There are many accredited courses that see specific Units of Competency delivered to students, rather than full Qualifications. These may very well have a face-to-face component as well, but unlike a full Qualification, this may only run for a short period of time, e.g. a single day or week. Subsequently, this unit-only training will often be referred to as a “short course”.

If you commonly run short courses or unit-only delivery, read on to see how this can be configured in aXcelerate.

Introduction

Setting up a short course for delivery involves the following main elements

A Qualification
Trainers with competencies
Workshop Types
Workshop instances

Qualifications are effectively a set of Units that must be completed for a student to attain an outcome. They merely describe the structure of the course, and do not have a start or finish time. Qualifications must be set up in a specific way for Workshop Types, which is described in the next section of this guide.

Workshop Types are effectively a template for the different kinds of short course you could offer. They do not have any specific dates, but contain core information such as the accredited Units that are part of the course, the overall description, and recurring information such as its cost and typical duration.

Workshop instances are actual short courses that have been scheduled to accept student enrolments. They can only be created from available Workshop Types, and must have a specific Trainer assigned. Unlike Types, Workshop instances have actual dates/times of delivery rather than generic durations.

Trainers are staff that are assigned to deliver courses, and must be set up in aXcelerate in order to be allocated to specific Workshop instances. Our Help category on the topic can provide more insight into how this can be achieved.

Configuring the Qualification

All accredited training within aXcelerate, whether it be for an entire Diploma or only handful of Units, needs to draw from a Qualification. Therefore, before you are able to set up a short course, you will first need to set up and configure a Qualification in a specific manner.

The main requirements that a short course Qualification will need are:

The code/name (these can be whatever you like since they will not be included in your AVETMISS data)
The list of Units that you intend to deliver to the students
To have the Unit of Competency Enrolment Only tickbox checked

The final point about ticking the Unit of Competency Enrolment Only box is the most critical, as this ensures that the Qualification will not be reported in your NAT00030 file for AVETMISS reports. We are treating the “Qualification” in this case as a container of accredited Units, rather than a nationally recognised full Qualification.

For more general information on how to set up a Qualification and its Units, please refer to our Qualification Management help article.

Tip: We recommend creating a different Qualification for each specific kind of short course you deliver, even if they share similar Units of Competency. For example if you offered a basic course on "Entering confined spaces", and a more advanced course on "Performing work in confined spaces", these should have two separate Qualifications, even though they both have a common Unit on how to enter confined spaces.

Note: Any Units within a Qualification that has the Unit of Competency Enrolment Only setting ticked will still be reported in your NAT00120 file, so long as the Unit is set to be accredited rather than internal. For more information about this, please refer to our Unit Management help article.

Creating a Workshop Type

Short courses are often best managed through an Accredited Workshop arrangement within aXcelerate. Before you can begin creating these Workshops however, it will be necessary to set up a corresponding Workshop Type and associated with the Qualification of your short course.

Courses

Workshop Types

After clicking the + Add New Workshop Type button at the top of the Workshop Types page in aXcelerate, you’ll need to fill in a handful of fields:

Enter a Workshop Name and Code; the name is what this kind of short course would normally be called by students and trainers, so it’s best to enter something meaningful
(Optional) If there is a standardised price for each booking into this course, enter this into the Price per Participant field
(Optional) If you have a general outline of what the short course delivery and content is like, this can be entered into the Short Description
Click the Submit button to continue the setup process from here

On this next screen you will be able to configure more details about the Workshop Type. Some will already be in place from the steps listed above, but there are a number of other elements that must be populated as well.

