SabaLearning is designed to help organizations harness the power oflearning to manage the development of their most important resource-people.With Saba Learning, organizations can develop and manage a catalogof learning offerings and deploy this catalog across the extendedenterprise of customers, partners, employees and suppliers. Organizationscan then measure competency gaps across the extended enterpriseand close those gaps by leveraging the Learning Catalog to recommendtargeted learning.
This chapter provides an overview of how learners and managerscan use Saba Learning to find, manage, and participate in differentforms of learning -scheduled, self-paced, physical, and blended- in order to close competency and certification gaps and ensurecontinuous skills development.
Overview of Saba Learning
Using Saba Learning, learners and managers can target requiredcompetencies, certifications, and curricula; assess competency andcertification gaps; and plan learning to address those gaps. Learnerscan then participate in different forms of learning-instructor-ledor web-based-in order to close those gaps, measure their progressagainst targets, and then ensure continued improvement by repeatingthe learning process.
Managers will have the ability to assign learning offerings totheir team members. They can search the Learning Catalog and selectlearning offerings they want their team members to take, and assignthe offerings to one or more team members.
Learners and managers can view learning offerings they have intheir current learning list, and offerings they have completed orrequested in the past. They can search the Catalog for offeringsneeded to close certification or competency gaps, or those neededfor career advancement.
Individuals may have valuable knowledge to share and are grantedthe option to add resources to the knowledge base. This supportsthe option for a learner to hold a brown bag lunch or another formof informal training and record the event. The learners can addtheir resources to the knowledge base based on guidelines definedby the content administrator.
User Roles
Saba Learning is designed to be used by everyone in theextended enterprise, including both internal members of the organization(employees) and external members of the organization (customers,partners, suppliers, and distributors).
Users of Saba Learning can have one or more of the followingroles:
- Individual User or Learner
- Manager
- Local Learning Registrar
Individual User or Learner
Everyone with access to the system has the role of individualuser or learner.
Note: In Saba Learning, individual users are oftenreferred to as 'learners', as this is their primary function withinthe system.
As an individual user, you can do the following:
- Analyzeyour competency gaps
- Self-assess your competencies
- Assess others on competencies (as requested)
- Volunteer as expert
- Find experts
- Find learning offerings in the Learning Catalog
- Register for learning
- Take learning
- View learning results
- View your current learning and learning history
- View/track progress on your certifications and curricula
- Create learning offerings (where authorized)
- Build your learning plan, which includes planned learning, plannedcertifications, desired competencies and proficiency levels, andcareer interests
- View your user profile, which includes your preferences, contactinformation, and career interests
The functionality available to individual users is located in the Me role.
Manager
Managersare responsible for managing a team of one or more direct reports. Anyperson defined in Saba as the manager for another user has the manager role.
Managers provide supervisory functions for the individuals theymanage.
Specifically, managers in Saba can perform the following functions:
- Track competencies/view competency gaps for team and team members
- Assess the competencies of team members
- Build learning plans for team members and view development progress
- View the user profiles of team members
- Approve learning for team members
- Record learning results for team members
- Find learning offerings in the Learning Catalog
- Recommend learning offerings to team members
- Assign/track certifications for team members
- Give credit for ad hoc learning to team members by adding itto their learning history
- View team current learning and learning history
- Search for people based on name, location, job, competency,organization unit, and other criteria
Managers in the application are also individual users. For managing team learning, managers use the functionality located in the My Team role. All functionality in the My Team role is designed for use by managers. For managing personal learning, managers use the functionality under the Me role.
For information about defining users as managers, see the People and HR Administrator Guide.
Local Learning Registrar
Locallearning registrars act as proxies for the manager of an organization.They have special privileges which apply to the people in the organization(s)they administer. Each organization can have zero, one, or many locallearning registrars, and any person can be designated the locallearning registrar for one or more organizations.
Local learning registrars in Saba can perform the following functions:
- Place orders for learners (on behalf of manager)
- Cancel orders/registrations for learners
Local learning registrars use the Registrar role to perform these tasks.
For information about using this role, see the Registrar Guide. For information about defining users as local learning registrars, see the People and HR Administrator Guide.
