Sometimes we want to give people content and we can’t just use a learning profile (because they share a job type with another person who won’t need the same content) and we can’t use a location attribute (because not everyone in the same location needs this particular content).
How to create and assign a learner attribute.
Start at your Learners menu, search for the person in question and Edit:
A learner attribute can be anything. It might be a key holder, a fire warden and if you’re allocating certain courses to people who are over 18 then their learner attribute might be “>18”. Think of it as something that describes the additional content you’d like to give someone that is outside of their job type and the location where they work. It’s also good to know that the same learner attribute can be applied to lots of individuals, you don’t need one learner attribute per person! (So “give these courses to Ivan” is not a great approach for a learner attribute!)
Scroll down to the bottom of the Edit User screen and pick an attribute from the existing list:
If you don’t see what you’re looking for then simply type the name of the new learner attribute and, when you’re ready, click where is says “Create new attribute called …”. It will do just that, including any typos! This is a really great way to create learner attributes quickly, just when you need them:
If you need to change your learner attribute, pick Manage Attributes, and pick the 3 dots next to the attribute that you’d like to update:
Renaming is quick and simple:
Deleting a learner attribute is simplicity itself, but only if there are no assigned courses.
You can also join two existing learner attributes together so that they become one attribute. Pick Merge from the 3 dots next to the learner attribute that you’d like to remove, and search for the learner attribute that you’d like to combine it with:
When you’ve selected the attribute you’d like to combine with, press Merge:
Restricting content to individuals
There is one important scenario that you might not have considered, and it looks like this. Imagine you have a colleague who is a sales assistant, just like your other sales assistants in every way in terms of their job type and location – apart from one thing, they have learning difficulties. It is this that sets them apart because you might only want to give them a smaller set of learning content. Your challenge is that they will already have a learner profile assigned to them because of their job type.
Here are a couple of options you can take:
Create a new Job Type (you may need to do this in your HR platform if you are automating your learner imports) and assign a learner profile with no courses assigned. Then you can create a learner attribute with just the courses you’d like them to complete for themselves.
Use the Mark as complete tool to “force pass” those courses that they are unable to complete themselves.
What’s next?
You’ve done everything you need to on the learner side, all you need to do next is make sure that this learner attribute does something, and for that you should read Assigning attributes to courses
You might also find these useful:
Assigning courses to locations