(Optional) Underneath the Short Description you see a number of other text fields (Introduction, Benefits, etc), which can be filled in with specific details about the course by clicking the edit pens next to them
(Optional) The Price per Participant field also exists on this page, but will be renamed to Public Short Course Rate
(Optional) If you deliver this short course to corporate clients, where the employer pays a flat fee per hour/day, you can enter this cost into the In-House Delivery Fee field
Set the Min and Max Participants to define what the general number of bookings are allowed per course
Set a default Duration, Start Time, and Finish Time; if the duration and start times routinely change depending on the date this short course is held, put in placeholder values as this can be changed later
(Optional) If a specific Trainer always delivers this kind of short course, select them from the Trainer dropdown
Change the Workshop linked to a Unit of Competency field to “Yes”
Next to the Workshop linked to a Unit of Competency dropdown, search for the Units of Competency that are part of the short course, and click to add them to the Workshop Type (The Units must all come from the same Qualification to be added)
Click the Submit button at the end of the page to finalise the creation of your Workshop Type

Tip: You can create several Workshop Types for the same course that are specific to a certain Trainer. This can help with internal reports and automated messaging later on. To do this, set a trainer in the Trainer dropdown of the Workshop Type, save it, and then duplicate the Workshop Type. You’ll then be able to change the name or code of the Workshop Type to indicate that it is trainer specific, before swapping the person in the Trainer dropdown.

Note: Workshop Types act as a sort of “template” for a course when setting up an individual Workshop instance. You do not enrol students directly into a Workshop Type, rather it simply helps load in default information when scheduling a short course for an actual date and time.

Note: Linking Units to a Workshop Type will make it an Accredited Workshop Type. This means that when the Type is used for creating individual Workshop instances, it will pull through the accredited Units that you’ve linked, and ensure that students are enrolled into those Units while they are booked into the Workshop.

Warning: As outlined in Step 8 above, it is only possible to link multiple Units to a Workshop Type if those Units are in the same Qualification. If you’re experiencing difficulties at this step, please review the section on Configuring the Qualification at the beginning of this article.

Creating a Workshop Instance

While a Workshop Type defines the overall parameters of your short course, you are not able to enrol students into a Type. Instead, you will need to create a Workshop instance for there to be an entry point for enrolments, which has the actual specific date, time, and location of the session/s.

Before you are able to create a Workshop instance, you will first need to create the relevant Workshop Type. Additionally you will also need to ensure you have at least one Trainer who is competent in the Units that are being delivered in the course; you can read more about this in our Competency Matrix help article.

Courses

Add New Workshop

Once you have started to add a new Workshop, you will need to enter the following:

Workshop Type
Coordination Type

While the Workshop Type determines what kind of course this will be, the Coordination Type determines what kind of bookings you are taking into it.

Public coordination: students are treated as individuals booking in of their own accord, with each participant paying for their own booking
In-House coordination: students are treated as a group being signed up for training requested by another business, with a single invoice for the whole course being sent to a designated Client Contact

Once your Workshop and Coordination Types have been selected, you can click Submit and proceed with setting up the Workshop instance by configuring the following areas:

(Only for In-House) Add a Client Contact; this is the person who has requested the course and who will be invoiced for it by default
Select a primary Trainer from the drop-down list who will be teaching the short course (if more than one Trainer is involved, additional Trainers can be added once the Workshop is created)
Ensure that the correct Units of Competency are ticked so that participants will be enrolled into them when you book students into the short course
Ensure that the Workshop Name describes the short course accurately for trainers and participants (this should be prefilled by your Workshop Type selection earlier)
Select the appropriate Reporting State and Accredited Delivery Location; the former will depend on what kind of state funding (if any) you are accessing for the enrolments within this Class (These fields are used purely for AVETMISS reporting purposes)
Enter a Location that describes where the short course is being held (unlike the Accredited Delivery Location, this field is free-text and will be generally visible to participants)
(Optional) If the short course is being held virtually, tick the Virtual Classroom tickbox to open fields where you can put in the link and password to a relevant digital meeting
Enter the minimum and maximum participant numbers for the short course
(Only for In-House) Enter the expected participant number for the short course; this allows you to invoice the Client Contact prior to receiving actual bookings
(Only for Public) Ensure the Cost Per Student figure is correct
Enter the Dates & Duration for the short course to determine how long this short course will run for, and which dates the students will need to attend
(Only for In-House) Ensure the In-House Rate is the correct price
(Optional) if you have created Rooms and this short course takes place in one, choose it from the Select a Room dropdown; otherwise tick the Skip This Step box to the right
Click Submit at the bottom of the page to create the Workshop instance

After working through the above, you should have created a Workshop instance to reflect your short course, that can now be located in the aXcelerate Calendar. It is also potentially ready to take in bookings/enrolments, but before doing this you may wish to alter certain parts of the instance.

