Content Management - Overview

Microsoft Community Training platform allows you to create and manage content, as well as it quickly and easily. Organizations can add rich multi-media content, quizzes and exams as content and create a structured learning experience for the learners.

All the management functionalities of courses are stacked together in a single panel under the Content Tab  – a one-stop-shop for administrators to manage content on the portal. From the content tab, administrators can create Categories, Courses and Learning paths, upload and manage course materials, configure course settings, and much more.

In this section, you will learn how to leverage the content management capabilities on the management portal to create and manage your online learning content.

Content structure on the platform

Microsoft Community Training platform provides the following learning taxonomy to categories and structure content on the portal:

1. Category

A  Category  is a collection of multiple courses.

Think of it like a subject or a domain in a traditional education system. Within that subject or domain, you can have one or more courses each of which may instruct learners on a specific topic within the domain.

For example, training your extended workforce may include different subjects such as communication, interpersonal relationships, customer satisfaction and compliance. Each of these subjects can be a category on the platform.

Alternatively, categories can also help you organize your learning content for different departments within your organization such as marketing, legal, customer support and finance. Each of these departments can be a category on the platform.

2. Course

A Course is a collection of lessons and assessments.

Think of it as a book in a traditional education system. For each course, you can have multiple lessons as chapters. After each lesson, you may optionally include a Practice Quiz to serve as a refresher on the lesson. Finally, you may include an Exam at the end of the course to evaluate the learner’s knowledge and proficiency on the entire content of that course.

Every course may also include a certificate, that will be awarded to the learner on either a successful completion of the course or passing the exam, depending on your choice.

For example, an organization has a technical course on Washing Machine installation with a total duration of 20 minutes from start to finish. We can divide the video into segments of 2 to 3 minutes resulting in 6-10 lessons and add an exam towards the end to assess and certify the learners.

3. Lessons

A Lesson is a single unit of learning in the form of Audio, Video, PDF, Word document or PowerPoint presentation. These are created as easy-to-learn capsules – short, simple and informative.

Supported file formats for content

• Video lessons: MP4, 3GP, 3G2, 3GP2, AVI, MEPG, MPG, WMV, VOB, MKV, FLV, DV, TS, ASF, M4V, MOV
• Audio Lessons: MP3 & OGG
• Other formats: PDF, PPT, PPTX, DOCX, EPUB, HTML
• Hyperlinks: Paste link in the upload lesson dialogue box.

4. Assessments

Assessments are a way to test learner’s understanding of the course content and check their knowledge & proficiency. They may contain one or more multiple-choice questions. Microsoft Community Training platform provides two types of assessments:

Practice Quiz

A Practice Quiz to serve as a refresher for learners and facilitate revision of a particular lesson. It encourages and motivates the learner to go to the next lesson.

For example, a learner who has seen 3 lessons takes a Practice Quiz and finds that he has got 2 out of 3 questions correct. He can go back to the lesson, view it again and then repeat the quiz till he corrects his understanding.

Exam

An Exam is to evaluate learners on their proficiency and knowledge in a particular course, with limited number of attempts and passing percentage as specified by you.

Exam is always kept at the end of the course and learners can attempt only when they have completed all the lessons and practice quizzes in the course.

For example, an organization who wants to certify their technician on Washing Machine installation can put an exam at the end with a passing percentage to assess their knowledge and provide certificate accordingly.

Difference between a Practice Quiz and an Exam

Area	Practice Quiz	Exam
Purpose	Allows the learner to revise the concept of the previous lessons. Use it as a confidence-building reiteration of the key points in the previous lessons before moving further	Means of Assessment where the learner is evaluated for the questions. Based on the performance in the Exam, the learner is awarded a Certificate of Completion.
Functionalities	There is no restriction on the number of attempts for a Practice Quiz. There can be one or more practice quizzes in a course	There is passing percentage, a limit on the number of attempts and shuffle mode for an Exam. There can be only one Exam at the end of the course

5. Certification

Organization can enable certification and offer customized certificates to the learners on successful completion of the courses.

6. Learning Paths

A Learning Path is a logical sequence of Courses referenced from one or multiple categories.

Think of Learning Path like a curriculum that specializes learner in a specific skill in a traditional education system. Within a curriculum, you can have one or more courses from different categories each of which may instruct learners to gain expertise in a guided manner to gain the specific skill set(s). A Learning Path references courses from various categories which learners can be optionally enforced to complete in an order. A Learning Path can be assigned by the administrators to a individual or group of users.

For example, training your extended workforce may include different competencies such as Sales Expert, Compliance 101 and Safety Expert. Each of these competencies can be a learning path on the platform with courses from different categories added to the paths.

Steps to create content in the portal

Content creation is one of the core activities of any online learning program. This is why Microsoft Community Training platform provides specific set of features to help administrators to create new content on the portal. Given below are the few simple steps to get started with content management on the management portal:

Step 1 - Create a new category

Here are the detailed steps on how to create new category on the portal.

Step 2 - Create a course

Here are the detailed steps on how to create a new course on the portal.

Step 3 – Upload content for the course

Here are the detailed steps on upload content for the course on the portal.

Step 4 – Add practice quiz and exam for the course

Here are the detailed steps on how to add quizzes and exams for the course on the portal.

Step 5 – Publish the course for the learners

Here are the detailed steps on how to publish a course for the learners on the portal.

Step 6 – Create a new Learning path

Here are the detailed steps on how to create a new Learning path for the learners on the portal.

Step 7 – Add courses to the Learning path

Here are the detailed steps to add courses to the Learning path for the learners on the portal.

Step 8 – Publish the Learning path

Here are the detailed steps on how to publish a Learning path.

Enabling Global Content across organizations

Microsoft Community Training allows to create a common repository of content which is called as Global Content. With this feature, you can have common content across organizations/tenants in your instance.

Note

This Feature will allow you to have global content across multiple tenants for your MS Teams deployment

Steps to enable Global Content

1. Pre-requisite:

   a. In App Service Configurations, search for Features:IsMultiOrgDeployment, add this if it does not exist, follow this step

   b. For instances with MS Teams Integration: Follow the steps to enable Multi-Tenant support for Azure Active Directory based Authentication in Teams

2. Login to Azure portal

3. Navigate to Steps to set the Configurations on the Platform

4. Create/Update with below mentioned App settings in Configurations

   Features:IsGlobalContentEnabled, set the value as true, then click ‘Ok’

   

5. Now, "Common" organization will be available while creating Categories/Learning Paths. Any content created under Common will be available for assignment to all admins.

   

View content analytics to track and measure effectiveness

Microsoft Community Training platform provides out of the box rich analytics for organizations to track overall learner’s enrollment and completion for different courses, measure learner’s performance and ensure quality of content in satisfactory and meets the success criteria set by the organization. The management portal has content and user related in-built reports at category level to help administrators track and measure effectiveness of the learning content.

Best practices to create courses on the portal

1. Use bulk upload courses to create multiple courses on the portal in few simple clicks

2. For video lessons – keep the length of the video short i.e. 2-3 minutes for easy consumption

3. Categories and courses are alphabetically stacked, so it is best to use numbering 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 etc.

4. Order of categories/courses can be changed by editing the name/number

5. Only order of lessons is user defined and can be manually moved up/down.

6. For quizzes and exams, keep the questions simple to help learners revise and retain the training lessons. It must cover key points of the lessons to keep learners engaged and encourage them to complete the course.