Learning Management Collection Refresh Schedule

The Learning Management data collection is refreshed every night in the Data Warehouse. The batch job that refreshes the data starts at about 3:10 a.m., seven nights per week, and is usually finished before 4:20 a.m. This job completely replaces the contents of the refreshed tables. Note that the Learning Management data collection is not available for querying while the job is in progress.

Source of the Data
Most of the data in the Learning Management data collection comes from Knowledge Link, the learning management system used by the University and by the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The Learning Management data collection also stores some data from the Penn Profiler, the system that identifies an individual's training needs and assigns the appropriate courses to the individual. The Business Objects Learning Management and Profiler Universe facilitates access to a subset of the Learning Management data collection, as well as to reference tables with data on University orgs. (from the BEN Financials General Ledger system, in the General Ledger data collection), and on University employees and job classes (from the Payroll system, in the Salary Management data collection).

Time Span Covered
Knowledge Link has been in use since March, 2005. For some courses, data is available for course iterations that were scheduled before that time. (A course iteration is an offering of a particular version of a course. For example, version 2 of the course on Software Package X will have two course iterations if it is offered in two different places on the same date and at the same time.) Each registration transaction is stored, so it is possible to track whether and how a trainee's registration for a given course iteration changed over time. However, Knowledge Link stores only current information about everything else. For example, if a trainee originally was required to take a given course, but never registered for it, and now is not required to take it, there is no way to tell that the trainee was ever required to take the course. Although Knowledge Link stores information on multiple versions of some courses, it stores only the latest information for each version. If the title of a course version is changed from A to B, there is no way to tell that it was ever A.

The Penn Profiler was implemented over a 7 to 10 week period beginning in April, 2008, but some earlier records are available for University employees who participated during the pilot project phase. Records are stored for all of the responses to the Penn Profiler survey, and all the required course assignments fed from the Penn Profiler to Knowledge Link. It is possible to see not only an individual's latest survey response and Profiler-identified course assignments, but also to see how they have changed over time.