. It's not
all or nothing though. You can manually
add e-mail addresses as you need them.
I'm trying to delete a module from a learner, but after I
click the delete button, the module still appears.
Check to see if the learner has completed a lesson from the
module. If a learner has completed a
lesson in the module, the delete button will delete all lessons that are not
complete from that module, but the module name will remain.
You may not be able to delete a module if it was assigned at
a different level of administration. For
example, you cannot delete a module from a learner that has been assigned to
the entire department without deleting it for the department.
- Why
won’t my module ‘Reassign’?
If the
module name is missing on the original module assignment then the system can’t
reassign.
- Will
Rename delete a module name from the learner transcript.
No, the
rename automatically applies to the learner records.
- Why
doesn’t the retake frequency always work?
If the learner uses the ‘back browse’ button after
completing their test, instead of going to their personal page they will
circumvent the system. Learners should
never use the back browse while in the lessons or the test.
- Why
are learners allowed to test out of a lesson when the module is set to
require lesson completion prior to testing?
If there is
any value in the Pre-Test score box the system defaults for lesson completion
are invoked.
If you use an authoring tool such as Macromedia, Flash,
Front Page, etc. to create training; that training can now be pulled into College of Direct
SupportÒ through this feature.
Our goal is to simplify your training management duties by giving you
one place to manage it all.
We linked to a MS Word document, and I was able to change
the data from the learner’s screen. I
don’t want my learners to be able to change the data.
Depending
on the software you use to create the training, there are several ways to
“lock” the file. If it is a word
document, you can make it read-only, an Excel spreadsheet can be locked, Power
Point presentations should be published, etc.
Check the help features in the software you are using to determine exact
instructions. FYI -- This can be good
and bad. It’s a great way for multiple
people to view something and make central changes in real time.
How
does all of this classroom training work? How do we utilize this feature?
You can
now manage your classroom training as well as your on-line training. You can schedule instructors, create
classrooms, and setup classes to be assigned to the learner. These classes show up for the learner when
they click "Classes & Events."
This is great for orientation classes, CPR, or any situation where
on-line training is not an option.
Is
classroom training only for e-learning lessons?
No,
classroom training is a used to schedule/manage your facility classrooms. It is not meant for e-learning lessons. You may enroll a participant or allow open
enrollment. The system allows you to
publish available classes for open enrollment as well as limit the number of
participants per class.
Service Related Questions
What
internet provider do we use?
MC Strategies, Inc. has a contract with Verisign
that ensures us a secure website and also allows us to offer security
certificates to ensure each client has an individual secure website.
What plans
have you taken to provide un-interrupted service to the training website?
Service can be interrupted from basically four different
places - a problem at your facility, a problem here with our system, a problem
with our Internet service provider, or on the phone lines somewhere in
between.
We have taken measures to ensure that our system has minimal
down time by doing two things -- signing with a reputable service provider and
having a backup system in place.
MC Strategies, Inc. has a contract with a major service
provider that has a local point of presence.
What does that mean? That means
we receive fast, reliable Internet connections and are provided with service
technicians to solve any problems within a timely manner. Fewer miles between the "point of
presence" and the physical location of our office means
less chances for problems to occur. We
also have in place a redundant system that we can initiate if there are
difficulties on our end. Occasionally,
we will have scheduled down time for maintenance or updates. You will be notified prior to the scheduled
down time so that the inconvenience will be lessened.
How is a
client's website set up?
Each client has it's own
database. What does this mean for the
client? A Personal Client Database means
that the clients will only have data in their database that is for their
employees. One of the advantages is they
have the ability to run reports for their facility, customized to their
departments. It also means that only
authorized users from their facility can access the site. And it means that they won't be competing
with the world to access their site.