Tip: If you wish to track physical room allocations for your short course, consider configuring a set of Rooms prior to creating any Workshop instances.

Note: Since you have used an Accredited Workshop Type, the Workshop instance you’ve created should have a linked Class attached to it; by default this will be called “[Workshop Name] (linked Workshop ID XXXXXXX) [Workshop Dates]”. This automatically-created Class sits behind the Workshop, and is where the Units of Competency other accredited details will be stored. Unlike a manually-created Class however, you will be able to perform key actions such as enrolments, resulting, and award issuance from the Workshop instance view without having to go into the Class.

Note: For further detail on Coordination Types, please refer to the Create a new Workshop section of our Workshop Management help guide.

Warning: If you intend to mark attendance digitally directly in aXcelerate, we recommend to always use the Multi-session option when setting Workshop dates as per Step 10 mentioned above. Even if the short course only lasts a single day or a few hours, using the Multi-session option will streamline the attendance marking process.

Warning: Entering dates using the Simple or Multi-session options in Step 10 sets a period of training that all participants in the Workshop are meant to attend. To create a sequence of different short courses of the same type, running on different dates with different groups of participants, use the Multi-workshop option instead, which is a bulk duplication tool.

Editing a Workshop Instance

Before enrolling students into a new Workshop instance, you may wish to alter or add certain details about it. This may be because a field was accidentally skipped when creating the instance, or because certain information won’t be known until closer to its commencement date.

On the main Workshop page, you can click the Update tab in the top left area of the page to address the fields listed below:

Changing the Name to better reflect what the course is about
(Only for In-House) Swap out the Workshop Client if the invoice needs to be addressed to someone else
Changing the Coordination Type; this can be useful if you have mistakenly set up a Public course in an In-House manner, or vice versa
The Min, Max, and actual/enrolled Learners can be edited, along with the free-text Location field
The Trainer can be swapped out for any other Trainer who has valid competencies (note that this is considered the Primary Trainer for the Workshop)
The Public Workshop Rate or In-House Rate can be adjusted to change the course price
The Start and Finish date/times can be altered to effectively reschedule the course; if you have used the Multi-session setup, the system will automatically ask you to modify the Workshop's Complex Dates when you finish editing it

Clicking Submit at the bottom of the Update page will save any changes you have made.

Other changes need to be performed from the main Workshop page itself. This could include:

Adding in a Virtual Classroom, which can be achieved by clicking the + Add Virtual Classroom button
Adding in additional Trainers, achieved by clicking the Edit Pen next to the Primary Trainer, and then selecting another individual from the dropdown list
Altering the Room/Venue of the Workshop, achieved by clicking the Edit Pen next to the Venue, and then selecting a Room from the dropdown list

After updating or adding any of these final details, you should be ready to start booking in students into your Workshop instance.

Warning: If you are intending to make use of any of aXcelerate’s Finance features, it is recommended you orient yourself on those before you initiate booking of any real students into the Workshop. See our Finance Management Help category for more details.

Enrolling/booking a student into a Public Workshop Instance

After working through the above, you should have a Workshop instance ready to have Contacts booked into it. By making sure you’ve created an Accredited Workshop instance, booking a student should simultaneously place them into the Workshop, while also enrolling them in to the Units of the linked, background Class.

