Editing Trainer quick-start guide

Getting started

Editing Trainer is one of the default roles in Totara. You can edit, add content, configure settings, assign the Learner or Trainer role, and manage grades for any courses in which you are enrolled as an Editing Trainer. Users are assigned the role of Editing Trainer on a course-by-course or category basis.

Let's take a look at the basics of being an Editing Trainer.

Adding and editing courses

If you have been assigned the role of Editing Trainer at the category level, you are able to create new courses within that category. A course is a page that contains all of the activities and resources for a particular set of training, including videos, SCORM packages, forums, quizzes, seminars, and more. As an Editing Trainer you can edit the settings and content for any course to which you are assigned.

If you need to break up your course you can divide it into sections or restrict access to specific parts of the course. In each section you can add text or media using labels, providing a structure and guiding learners through the training. Next, you can add activities (such as SCORM packages, surveys, lessons, wikis, and many more activity types) or resources (such as files, web links, or pages). As with course sections, you can also restrict access to specific activities and resources. You can configure each element to determine which activities are mandatory or optional. In each section you can add text, either in description fields or using labels, to provide a structure and guide learners through the training.

Alternatively, you can import content from another course, or even an entire course if required. If you want to re-use existing content you can import it from an existing course, then manually add, remove, or edit content to tailor the new course to your requirements.

Find out more about Courses and categories in the dedicated course on the Totara Academy. 

Grading and completion

Naturally, most organisations use Learning Management Systems because they need to track their learners' progress and keep track of which training learners have completed. You can set up your course completion settings to track completion in a number of ways. In some instances you may want learners to mark the course as complete on their own, or you may require learners to complete all mandatory activities before the course is marked as complete. Additionally, you can import historical completion records into a course from a CSV file.

You should not edit your course's completion settings once learners have completed the course. Additionally, the completion options are locked once activities contributing to course completion have been completed by learners.

Find out more about Grading, completion and certificates in the dedicated course on the Totara Academy. 

Enrolling users

Once you have populated a course with content and set up your completion settings, you can enrol your users. You can set up each course with different enrolment methods enabled depending on your requirements. For an optional course that might be of interest to learners across the organisation, you may just want to enable self enrolment. For mandatory training that needs to be completed by a specific audience, you might want to enable audience sync, meaning learners are enrolled or unenrolled on the course if they are added or removed from the selected audience. Alternatively, for courses with more sensitive or specialised content you might only want to enable manual enrolments to ensure that only the right people have access. You can use any combination of enrolment methods for each course.

As an Editing Trainer, as opposed to a Trainer, you can assign the role of Trainer to other users for your courses.

Note that you will only be able to use enrolment methods that have been enabled by a Site Administrator. For example, if the self enrolment plugin has not been enabled at the site level, you will not be able to select this enrolment method for any of your courses.

Maintaining your courses

As an Editing Trainer you will be able to maintain existing and ongoing courses. When working on courses in Totara Learn it is good practice to create backups of your courses. If anything goes wrong with your course, you can then revert to an earlier version by restoring the course. If learners experience issues with one of your courses, you may need to see what the course looks like from their perspective. In this case, you can switch roles to view the course as a learner. This can help you to identify issues and improve the learner experience, as problems may not be immediately obvious when logged in as an Editing Trainer.

Additionally, you can use course reports to gain a better understanding of how your learners are using your course. Some activities, such as quizzes, include ready-made reports, but Totara also has a set of built-in reports that you can use. You may want to see how many learners have completed the course, see how much time learners are spending on activities, or even identify if learners are struggling with specific questions on a quiz. You can use this information to improve the experience for your learners. For example, if you noticed that all of your learners were getting a quiz question wrong, you may want to check the wording of the question to ensure that it isn't ambiguous or misleading.

Find out more about Course reports in the dedicated course on the Totara Academy. 

Totara Academy

There are a range of materials available on the Totara Academy that will help you to understand your capabilities as an Editing Trainer. Through e-learning tutorials, videos, interactive simulations and quizzes, you can develop all of the skills you need to deliver engaging courses in Totara. We recommend starting with the following courses:

• Course resources 
• Social tools 
• Assignments and workshops 
• SCORM activity 
• Getting started with quizzes
• Grading, completion and certificates

Find out more

If you're looking for specific information about how to complete a task as an Editing Trainer, there are plenty of useful pages on Totara Help. Here is a selection of useful pages to get you started:

• Create a course
• Course activities and resources
• Course completions
• Course grading