NEW MAT IS Part 1 (MAT Online Learning Center version)
Trainer Instruction Sheet
MAT IS Version 2.0, April 2011
MAT Trainers: This instruction sheet gives you information about the new MAT IS Part 1
course on the MAT Online Learning Center. This new course will replace the current MAT IS
Part 1 course (the one on the State of Virginia’s Knowledge Center) at the end of April, 2011.
About the new course: The new MAT IS Part 1 course includes all the same content as
the current Part 1 course. In response to trainer and VDSS requests, we have added features to
help ensure that the participants have watched and paid attention to all the content, so that they
will be more consistently prepared when they arrive for the MAT IS Part 2 class. Specifically:

In the new course, the participant must complete each module, including answering the
two to four multiple choice questions that we have embedded in each module and getting
50% or more of these questions right, before her or she can start the next module. The
participants get two opportunities to answer each question correctly. In our field tests,
these questions have worked very well, ensuring that the participants paid attention to the
modules without creating any undue anxiety, frustration or other problems.

The new course includes a Course Completion Certificate that the participant can print
out as soon as he or she has successfully completed all the modules. In the course, the
participant is told multiple times that he or she must bring his or her Completion
Certificate to the MAT IS Part 2 class in order to be admitted. The Course
Completion Certificate has the student’s name on it as well as a unique security code that
is stored in the learning system database should you have any concerns about certificate
forgery.

The new course has been completely rebuilt on a new software platform to address the
performance issues that participants were having with the current MAT IS Part 1 course
(difficult, complex enrollment process, unpredictable server downtime (course not
accessible), problems with getting the videos to play and/or with videos getting stuck in
loops, etc). The new course has been field tested with 52 actual providers and none of
these problems have occurred. Participants have been able to reliably register for and take
the course on a last-minute basis, as is often requested.

