Understanding Objectives
Learning objectives, often called learning goals in many businesses, enable you to target and recommend learning for an individual. When you set up learning objectives in Enterprise Learning Management:
The system can assign objectives to learners based on their position or job requirements.
Managers can assign objectives to team members, learners can self-assign objectives; and administrators can assign objectives to groups of learners.
Learners can search the catalog for classes and programs that meet specific objectives.
The system can track learner progress toward meeting objectives and maintain a history of each learner's met objectives.
You can import objectives from a human resources application, such as PeopleSoft HCM or you can define objectives manually in Enterprise Learning Management. If you use PeopleSoft HCM, objectives represent the difference between the learner's actual competencies and the competencies that are required for the learner's job or position as defined in the human resources system.
Enterprise Learning Management delivers EIPs for importing competency and related proficiency levels (ratings) for both job roles and people from PeopleSoft HCM. After you import the data, the system performs a gap analysis by comparing the learner's current competencies to those associated with the learner's profile—for example, competencies linked to the job position or based on manager feedback through PeopleSoft Enterprise ePerformance—and presents a list of needed objectives.
When you associate objectives with classes and programs, the learner can search the catalog to locate and enroll in the classes or programs that fulfill the outstanding objectives. Upon completing the class or program, the system updates the learner's enrollment record by marking the objective as Met. If the source of the learning objective is a PeopleSoft HCM competency, an outbound EIP message sends the competency information back to PeopleSoft HCM. A subscription message in that application updates the learner's competency and proficiency levels.
Note: The delivered EIPs are designed to interface seamlessly with PeopleSoft HCM. Some modifications are necessary to use the EIPs with other applications.
Objective Statuses
Objectives have statuses that indicate a learner's progress for each objective. These statuses appear on several of the employee and manager self-service pages.
This table describes objective statuses:
|
Status |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Needed |
Learner is assigned the objective. |
|
In progress |
Learner is enrolled in a class or registered in a program that satisfies a needed objective requirement. |
|
Met |
Learner has completed a class, program, or supplemental learning that satisfies the objective requirement. |
Methods of Associating Objectives with Learning
You can assign learning objectives to courses and to programs. You can also enable self-service users to select an objective to get credit for when reporting supplemental learning. The most common way for learners to meet objectives is to complete classes and programs to which objectives are mapped.
Objectives can also be assigned as prerequisites to courses and programs.
Rating Models
A rating model defines the values that can be used to rate a learner's performance or level of proficiency for a learning objective—for example, poor, fair, average, good, and excellent. The use of rating models is optional.
For each rating model, you can specify values for proficiencies, review points, and numeric ratings. The system uses these values to determine the learning gap, which is the difference in what a learner should know to perform the job role (job code or position) and what the learner currently knows.
When a rating model is associated with an objective, users must specify a proficiency level whenever they select the objective. For example, when assigning an objective to a course or to a learner, the user must specify the proficiency level of the objective.
Global Objectives
Global objectives represent organizational level learning goals that you define specifically for use with a formal training plan. In Enterprise Learning Management, you can use training plans to plan or estimate the demand for learning for a specified period of time. When you generate a training plan report, the report can detail learning demands by global objective.
To set up global objectives, use the Define Learning Objectives component. You can then assign global objectives to courses using the Courses - Attributes page.
Related Objectives
In PeopleSoft HCM, when you define sub-items in the content catalog, you create an association between the sub-item and its parent item. The system uses this association to drive the processing for the entry of sub-items into a profile. The most common use of sub-items is as sub-competencies for a parent competency. When you add a competency profile item, you can then add one or more related sub-competencies to that profile.
When you import objectives from PeopleSoft HCM to PeopleSoft ELM, you import both parent items and sub-items. PeopleSoft ELM maintains that parent-child relationship by designating these sub-items as related objectives.
When a learner meets both parent and related objectives, the PeopleSoft ELM system sends these met objectives to your PeopleSoft HCM system and adds them as content items to the appropriate person profile.
For more information on related objectives, see the product documentation for the following pages: