Notes on Training and Assessment Strategy form

Ross Woods and Graeme Corn, 2019

The goal

It seems ideal in the longer term if the TAS could be a webform to reduce paperwork, simplify archival, and simplify growth. Local sites could generate data for student course information on the website.

Stage one

We need to be sure the form is right before putting it into an on-line form, because writing software is very labor intensive. This involves getting the questions well-worded so they are easy to understand and answer well, making sure that everything is covered, and being able to pass an audit.

So far, student course information for the website often needs to be edited to be understandable for students and to be able to pass an audit.

Suggestions

1. Populate the form with the details of the most recent version. This would allow people to update and improve information, although people could be lazy and not make necessary changes.
2. Allow users to update data during the year. This would be necessary in some circumstances, such as:
   1. Changes in staff
   2. Mid-year transitions of training packages or qualifications
   3. Results of audits.
3. Make it separate pages, so that users can fill in a page, save it, and come back later on. This will help new administrators who are still learning and users who do not have all information available when they sit down to fill it in.
4. If it includes teacher-unit schedules, ACAS could provide schedules to students, although this might not be very useful.

---

Programming considerations

1. Populate the form
   1. User selects task Write or revise course strategy form.
   2. Use the login to identify the user’s site and generate the key numbers of a list of programs it is authorized to offer.
   3. User selects the qualification from a dropdown selector (generated based on the list of key numbers.
   4. Search the database for the key number of that site’s most recent version of its TAS for that qual. (I.e. site number, qual number, date)
   5. Save that key number as a session variable.
   6. User selects a page.
   7. Extract data, convert it to variables, and display each item as value in the html form.
   8. Save saves data. If it is the first data of a new form, create a new record. Save record key number as a session variable.
2. Mid year updates
   1. Updating the TAS during the year would be easy, but changes would need to be approved.
   2. If data were to be put directly on a website (e.g. course info data), the central admin might need the right to edit it. [Not "might." The centre definitely needs that right.]
3. Separate pages*
   1. Each page of the full TAS form needs to be a separate html form. That is, a full TAS form comprises a series of pages, each of which can be saved separately.
   2. The database would use the key number for each TAS form to keep each page related to its TAS form.
4. Teacher-unit schedules: The centre could provide schedules to students, although this might not be very useful.

*Many multi-page forms allow a user to save all data but not submit it. This is problemmatical when users save but do not submit; they believe that they have provided data when they haven't. Other forms require users to progress through the pages in sequence with "Submit" at the end.

---

Additions

Ross Woods, 2020

The form requires information that is so complex that it might be better to simply update it each year, and check that any other information is still acccurate. The point is that it is current, not that it is re-written from scratch each year. We could do it at audit time, which would be better than trying to get it written well in the start-of-year rush.

Some of it might move to the student course handbook.