However, this is a new course, and as a wider range of providers use it, problems or
questions could emerge. It is *very helpful* and *much appreciated* to get feedback on
any problems or issues as soon as possible! We provide both a feedback form and an
email address (MAT@medhomeplus.org) that providers can use to send us feedback.
Impact on You: The new MAT IS Part 1 course should have minimal impact on you
as a Trainer. The only new procedure that you must do is to check for the participant’s
MAT IS Part 1 Course Completion Certificate when the participant arrives for the Part
2 class.
However, the new Part 1 course has several optional features that may be very helpful to
you, your customers, and your participants. Below is a summary of these new features,
and information on how to use them follows.
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New Features for Trainers: The new MAT IS Part 1 course gives Trainers the ability to
track the progress of their participants as well as to verify completion of Part 1 before the
participant begins Part 2 (more detailed information and illustrations on how to use each of these
features is provided further on in these instructions). As a Trainer:
1. You can see a list of all your MAT IS Part 1 students who have not yet registered for
Part 2, with data that can help you schedule their Part 2 classes: This list includes
the participants we have registered for MAT IS Part 1 who have taken MAT or MAT IS
training from you before, or who have indicated that they want to take Part 2 from you.
o
You can click on any participant in this list to see the participant’s contact
information, the date by which he or she needs to be trained, etc, to help in your
Part 2 class scheduling.
o
When you schedule these participants for Part 2, you can enter the date, start
time, and location of the Part 2 class, so that their progress will be easier to track.
2. You can track the progress of your MAT IS Part 1 students – You can go into the
MAT IS Part 1 class, and:
o
Click “Grades” to see at a glance which of your MAT IS participants have
started the MAT IS Part 1 and how far along each of them is in the course.
o
Click “Certificates” to see which of your MAT IS participants have
completed the MAT IS Part 1 and the date and time they received their
certificates, as well as the unique security code on each certificate. You can print
out this information to take with you to class.
3. You can verify that participants arriving to take the MAT IS Part 2 class have
completed MAT IS Part 1
o
Each student taking the MAT IS Part 1 through the Online Learning Center is
told repeatedly within the course that they must print out and bring their MAT IS
Part 1 Course Completion Certificate to the Part 2 class in order to be
admitted. Seeing this certificate is the best means possible (short of a proctored
test) to verify that the participant has completed the MAT IS Part 1 course.
New Features for Your Customers: The new MAT IS Part 1 course enables you to
offer two new services to your customer, the child day program administrator (details on these
services are given in the More About New Features for Administrators section):
1. The Group Enrollment service enables your child day program administrator customer to
conveniently enroll a group of employees in the MAT IS Part 1 online course at one time.
2. The Administrator Tracking service enables your child day program administrator
customer to conveniently track the progress of his or her employees in the MAT IS Part 1
course online. Some child day program administrators may want to ensure that their
employees have started the course and that they are making sufficient progress, preventing
the frustration and wasted investment that can be caused by unprepared participants
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attempting the MAT IS Part 2. This service requires a Program Enrollment Code which
must be set up in advance.
With this service, the Child Day Program Administrator can log in to the MAT Online
Learning Center, go into the MAT IS Part 1 course, click on Grades, and see the grades of his
or her employees, enabling him or her to tell which students have started the class and
how much progress they have made.
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Participant Registration for the New MAT IS Part 1 Online Course –
THE BASIC PROCESS
Using this basic process, you need not have any involvement in the MAT IS Part 1 course other
than checking for the MAT IS Part 1 Course Completion Certificate when the student arrives for
the Part 2 class. Note: see More About New Features for Trainers below for additional features
that may help you even more.
Here’s the basic registration process:
1. The participant goes to the MAT program webpage (shown below,
http://www.medhomeplus.org/MAT/index.php) as they always have.
2. In the MAT Independent Study section (highlighted in yellow below), there are currently
several links. Following the conversion from the current MAT IS system (the Knowledge
Center) to the new system (the Online Learning Center), all these links will be replaced
with one link – Registration for the MAT IS Part 1 online course.
3. The participant clicks the “Registration for the MAT IS Part 1 online course” link.
4. A registration instruction sheet will open for them (see below). This instruction sheet
gives an overview of the MAT course (Part 1 and Part 2), as well as instructions on how
to register for the MAT IS Part 1 online course, log in to the Online Learning Center,
print the MAT IS Handouts, take the MAT IS Part 1 course, print the MAT IS Part 1
Completion Certificate, and register for the MAT IS Part 2 class.
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5. The participant clicks the registration link in the Registration Instruction Sheet, and the
MAT IS Part 1 Participant Registration Form (see below) will open.
6. The participant fills in this form and clicks the “Submit” button at the bottom of the
form.
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7. The form comes directly to us, and we register the participant for the MAT IS Part 1
online course.
8. We email instructions to the participant on how to access the MAT Online Learning
Center and the MAT IS Part 1 course, including his or her username and password. These
instructions remind the participant that it is his or her responsibility to register for the
MAT IS Part 2 course, in addition to registering for Part 1. The instructions also provide
the Find a Trainer Near You link for participants that need to find a trainer.
9. The participant registers for the MAT IS Part 2 class (Some participants wait to do
this after completing Part 1)
10. The participant completes the MAT IS Part 1 course and prints his or her MAT IS
Part 1 Course Completion Certificate.
11. The participant appears at the MAT IS Part 2 class with his or her MAT IS Part 1
Course Completion Certificate, in addition to the CPR and First Aid cards and photo ID
that are also required for admission.
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More About New Features for Trainers
To learn how to conveniently enroll several participants at one time, see Group Enrollment for
Trainers at the end of this section.
By taking a few optional additional steps, trainers can reduce the risk of students failing MAT IS
Part 2, potentially improve customer service and potentially increase their number of MAT IS
participants as well. Here are these steps:
1. Check your MAT IS Part 1 Participants List frequently to learn of students that have
registered for the MAT IS Part 1 that have taken MAT training from you before, or who
have indicated that they want to take the MAT IS Part 2 class from you. To do this:
a. Go to the MAT Online Learning Center
o http://mat-elearning.medhomeplus.org
b. Scroll down and click on the MAT IS Scheduling and Registration Tool in the
Courses for MAT Trainers and Monitors section
c. In the MAT IS Scheduling and Registration Tool….
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d. … scroll down and click on the MAT IS Part 1 Participants List link in the
MAT IS Toolbox.
e. You will now see a list of all your participants who are registered for the MAT IS
Part 1 course but not yet registered for MAT IS Part 2. (illustration below)

You can sort these participants in ascending or descending order on any of
the fields using the Sort By menu (in the red circle in the illustration below).
After you’ve set how you want the data sorted, click the Save Settings
button to the right, and the participants will be sorted in that order. So for
instance, you could sort them in order of the date they need to be trained by,
to prioritize getting them scheduled for a Part 2 class.

You can view all the data on a participant by clicking the Magnifying
Glass icon (in the blue circle in the illustration below) next to that
participant’s name.

You can edit the data on a participant by clicking the Clipboard icon (also
in the blue circle in the illustration below) next to that participant’s name.
Note that all the participants initially have Jan 1, 1999 as their Part 2 class
date – that’s just a “placeholder” date – you can change it to the real date
when you schedule them for Part 2 (more on this in Step 4 below).
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You can use the scrollbar at the bottom of the window (circled in blue below) to “scroll” to
the right in this screen and see more of the fields that are included in this screen.
2. Use the information in the MAT IS Part 1 Participants List to help yourself
efficiently schedule these students for Part 2 if these participants haven’t already
contacted you to do so. Clicking the magnifying glass icon (see below) for any Part 1
participant listed on the Participant List gives you the participant’s contact information.
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
The illustration below shows where to find the participant’s contact information on
their individual data screen.

