A How-To-Guide to Placements and Workshops

Introduction

A placement/workshop allows you to create your classroom face-to-face sessions for your learners. It also allows you to create and publish these as a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). Once these have been created and the learners have been enrolled, this will allow you to verify hours. This is then automatically populated to the off-the-job report.

Aptem is designed to allow the creation of multiple placements and workshops at a particular organisation for a given time period.

Creating a Placement/Workshop

If you are creating a placement/workshop for an organisation, you must first create a record for the organisation.

A new placement/workshop can either be created by clicking on the ‘Add Placement/Workshop’ link in the organisation’s profile page or from the main ‘Placements/Workshops’ tile.

1. Sign into your administrator account. In the navigation panel, click on the ‘Placements/Workshops’ tile.
   
2. The ‘Placements/Workshops’ page will be displayed. You can search for placements/workshops by using the filters such as organisation name, address, title, programme, group, etc.
   
3. Click on the ‘Create’ button. The ‘Add Placement/Workshops’ page will be displayed. The status will be ‘Confirmed’.
   
   

In the ‘Add Placement/Workshops’ page:

• Select the status of the placement, either ‘confirmed’ or ‘opportunity’. Note that users can only be enrolled onto ‘confirmed’ placements.
• Choose the type ‘Training’ for the placement.
• Choose the organisation from the dropdown list. If the organisation name is not there, then a new organisation record needs to be created first. This is done by clicking on the ‘+’ icon.
• Select the location and organisation contact name for the placement or add new details as required.
• Type or copy the title and description of the placement. The description can be formatted and will be used in emails and users’ tasks lists.
• Select the relevant group that the placement/workshop should be attached to.
• Choose the placement’s category of work from the predefined dropdown list or click on ‘+Add’ to add your own category. Any categories that you define will be available when you create another placement. These categories can be used by administrators to search for placements.
• Set the start and end dates for the placement availability. For example, if the organisation provides 2-week placements throughout the academic year then use the start and end dates for this time period. Click on the ‘Add recurrent’ button to select specific days per week/month etc. for the placement.
• Complete the working hours for the placement. Separate sessions during the day, such as morning and afternoon excluding a lunch break can be accounted for. Click on ‘+Add another session’ to set the hours. For example, this might include the morning session. Then, click this link again to set the hours for the afternoon. The provider will be able to verify that a user has completed these hours while on placement.
• Enter the maximum number of positions available for the placement. Multiple users can be enrolled onto a placement simultaneously. Use the ‘maximum simultaneous’ box to limit how many people can be assigned to the placement during the same time, for apprenticeship clients, this is not needed.
• Select the ‘Allow self-enrolment’ for learners to decide whether they would like to join the placement/workshop or not.
• Select your programme from the drop-down list (if required) to connect this classroom session to a programme which will allow you to tick off any criteria, skills, knowledges and/or behaviours.
• Tick the box if you require the learners to provide you with supporting evidence for this session.
• Click “Save” to create the placement/workshop. The placement details and status will be visible in the placements page.
• You will then be asked if you would like to add documents to the placement for your learners to see.
• You will now be asked if you would like to add learners to the placement/workshop.

The Placement/Workshop Profile Report

The details of a placement/workshop can be viewed and edited from its profile page. The profile page can be accessed by clicking on the ‘Placement/Workshop’ title from the placements/workshops report. You can also access it from the placements/workshop section within an organisation’s profile page.

The profile page lists all details for a placement/workshop. This includes contact details, timings, date availability, assigned users, application process (if applicable) and relevant documentation - e.g. preworkshop or placement reading material.

Editing an Existing Placement/Workshop

1. Sign into your administrator account. In the navigation panel click on the ‘Placements/Workshops’ tile.
2. The ‘Placements/Workshops’ page will be displayed.
   
   The ‘Placements/Workshops’ page lists all placements and workshops within your account, displaying the organisation name, start and end date and the number of filled positions compared to the number provided by the organisation. If needed, use the filters to search for a placement by employer name, work category, description and/or location, by completing the relevant information and clicking on the search button.
   
3. Click on the relevant ‘edit’ icon to amend the details. The ‘Edit Work Placement’ page will be displayed. All relevant details such as the placement location, contact details, session times and allocated dates can be edited.
   

4. Amend the relevant information on this page. Then, click on ‘Save’ to store any changes.

Enrolling an Individual onto a Placement/Workshop

1. Sign into your administrator account. In the navigation panel, click on the placements/workshops tile.
2. Select the placement/workshop that you would like to add the learner to by clicking the title of the placement/workshop.
   
3. Scroll down the individual profile to the users/candidates section and select ‘Users Matching’.
   

4. The ‘matching’ screen will be displayed.
   
   By default, this window shows all learners available to be enrolled onto the placement/workshop. This is based on learners allocated to the programme to which the placements/workshop is attached. You can select learners by ticking the boxes next to their name. You can also do this by selecting ‘select all’ if all your displayed learners need to be enrolled. This is equally done by using the search functionality.
   
   Once you have selected your learners, click ‘Enrol Now’. If the learners for which you are searching you are looking do not appear in the displayed list, amend your programme filter box. You can select ‘Clear’ to remove all filters and click ‘Search’ for updated results. Once a learner has been enrolled onto a programme and, providing that the learner is on the same programme as the placement/workshop, this item will be displayed in their learning plan.
   
   

5. The following screen asks you to confirm the learners, description, days and working hours, contact name and details. Once confirmed, click on ‘Enrol’.

Verifying Hours for a Placement/Workshop

Once your placement/workshop is completed, you will need to verify the hours for these sessions. Once the hours are verified this pulls to the learner’s off-the-job evidence report in the compliance documents section on the learner’s profile page.    

Locate a tile called ‘Unverified Hours’, This will bring you a full list of all learners that need their placement/workshop hours verified. You will see a report as a snapshot that shows you the learners name, organisation, start date, end date, and sum of hours to be verified. If you need to delete a learner due to non-attendance, select the red cross in the ‘Delete’ column, once this is done you can then add them to another session that will be taking place in the future. The verify column will allow you to select a learner and confirm the hours attended.

Please be aware that a Placement should not be linked to two Components at once. This can cause the verified hours to not be generated correctly for one of the Components and may leave this Component with the status of 'Evidence Required'.

1. Select the verify box alongside the learner’s name.
2. You can amend the time by using the arrows to show what hours the learner did on the specific day as well as leaving comments in the box provided.
3. Once this has been done, click ‘Save’.
   
4. A pop-up confirmation message is displayed.
   
5. Once the hours are verified, this will update the hours logged, to match those on the Learner profile:
   
6. This is because workshops are not designed to show absence, and so there should be no disparity between Logged and Verified hours, after this has been actioned.
7. The learner will now be removed from your placement/workshop unverified hours report for the placement session that you have just approved.
8. This item will automatically be pulled to the learners off-the-job evidence report in their compliance documents section. You can see this by clicking create to populate a new report or selecting a previous version, once you click ‘Save’ the learner will be prompted to digitally sign the document.
   

Lapsed workshops

Workshops that have been finished earlier than they were planned to be finished have a status of 'lapsed'.

Note about deletion of workshop

A workshop cannot be deleted if there are any learners appearing under the Users/Candidates section. This will include ‘Enrolled’ learners and ‘Shortlisted’ learners. All learners will need to be removed first.