Engineering Division Fire Safety Programs Online Continuing Education Course Management Version 1.0 March 6, 2013
Background The North Carolina Department of Insurance (NCDOI) Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) has created a new web-based program to create and manage Continuing Education course schedules for Pyrotechnic Safety. The new program provides the following benefits: Improved turn-around time for submission and approval of rosters. Classroom schedules can be created from a list of the active, approved courses managed by Sponsors and Instructors. Classroom schedules can be edited directly in case of date or venue changes, prior to the start of the course. Upon creation or edit, details of the classroom schedule are immediately posted on the NCDOI Fire Safety Programs website (http:// fscpublic.ncdoi.net/public/publiccourseschedpyrotechniclist.html). The Class roster can be entered online. Roster submissions via the new program are sent directly to the Pyrotechnic Safety Continuing Education administrator for processing. The program prevents the addition of invalid contact types to course rosters. For example, Proximate Audience Operators cannot be added to the roster for a Pyrotechnic class, 1.4g Operators cannot be added to a Proximate Audience class, etc.
Instructions for Use You will be sent a letter providing a logon id, password and web address to the online course management system. Your user id will be your current license ID, (i.e.1001), or an identification number provided for you by the Pyrotechnic Safety administrator. The initial password will be provided by the Pyrotechnic Safety staff; you will be prompted to change this upon your first login to the system. When first accessing any page of the online course management system, you will be challenged with a password request. Enter the provided credentials using the form shown in Image 1: Image 1: The Login Screen Upon first login, you will be presented with a form similar to the one shown below in Image 2. This allows you to change your password to one of your choosing. The rules for valid passwords will also be displayed. If you forget your password, please contact the Pyrotechnic Safety staff. Image 2: The Password Change Screen For security purposes, you will be required to change your password every 90 days.
Adding a Classroom Schedule The course management system is divided into three pages. The first page is where course sponsors and classroom instructors will go to schedule new classroom sessions. The Add Schedules page can be found at http://fscpublic.ncdoi.net/public/form/publiccoursescheduler.html. Upon successful login the page will be displayed, as shown below in Image 3. Image 3: Adding Class Schedules
You may add a schedule using the following steps: 1. Select the relevant Course from the COURSE list. Note that this list will only show active, approved courses for the currently logged-in person. Sponsors will see all courses they developed, and Instructors will see all courses which they are approved to instruct. 2. Upon Course selection, the approved, active Instructors for that Course will be shown in the INSTRUCTOR list. If only one Instructor is active for the Course, that Instructor will be automatically selected. 3. Enter the relevant dates for the Course and Last Registration date. Clicking on the calendar icon beside each date pops up a tool that helps you quickly select a date. 4. Enter the Location where the class will be given. We strongly suggest that you provide an address or other description which will help students find where the course is being offered. 5. Enter any relevant Notes for the class, which may include a brief overview of the class content. This information will be displayed in the public course listing. 6. When you have entered the schedule information, press the Save Course Schedule button. The Course will be saved, and the page reloaded. You will see the new schedule listed at the bottom of the page in the scheduled courses list. All distance learning and classroom courses that have been certified as public courses will be posted on the Pyrotechnic Safety Website. When specific dates have been scheduled and entered for classroom courses, this information will appear on the website.
Editing a Classroom Schedule To edit a scheduled course, select the course from the list at the bottom of the page. The page will be reloaded into Edit mode, as shown below in Image 4: Image 4: Editing Class Schedules Note that the text at top of page shows whether you are Adding or Editing a course schedule. To save the schedule changes, press the Save Course Schedule button. Two new buttons appear on the screen: Add New Schedule shown when in Edit mode, this reloads the page into Add mode, allowing you to add a new class schedule. Any changes you made to the current form are lost, so be sure to press the Save Course Schedule button if you wish to save changes. Delete Course Schedule shown when in Edit mode, allows you to remove the current schedule. You will be prompted for confirmation. Classes which already have roster entries cannot be deleted.
Managing Class Rosters The Manage Class Rosters page is where you will add students to a class schedule. This page shows all of the currently open, or not yet submitted, class rosters. To edit a roster, click on any of the course schedules in the list. The page will be reloaded with the contents of the current roster (if any) below the list of scheduled classes. Below in Image 5 we see an example: the user has selected a class scheduled for 04/26/2013. The class is highlighted in the list, and it s currently empty roster is displayed. Image 5: Managing Rosters To add students to the roster, enter their License number as directed into the input field, and press the Add Student button. If the student s contact type is appropriate for the class, the student will be automatically added and saved to the roster. Image 6 on the next page shows the result of adding a licensed Pyrotechnic Safety Operator to the roster above.
Image 6: Adding Students Note that the Student s current license status has no bearing on whether they are allowed to be added, and you may only enter licensed individuals. If you have added a student to the roster by mistake, you can click the red X icon by their name to remove them from the roster. You will be prompted to provide confirmation of the deletion. If you enter the license number for an individual who cannot receive credit for the class (for example a Pyrotechnic license holder cannot receive credit for a Proximate Audience Class), an error is displayed. On the following page, Image 7 shows the message received when we tried to add a Proximate Audience Operator to the Pyrotechnic class scheduled for 04/26/2013:
Image 7: Incorrect Contact Type An error message is also displayed in the following scenarios: 1. The license number provided is not found in the set of contacts licensed by Pyrotechnic Safety. 2. The license number provided has already been added to the same course in the current calendar year. The roster does not need to be submitted at this time. You could add students to the roster all at once, or over a period of days or weeks. The system will save the roster until submitted. When you click the Submit Roster button, you are presented with the following confirmation message: Image 8: Roster Submit Confirmation Select the OK button to proceed, or Cancel to return to the roster and add/delete more students.
Viewing Completed Class Rosters Completed class rosters can be viewed by selecting the Completed Courses tab. The list shows the name of the Scheduled class, along with the Instructor, course date, and students submitted on the roster. To view the class roster, select the line item for the class you wish to view. The page is reloaded with the roster beneath the completed class list, as follows: Image 9: Viewing Completed Courses Note that you cannot delete or add students to a submitted roster. You may export any list to excel or PDF format. Exported lists may contain additional information. For instance, the completed course list above will contain columns listing the start and end times for the course, Sponsor name, and Location where the course was provided. Please send email with any questions to the NCDOI Fire Safety Team if you have any questions or problems using the new course management system.