How to create an Instructor-Led Training (ILT) unit

Instructor-led training (ILT) is a conventional training method in which an Instructor conducts the lesson in a classroom-type environment. ILT sessions can be held either at a physical location (e.g., a meeting room, an office, an auditorium, etc.) or a virtual one (e.g., as a webinar conducted through video conference).

TalentLMS lets you add ILT units to your courses (classroom-based and webinars) to enhance your users’ learning experience.

We’ve broken down the process of creating an ILT training event into four steps:

Step 1: Add an ILT unit to a course
Step 2: Create an ILT session
Step 3: Register users to an ILT session
Step 4: Manage registered users

Step 1: Add an ILT unit to a course

1. Sign in to your TalentLMS account as an Administrator or Instructor and go to Courses (1), then click to edit (2) the course you want.

2. Click Add > Learning Activities > Instructor-led training (3).

Note: After saving an Online session type, you cannot clone it, and you cannot edit the Type, Capacity or Duration values.       

3. On the following page, give your ILT a name and a description (4).

Step 2: Create an ILT session

For the type of the ILT session, you can choose among 3 options:

• Online session (integrated tool): this creates a virtual session using the integrated through Account & Settings - Integrations conferencing tool 
• In-person session: this is for a session that takes place at a physical location
• Online session (other external tools): virtual session using an unsupported conferencing tool by entering the session URL in the ILT description

Online session (integrated tool)

1. Click the above option and a side drawer opens.
2. Give a name (1) to your session.
3. Add the date (2) and time (3) it will start.
4. Select who will be the Instructor (4) to conduct it.

Note: The list shows only the Instructors who are enrolled in the course.       

5. Using the slider, choose the duration (5) of the session. This can vary depending on the type of the integrated tool.
6. Give a description (6) of the session.
7. Finally, choose a color (7) for it by entering a numerical value or by clicking on the colored square and dragging the circle over the color that you prefer.

When ready, click the Save (8) button to create the session.

Note: Our integrated conference tool allows you to host a session for up to 40 users (1 Instructor + 39 Learners). For the rest, it depends on your conferencing tool’s plan capacity.       

You will now see the created session with its information. If there are multiple sessions, you can sort them (9) by date, name, Instructor or registered users and you can also search (10) for a session.

If you would like to edit, clone or even delete the session, you can do so by first clicking on the menu button (11).

Note: After saving an Online session type, you cannot clone it, and you cannot edit the Type, Capacity or Duration values.       

The Join (12) button will become available 15 minutes prior to the session start time, and will allow the participant to access the session. It will remain available throughout all the duration of the webinar.

You can add more sessions in the same unit by clicking on the buttons (13) at the bottom of the page.

Note: If you have more than one session in an ILT unit, you can create multi-day sessions to link them together. To find out more, read this article.

In-person session

1. Click the above option to create a new physical session.
2. As with any session, give it a name (1), date (2) and time (3).
3. Select who will be the Instructor (4) to conduct it, as well as the capacity (5) and physical location (6).
4. Set a duration (7) from 30 minutes to 24 hours.
5. Add an optional description (8) and color (9) and click Save to create it.

Online session (other external tools)

For this type of session, which takes place online, you have to set the exact same fields as before, such as name, date, time, capacity, and so forth.

The key difference here is that if you use an external, not natively supported, conference tool, you would have to add the meeting URL from that tool to the session's Description (1) field.
That way, the Learners who are to participate in the session will be able to click the URL and be taken to the external tool’s environment to attend.

Step 3: Register users to an ILT session

Now that you have created some sessions, you have to add the Learners who are going to participate. To do so:

1. Click the Manage users (1) icon.

2. A side drawer opens where you can view the available session and the number of users registered to them (2) in parenthesis.
3. If you haven’t added any users yet, select the session you want and click Add user (3).

4. A list of all the users who are enrolled in the course opens. To add them click the Add (4) button to the right.
5. When ready, click the back (5) button.

Note: If there are many users in the course, you can search (6) for specific users or filter (7) them by session.

Note: On the course overview page, Learners can view all the available sessions for an ILT unit, click Register (8) to enroll in a session, and add it to their calendar (they can also unregister if necessary). Expired sessions and those in full capacity are excluded.

Note: For your Learners to be able to actually join the ILT, please ensure they have the permission "Conferences" checked on their user type. Otherwise, they will get an error message after clicking the Join button.

Step 4: Manage registered users

Now that you have some Learners registered to each session, there are certain actions you can do to manage them.

1. Choose the session (1) you want to work on.
2. You will see the users (2) registered to this session along with information related to their session status, such as their status, grade (optional), and session attendance. Right now, all the users’ statuses are labeled as “Pending.”

Note: You can search for any user or filter them based on their status in the ILT session (Pending, Passed, Not passed)

3. Hover over any user, and you will have the option to grade, message them, or remove (3) them from this session.

4. Click any user to grade them. You will see the session information. Switch to the Grade (4) tab, give them a Grade (5) between 0 and 100, and leave a comment (6) if necessary.
5. Finally, select if the Learner has passed or not passed this session using the buttons (7) at the bottom

Note: If you do not add a grade manually and select Passed, it will be set to 100. If you don’t manually grade and select Not passed, it will be automatically set to 0.

After you have graded the Learners, another option would appear when hovering over their entry in order to reset (8) their grade and status.