Many of you know that my team are working hard to develop a replacement LMS which will replace the ageing, creaking and unpopular Ultilearn platform. An options paper was submitted to Command Board which recommended that Moodle should be the replacement, which was agreed and we are now really starting to make some good progress on the new platform.
There is still a lot of work to do but I am very excited to share this preview with you
I will not be pushed on timelines for deployment as there are a lot of moving parts, but be assured that it will be as soon as possible.
I can not stress enough how much of an unlock this well be. Less issues and admin related to the constant issues with Ultilearn. A streamlined and more appealing approach to classification exams. It’s all a big win really
That’s great progress. It’s good to see such effective working between volunteers and permanent staff at HQAC, that’s producing results and benefits to all. Something for everyone to learn from.
i second @mprentice1’s comments - if anything this kind of announcement is exactly what corporate SM accounts are good for - a good news story to put up on the bulletin board.
If this was the announcement that we are now ready to move over to a new learning platform and that what the plan will be for moving ~50000 users over, then yes I’d agree that it should be internal comms via email etc first, then via social media later.
Indeed - this is simply a development update like we have done for other platforms like Cadet Portal. If you read the article on Bader SharePoint that both the post on here and on social media link to, that will be clear.
When it comes to the full release, believe me, you will know about it through all of the internal communications channels, the CoC and anyone else that will listen!
Can we have this available to the AEF Cadre as well?
As it stands there is no way of them being able to complete any form of mandatory training required for CFAVs. When I mentioned it formally to HQ RAFAC I was told that we could access it once a CFAV is added to SMS. AEFs do not use SMS and are unable to be added (response from the Bader team) so are unable to use Ultilearn.
This is part of a bigger problem - when I started helping a particular AEF with their flying allocations about 2/3 years ago, alongside my ATC colleague, it became clear just how much stuff they couldn’t do because they had no access to BADER and particularly SMS (but also Sharepoint); equally, they had MOSS, which had information that I needed and wasn’t on RAFAC Sharepoint. Frustrating.
I don’t know if there’s a way to provide them with a separate BADER login experience - I know from experience at work that Office 365 doesn’t cope at all with logging into separate accounts unless you use Incognito Mode or similar, which is a major faff. But it might be sufficient for their needs.
But why dont AEFs use SMS?
They should operate admin wise identically to a normal Sqn. Just ‘on their books’ they would have zero cadets showing.
They should list all their staff, attendances, registers, qualifications etc etc.
This would enable them to complete mandatory training, access sharepoint etc.
Surely this is a very simple easy win.
Just create x1 new entry for each AEF and VGS.
I think this goes some way to explaining why flying and gliding doesn’t come with a designated SMS activity too, which I always found odd given that we use it for everything else.
Would also make sense if they did this as wing could put flying out for bids and then add the cadets/staff attending onto SMS - The VGS/AEF then know who is coming and have contact details for if they need to get in touch… Without having an email stream/spreadsheets etc…
