PDF Estimated Time To Read This: 3 – 4 minutes
Overview
In PD Place there is a simple but unique capability that was introduced in version 3.7 called “Extra Credits“.
Not many clients currently use this feature and therefore I would like to review its capabilities and give you some ideas of how it can be used. Extra Credits provides you with the capability to indicate that the successful completion of an in-service will earn participants a specified number of special credit units. The number of extra credit units earned is specified in the in-service detail screen and a special report is available, to both the Supervisor and Site Roles, to summarize who has earned these extra credits units during a specified period of time and by location.
Extra Credits could be used in the following situations:
a) Your organization may offer special after hour or summer in-services that staff can voluntarily attend. As part of this you may wish to track the hours so that financial compensation can be paid or you may wish to grant equivalent time off.
b) Your organization may not want to use the more advanced Learning Program or Qualification features of PD Place but simply wants to track whether certain staff has attended a specific group of in-services during a specified period of time.
c) If applied to all in-services, it could provide your site roles (Principals, VP, managers, etc) with details on the total hours of training or substitute days the staff at their assigned locations have taken during a specified period of time.
Theses are just a few applications of this feature but I am sure there are many, many more!
How to Use the Feature
The Extra Credit functionality is controlled through the preferences as shown below.
Here you can turn the functionality on or off , specify the field label, indicate the type of credit units and specify a specific list of values that can be selected on the in-service screen and report filters.
On the In-service Admin Screen the following new field will appear. Here you will set the number of extra credit units earned through this in-service.
The Report is available to both the Supervisor or Site Roles (Principals, Managers, etc) via a Report link called “Extra Credits“.
The report screen provides a number of filter capabilities as shown below. The report can be filtered by location, date range and the amount of units earned.
The report can also provide either a detailed list by staff indicating all in-services and the associated extra credit units earned or you can request a summary report with grand totals for each staff member.
The following is a sample of the detailed report.
As you can see the extra credit functionality is simply but effective and I hope that this brief introduction has sparked your interest and that you will consider it’s usage in your own environment.