In Step 4 below, we’ll discuss how you can enter the Part 2 class date, time and
location when you have scheduled a participant for Part 2.
3. Track these students’ progress through the MAT IS Part 1 course
o
Go back to the Online Learning Center home page
o
Scroll down to Course Categories, and in the Courses for Child Day Program
Workers category, click the MAT IS Part 1 online course
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o
When you’re in the MAT IS Part 1 course, scroll down and click on “Grades”
(circled in red below)
o
In the Grades screen, select the class called “Unassigned_(your username)”. In
the example below, Jill Gallier-Durand is the trainer, so the class she would look
up is Unassigned_gallierdurand148 .(circled in red below).
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o
Now you should see a list of all your students who are registered for the Part
1 class but not yet registered for Part 2 (“unassigned”), and the Part 1 grades
for each of these students. In the example above, none of these three students
have started the Part 1 course yet. If they had finished any modules, you would
see a score for each module completed in the column for that module (you
use the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen to view the columns to the right).
o
Please note, this list could get very long if you have many MAT IS participants.
To make it easier to look up your participants, we encourage you to register them
for Part 2 and let us know the class details so that we can group them by class for
you.
o
You can use this information on how much progress the participants have made
in Part 1 to aid in your decisions about whether and when to contact these
students, as well as to track how soon a student will be ready to start Part 2.
4. For most efficient tracking, we encourage you to schedule your “unassigned” Part 1
participants for a Part 2 class and update the MAT IS Part 1 Participants List
accordingly. Then you will be able to look that class up anytime and track the progress
of the participants in that class. This can be a real timesaver just before the Part 2 class,
enabling you to quickly see whether or not everyone is prepared.
Here is how to do this:
o
In the MAT IS Scheduling and Registration Tool, click the MAT IS Part 1
Participants List link as was shown above.
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o
The screen above shows our participants Susie, Joan and Bob, with the screen
scrolled a bit to the right so that you can see all four Trainer Data Entry fields.
These are the fields highlighted in green.
o
Although you can enter data into all the fields on this database, it’s most likely
that these are the only fields you’ll need to change.
o
When you have scheduled the Part 2 class for each of these participants, enter
the class date into the “IS PART 2 DATE” column, the class time in the “IS
PART 2 TIME” column, and the class location in the “IS PART 2 LOCATION”
column.
o
To do this, you need to click the Clipboard icon next to the participant’s last
name (the leftmost column on this screen).
Clipboard
Icon
o
This will open a data entry screen for that participant (shown below for Susie).
o
Change the date in the MAT IS CLASS DATE field to the correct class
date (it will be preset as a date long past, such as January 1, 1999 – this is
just a placeholder). (see the red box below)
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o
Enter the class time in MAT IS PART 2 CLASS TIME field. Please
remember the am or pm! (see the red box below)
o
Enter the class location in the MAT IS PART 2 CLASS LOCATION
field. (see the red box below)
o
Then enter “class assigned” and your initials in the Made Changes? Tell
us here! field, so that we will know you have assigned this student to a class.
(see the blue box below)
o
We will then move that student in the MAT IS Part 1 online course from your
“Unassigned” class list to the correct class. This will make it much easier for
you to look up whether all the students in that class have finished the MAT
IS Part 1 course as the Part 2 class date approaches.
o
Please note – setting up classes and moving participants between classes is a
manual process. Please allow a business day for this to be done.
o
In the view below, the trainer has entered the date, time and location of the
MAT IS Part 2 class that Susie First has been scheduled for, and has let us know
that she has assigned this student to a Part 2 class in the Made Changes field.
o
Then she clicks the “Save and View” button at the bottom of the screen (see the
orange circle) to save the data she has entered.
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o
5.
Now when the Trainer logs in to check on how her April 15 Part 2 class is doing on MAT
IS Part 1, she doesn’t need to dig through her big class of Unassigned students and look
up each student that’s in the April 15th class. Instead, she can pull up her April 15 9am
class in Richmond (Class 041511_9am_Richmond) and Susie’s scores will be right
there (along with any other participants enrolled in that Part 2 class).
How to track the progress of participants who never appeared on your Part 1
Participant List: In some cases, participants will contact you to register for the Part 2 class
who never appeared on your Part 1 Participant List. This is because they had not yet decided
they wanted to take Part 2 from you when they registered for Part 1, so we did not know to
put them on your list.
It’s easy to let us know that these participants are taking Part 2 from you so that you can track
their progress in Part 1. Here’s how:
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o
Go to the MAT IS Scheduling and Registration Tool, and in the MAT IS Toolbox