Key Learning Concepts
This section provides introductory information about conceptsand terms that are key to understanding Saba Learning.
Learning Offerings and Events
In Saba Learning, all users are learners. Learners canuse the system to find, record, and disseminate learning. Thesecapabilities are described in the sections below:
- Find Learning
- Create Learning
- Record Learning
Find Learning
The Saba Learning Catalog provides an extensive catalogof learning offerings. These offerings can include learning of alltypes, such as instructor-led classes, web-based training, simulations,videos, and even shippable products.
Learners can use the Learning Catalog as a resource to assistwith job training and career development. Managers can use the LearningCatalog to find learning offerings that will fill competency gapsamong their team members.
Learners can browse or search the Learning Catalog to find learningofferings.
Create Learning
Learners may have valuable knowledge to share and may begranted the option to add informal learning offerings to the Catalog.This supports the option for a learner to hold a brown bag lunchor another form of informal training and to record the event. Thelearner can add their offering to the general catalog given certainguidelines defined by the catalog administrator.
Record Learning
A manager or local learning registrar has the ability torecord a learning event for anyone within his or her team or assignedorganization. This event can be an event that took place externallysuch as a university course or a conference. They also has the abilityto select a learning offering from the Catalog and give credit toteam members or anyone within his or her assigned organization.
Learning Interventions
A learning intervention is a recommended learning initiativetargeted at upgrading a specific skill.
When you identify a competency gap using the gap analysis tool, the application can recommend learning interventions to help closethe gap. These learning interventions can take the form of learningofferings (such as a web-based or instructor-led course). Or, learninginterventions can take the form of referrals to subject matter experts.By making subject matter experts available as mentors, organizationscan tap their own resources to close competency gaps.
Note: You must be using Saba Learning for the systemto recommend interventions in the form of learning offerings.
Certifications
A certification is a group of learning offerings that alearner must complete in order to gain a certification or be qualifiedin a particular technology, educational area, or field. As regulatorycompliance and formalized credentials become a larger part of hiringand development requirements, it is increasingly important for organizationsto manage and track learner certifications. The application enables individual learners to select certification packages from the LearningCatalog. These packages can include items like tests, instructor-led courses,or web-based training that are required to comply with regulationsand technical certifications.
A certification consists of a set of pre-defined paths, whereeach path consists of a specific sequence of steps (learning modules)that must be successfully completed in order to certify knowledgeor mastery of a specific skill set. Each learning module consistsof a set of learning offerings, one or more of which must be fulfilledin order to complete the learning module. Typically, a certificationmust be completed in a specific period and is valid for a certaintime.
The following diagram illustrates the structure of a certification:
Curricula
Curricula are often used within an organization to definethe learning offerings required for a particular job. For example,a New Hire Curriculum is used to establish all the learning offeringsthat a new hire must take when they join the organization. Anotherexample is a Management Track Curriculum. This can be a curriculumthat is intended for managers within an organization. It can havea variety of different management courses that the manager musttake.
Curricula can be created with different paths. The learner maynot be required to take every offering in the curriculum or maychoose a particular path based on their personal preference. SabaEnterprise will automatically track which learning offerings thelearner takes that apply to the curriculum and show the learner'sprogress.
Learners will be able to view their curricula. Similar to competenciesand certifications, a curriculum can be added to a learner's profilein one of two ways: their manager added the curriculum to the learner'sprofile, or the individual learner added the curriculum to theirown profile.
Learners can set a target date for when they want to completethe curriculum. Curricula can be sorted by name, status, targetdate, and by who assigned the curriculum, and the list can be filteredby status.
Interaction with Saba Performance Suite
Saba Learning behaves differently when Saba Performanceis not enabled in the system. In a Saba Learning-only environment,some roles and menus are different. Learners can add learning itemsto their learning plans. They can provide due dates for completingthe learning. Learners can view their learning plan and delete itemsfrom the learning plan. When Saba Performance is enabled, the planneditems will appear as learner's goals with a learning item in it.The learning item added to the learning plan will create a performancegoal, internally.
You cannot view the Performance role in the system on which only Saba Learning Suite is enabled. In the Me role, links such as Plans and Performance are not displayed. Similarly, in the My Team role, tabs such as Plans and Performance are not displayed.
