By Lindsey Arnold

Let's take a closer look at Virtual Academy 's advanced settings and email notification options for Managers.

Virtual Academy's advanced course setting allows several versatile options for course enrollment, but it must be requested by a department's training manager, and sent specifically to Tech Support.  Administrators do not have access to these functions, however.  There are three main methods available: Standard, Available Upon Approval, and Self-Enrollment.

Standard method has a department’s designated administrator or training manager assign required or mandated courses to take.  The second option available is “Available upon approval”.  This populates the Course Catalog feature for officers and shows a "Request" button below each course in the Catalog.  If requested, the training manager will then be notified and can either approve or deny the request.  Additionally, there is an option for “Officer Self Enroll” which also populates the Course Catalog.  Instead of "Request" a button labeled "Enroll" appears with this method, and once clicked that course is instantly available in the officer's Active Courses.

Available only by manager request is also the option to un-enroll from courses.  Training managers must contact us to request to have officers un-enroll from a given course if it's before the end date of that course’s section.

Another setting that is available to be amended upon request pertains to the assessments.  We can change the passing percentage required to pass any course assessments as well as the number of attempts that are allowed.  These settings generally default at 80% and one attempt to pass/fail unless specified during the creation of a department’s site.

If an administrator wants assessments for a given course to be randomized, the "Randomize Questions" option will provide the exam questions in a random order for every attempt.  There are however, many course assessments that have been created in this manner already.

Upon admin request we can also set a length of time to allow for a given assessment before it automatically closes and grades the answers that are selected at that time.

There are also five email options which make it easier to know the status of an officer's pass/fail:  You can choose "Email Certificate to Manager" (after pass), "Email Certificate to Officer" (after pass), "Email Grade to Manager" (pass or fail), "Email Manager if Officer Fails All Attempts" (after fail), and "Email Officer on Enrollment".

These settings can be set: 1) by rank, 2) by individual officer, and 3) globally, for the whole department.

If you haven't already customized these options for your department, please call Tech Support at 855-227-9119.