section, click on either of the MAT IS Class Scheduling and Registration Tool – One
Class links (one of these forms is oriented horizontally and the other vertically; that’s the
only difference).
o
Fill in the form:
o You must fill in the Class Date, Class Time and Class Location so that we will
be able to set up the class
o Fill in the first name and last name of each student that you are adding to this
class.
o Click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the form.
o If the student hasn’t yet registered for the MAT IS Part 1 online course,
encourage him or her to do so by going to the MAT webpage and clicking on the
the “Registration for the MAT IS Part 1 online course” link.
o
THAT’S IT! Within 24 hours, you should be able to see this class when you log in to
the MAT IS Part 1 online course so that you can track these participants’ progress.
Group Enrollment by Trainers: Several of our Trainers have asked for the ability to
be able to enroll several students in the MAT IS Part 1 course at one time, before these students
are scheduled for the MAT IS Part 2.
Here’s how a Trainer can enroll many students at one time:
a. Go to the MAT IS Registration and Scheduling Tool on the Online Learning Center,
scroll to the MAT IS Toolkit, and click the “Large Group Enrollment Form” link.
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b. A form will pop up. Fill it in with the first and last name, lastfour, and email address for
each of the participants. Be sure to include the Program Enrollment Code if you have
set the Child Day Program Administrator up to be able to track his or her employees’
progress (see Administrator Tracking Service below for more information on this).
c. We will send each participant an email with instructions on how to access the Online
Learning Center and the MAT IS Part 1 course, including their username and password.
We will copy you on these emails.
d. We will place these participants in your “Unassigned” class, since they have not been
assigned to a specific class yet.
e. You can track their progress by going to the MAT IS Part 1 course in the Online
Learning Center and clicking “Grades”. Then look in the Separate Groups menu for the
class called “Unassigned (your username). For most efficient tracking of students, we
encourage you to assign them to a specific class so that they will be easier for you to
find. For information on how to do this, see Step 4 above.
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More about New Features for Child Day Program Administrators
Administrator Tracking Service: As we’ve described above, you can now offer your
customers (child day program administrators) the ability to track their employees’ progress
through the MAT IS Part 1 class. This can help them avoid the frustration, cost and inefficiency
of unprepared participants failing the Part 2 class. Here are the easy steps to set this up:
1. Go into the MAT IS Registration and Scheduling Tool in the Online Learning Center,
scroll to the MAT IS Toolkit, and click the “Request a Program Enrollment Code”
link.
2. A form will pop up. Fill it in with the name of the child day program administrator who
would like to track his or her employees’ progress, that administrator’s “lastfour”, email
address, and phone number (in case the email bounces). Click the “Submit” button at the
bottom of the form, and the form will come right to us.
3. We will send that administrator an instruction email (copying you) covering how to
access the Online Learning Center, the MAT IS Part 1 course, and the grades for their
employees in that course. This email will include:
o the username and password that the administrator must use
o a Program Enrollment Code that his or her employees must enter when they
register for the MAT IS Part 1 online course so that the administrator will be able
to see their progress.
Group Enrollment Service: Here’s how a Child Day Program Administrator can
conveniently enroll several students in the MAT IS Part 1 course at one time, before these
students are scheduled for the MAT IS Part 2.
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Note: You may wish to send the Child Day Program administrator an email with instructions
on how to do this. The MAT IS Toolkit in the MAT IS Scheduling and Registration Tool
course has a form email that you can use for this purpose. Here’s where to find it.
Now here are the steps the Child Day Program Administrator would follow to enroll a
group of employees in the MAT IS Part 1 course:
1. Go to the MAT Online Learning Center, scroll down, and click the “MAT IS Part 1 –
Child Day Program Administrator’s Group Enrollment Form” link.
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2. A form will pop up. Fill it in with the required information, and click the “Submit”
button at the bottom of the form.
3. We will send each participant an email with instructions on how to access the Online
Learning Center and the MAT IS Part 1 course, including their username and password.
We will copy the child day program administrator and the trainer (assuming the Child
Day Program administrator properly identifies the trainer on the form) on these emails.
That’s all they have to do. For your information:
4. We will place these participants in the selected trainer’s “Unassigned” class in the
MAT IS Part 1 course. That trainer can track their progress at any time by going to the
MAT IS Part 1 course, clicking “Grades”, and then clicking his or her “Unassigned”
class. (see the section above for more detail on how to do this).
5. For most efficient tracking of students, we encourage trainers to enter the class details
when these participants are scheduled for a Part 2 class. (see the section above for more
detail on how to do this).
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