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Jun 28, 2026

Research Training & LMS (#117)

Generic, institution-neutral training curriculum and Learning Management System, provided by ahgResearchPlugin. Nothing about any customer is hard-coded — the roles/cohort, languages and pass marks are all data you configure per course.

This is the PSIS (Symfony/AtoM) parity port of the Heratio ResearchTrainingService and ResearchTrainingController.

Concepts

Entity Description
Course A unit of training. Has a title, description, target audience/role, language, a configurable default pass mark %, and a status (draft, published, archived).
Module An ordered piece of course content. A module may reuse a curriculum lecture (from the research_lecture table provided by the #116 curriculum twin — degrades gracefully if absent) or carry its own Markdown body.
Assessment A set of multiple-choice questions for the course. Has an optional pass mark that overrides the course default when set.
Enrolment A learner enrolled on a course. Tracks status (enrolled → in_progress → completed) and the best assessment score.
Progress Per-module completion tracking for an enrolment.
Certificate Issued automatically — with a unique certificate number and the passing score — once a learner passes the assessment and has completed every module. Printable.

Workflow

Builder / administrator

  1. Create a course (title, audience, language, pass mark, status).
  2. Add modules in order. For each module either pick a curriculum lecture to reuse, or write inline Markdown.
  3. Configure the assessment — add multiple-choice questions (≥ 2 options each), mark the correct option, optionally set a pass mark that overrides the course default.
  4. Enrol learners (name + optional email).

Learner

  1. Open the enrolment and work through each module, marking it complete.
  2. When all modules are complete, the assessment unlocks.
  3. Submit answers — the attempt is auto-scored. The best score is retained.
  4. On pass + all modules done, the enrolment is marked completed and a unique certificate is issued and can be printed.

Scoring rules

  • Score = round(correct / total * 100).
  • Pass = score ≥ effective pass mark, where the effective pass mark is the assessment's pass_mark if set, otherwise the course's pass_mark (default 80).
  • A course with no modules is treated as trivially "all modules complete".
  • Certificates are idempotent — re-submitting after a pass returns the existing certificate, it is never re-issued.

Screens / routes

Route Purpose
/training Course list + the current user's enrolments
/training/new Create a course
/training/:id Course detail (modules, assessment summary, enrolments)
/training/:id/edit Edit a course
/training/:id/status Set course status
/training/:id/delete Delete a course (cascades modules/assessment/enrolments/progress/certificates)
/training/:id/module/add Add a module to a course
/training/module/:id/edit Edit / delete a module
/training/:id/assessment Edit the assessment
/training/:id/enrol Enrol a learner
/training/enrolment/:id/delete Remove an enrolment
/training/learn/:id Learner view: modules + progress + assessment unlock
/training/learn/:id/module/:module_id/complete Toggle module completion
/training/learn/:id/assessment Take the assessment
/training/learn/:id/assessment/submit Submit + auto-score
/training/certificate/:id Printable certificate

Data model

Tables (all InnoDB, utf8mb4, no ENUM): training_course, training_module, training_assessment, training_enrolment, training_progress, training_certificate.

See ahgResearchPlugin/database/training.sql.

Notes

  • Markdown is rendered with the bundled Parsedown in safe mode; if unavailable the service falls back to escaped text with line breaks so content is never lost.
  • The curriculum-lecture reuse degrades gracefully: if research_lecture is not installed, the lecture picker is simply empty and modules use their own Markdown.