When ready, ensure you are at the main Workshop page, and then use the following steps to manually book in a student to a public course:

Scroll down and click the Book Learners button
Search for a pre existing Contact, or create a new one with the + New Contact button (you can keep adding names to build up a list here for a bulk booking)
Click the Enrol button
Select whether the booking is Normal or Tentative; tentative bookings will not be enrolled into any accredited Units until the booking is confirmed
Ensure the correct Units of Competency are ticked so that they are added to the student’s booking (initial competency outcome codes can also be selected here)
Fill in relevant AVETMISS reporting information underneath the Unit table (study reason, funding codes, etc)
(Optional) Change the Requested by field to an alternative Contact; by default this is who the invoice for the booking will be addressed to
Click the Continue button to proceed

On the next screen you will be asked to confirm the student’s course cost, apply any relevant discounts, and decide if you’d like to raise an invoice or merely confirm the cost. After making your selections, click Confirm Price to proceed.

Lastly, you will be presented with a screen offering the opportunity to send a confirmation message to the student, either as a Template or a prebuilt confirmation message. If you’d like to return to the Workshop without sending any message, simply click the name of the Workshop in blue near the top of the screen.

After working through the above process, your Contact should now be booked into the Workshop, and enrolled into the accredited Units within the linked Class. You can verify this by going into the main Workshop page, scrolling down to the participant list, and looking at the table of Units and their outcomes next to your Contact.

Tip: It is possible to send multiple confirmations in bulk after enrolling several students into the Workshop instance, at outlined in this help article. If you have access to the Workflow engine, you can also fully automate the sending of confirmation Templates to new bookings with the relevant Workflow action.

Note: You can view the above steps performed visually in this SHOT video

Warning: This guide does not take into account any form of E-Learning or Assessment that may be required for your students. These should generally be applied before proceeding with any enrolments. See our Help category for more information about these features.

Enrolling/booking a student into an In-House Workshop instance

After working through the steps for creating an In-House Workshop instance further above, you should have a Workshop instance ready to have new Contacts booked into it. By making sure you’ve created an Accredited Workshop instance, booking a student should simultaneously place them into the Workshop, while also enrolling them into the Units of the linked, background Class.

When ready, ensure you are at the main Workshop page, and then use the following steps to manually book in a student to a in-house course:

Scroll down and click the Book Learners button
Enter the key details for the students who need to be booked into the course (you can click the Display Columns dropdown to add in more fields like a phone number)
Set the Organisation that the new Contacts should be linked to
(Optional) Select the Postal Address or Street Address that should be applied to the new Contacts
In the Determine duplicate contacts IN NEW ENTRIES by matching dropdown, select what fields the system should check in order to detect if a Contact in the booking form already exists in aXcelerate or not
(Optional for Learner Portal access) Tick the Automatically generate Learner Users? checkbox if the students will need to log into the aXcelerate Learner Portal
In the Accredited Details section, ensure the correct Units of competency are ticked so that they are added to the student’s booking (initial competency outcome codes can also be selected here)
Fill in relevant AVETMISS reporting information underneath the Unit table (study reason, funding codes, etc)
Click the Register Learners button to proceed

After working through the above process, your Contacts should now be created and booked into the Workshop. Furthermore, they will also be enrolled into the accredited Units within the linked Class. You can verify this by going into the main Workshop page, scrolling down to the participant list, and looking at the table of Units and their outcomes next to your Contact.

Tip: After clicking the Book Learners button mentioned above, you can also click the Download Booking Spreadsheet button to obtain an empty spreadsheet with spaces for student details. This spreadsheet can be filled in outside of aXcelerate, potentially by a client. Once filled, the spreadsheet can be uploaded into an In-House Workshop instance with the Upload Booking Spreadsheet button. This will fill in the booking fields that normally need to be done manually, as outlined in step 2 up above.

Note: The In-House booking form used for this kind of Workshop coordination will both create and book Contacts into the course. This means you do not strictly need to create a Contact before initiating the booking process.

Workshop Management Webinar

This webinar demonstrates

Configuring Workshop Types
Creating Workshop instances (Public and In-House)
Booking Contacts into an In-House Workshop instance