EHS Training: Academic Subject-based Certification Rules

This document describes a proposal to add students' enrollment in specific academic subjects as a new "trigger" for EHS-related training requirements.

I. Overview

I.A. Current rules for training requirements

The EHS Training requirements and records component running on EHSWEB supports comprehensive rules for determining who needs EHS-related training. Training requirements are grouped into certification types. For each certification type, there are

• Certification trigger rules.
  These indicate what (a) job title, (b) DLC, or (c) self-reported EHS Activities trigger a requirement to complete the certification type.
• Certification completion rules.
  These indicate which courses or other units must be completed in order to complete the certification type.

People's EHS Activities and DLC affiliations are self-reported when they take the EHSWEB-based Training Needs Assessment. Employees' job titles are fed into EHSWEB from the HR system via the Warehouse each night. The certification trigger rules, and other rules and paramenters in the system are maintained by specified training administrators in the EHS Office.

Each night, the system examines each person's job title (if any), self-reported EHS Activities and self-reported DLC(s) to see if any of these match the certification trigger rules. If so, the system records the fact that the individual must complete the certification type indicated by the rule, and the system tracks whether or not the person has completed the required training associated with the certification type. A person can have multiple certification type requirements, and multiple EHS course requirements, based on their job title, EHS Activities, and DLC(s)>

I.B. Another certification trigger type

In the proposed enhancement for EHS Training rules, we will add a student's enrollment in specified academic subjects as another trigger rule. EHS Office training administrators would maintain rules that list certain academic subjects that involve laboratory work, and for each subject indicate a related certification type and EHS training requirements. For example, a student enrolled in subject 5.310 (Laboratory chemistry) might be required to complete a new certification type "Student in Chemistry Lab" which in turn would carry a requirement to complete an EHS-offered chemical hygiene course.

The EHS Office training administrators would be able to pick from a list of academic subjects, and define training rules for a small number of these subjects that involve laboratory work. Each subject might trigger the same or different certification types, involving the same or different EHS courses, according to the decisions made jointly by the EHS Office training administrators and the instructors for laboratory-based subjects in the various DLCs.

II. Business process and data flow

II.A. Steps in the process

1. Nightly feeds from the Warehouse bring a list of subjects into a table in EHSWEB. The subjects will be limited to lab-based subjects within the School of Science, School of Engineering, and Whitaker College that have been offered at MIT within the past few years
2. EHS Office Administrators define certification rules related to specified academic subjects, and define course completion requirements for these certification types
   • Issue to be resolved: Some subjects are cross-referenced in more than one department. Will we look at only the "master subject ID" for these subjectss and treat all cross-referenced subject IDs as equivalent, or will we require rules for all of the different subject IDs for the same master subject?
3. Following registration, students' subject registration data will be fed via the Warehouse into EHSWEB. A list of students currently registered in specified subjects will be included in the feed, but only for lab-based courses within the School of Science, School of Engineering, and Whitaker College.
4. Each night, based on the certification trigger rules and the current registration data, the system will determine which students need to complete certification types and their related courses. Reports on students' completed and uncompleted EHS Training will be made available to specially-authorized administrators within the EHS Office and within the DLCs. (Reports will be available in the Warehouse and on EHSWEB.)
5. Students will be able to use a web-based interface to view their EHS course requirements, and in the case of web-based courses, actually complete the training. In other cases, EHS trainers will offer live training to students enrolled in a given subject early in the semester during regular class time.
6. After the end of the semester, data on student enrollment and the resulting training requirements will be archived and cleared from the database on EHSWEB to prepare for the next semester.

II.B. Concerns about the proposed process

The main concerns we have about the business process outlined above are related to the accuracy and timeliness of data about student subject enrollment fed from MITSYS via the Warehouse to EHSWEB. Our understanding is that data about students registered in subjects may not be fed to the Warehouse until a few days after registration, and even after that point, students may continue to add or drop subjects. We have been told that at MIT, students sometimes do not officially enroll in a subject until after the end of the semester.

Despite the issue of data being incomplete early in the semester, we think that the overall process may still be practical. Students who are officially registered will be tracked by the EHS system. Students who are not yet officially registered will have the ability to take web-based courses and sit in classroom courses, and their successful completion of the courses will be recorded. It will be possible to verify compliance with training rules for all students who register for lab-related courses, even if the actual list of registered students is not available until later in the semester.

To make sure that no student misses the required training at the beginning of a semester of a lab-related course, we should make sure that either (a) the rules for late registration for subjects be tightened for lab-related courses, so that students will not be allowed in the lab until they have officially registered, or (b) instructors for lab-based courses take responsibility for students present in their labs who have not yet officially registered, and make sure that these non-registered students complete the required EHS training.

III. Tasks involved to accomplish the enhancement

III.A. Nightly feed program for getting list of subjects from the Warehouse

On EHSWEB, do the following:

• Build a new table in the database tr_academic_subject to contain a list of all subjects (within the limits described above)
• Write a feed program to move list of academic subjects from the Warehouse table "subject_offered" into the new EHSWEB table. Limit the list to subjects offered over the past ?? years within the 3 schools listed above that have a lab section.
  • The Warehouse team will eventually build a view that does the limiting of subjects, and then we will switch the SELECT statement in the nightly feed program to point to the new view rather than subject_offered.
• Modify the feed program for all trigger objects (ehs_trigobj.pm) to include the new type of trigger 'S' (subject)

III.B. Modification of web interface for maintaining certification rules to support academic subjects

Minimal modifications will be required to the CGI scripts for the UI for maintaining certification rules so that EHS Training administrators will be able to define certification rules based on academic subjects.

III.C. Nightly feed to get students enrolled in specified subjects

• Warehouse team will build a view of student enrollment data that includes only students enrolled in the current term in subjects within the 3 schools listed above that have a lab section.
• Create a new database table tr_person_academic_subject to include data about students enrolled in academic subjects
• Write a feed program to populate the new table

III.D. Modification of calculation of people's training requirements

Modify ehs_training_needs.pm and related stored procedures to

• Include academic subject enrollments in the list of people's triggers in tr_person_all_trigger
• Include the new trigger type in calculation of training requirements

IV.E. Checking reports and modifying them if needed

• Students with academic subjects need to be displayed even if they do not complete the Training Needs Assessment; handle "default" DLCs for students based on the subject they are enrolled in
• Check various reports on EHSWEB and in the Warehouse to make sure they still work and support the new trigger type. Make minor modifications if necessary
• Determine whether additional reports are needed to display the new data