General

MyFBO has long supported the collection and retention of course-related data as a part of its Premium and Advanced Edition software.  Every training flight or ground briefing can carry information about a student's coursework.  Student progress can be quickly assessed and their advancement managed.

There are two versions of curriculum tracking contained within the online system.  Basic Curriculum Tracking (the original version) is a free option with the ability to name courses of study, enroll students in those curricula, and include the course of study with student reservations and flight data.  Giving flight credits for previous training and reporting flight hours by curriculum are also supported.

The balance of this curriculum tracking documentation focuses on Advanced Curriculum Tracking, a chargeable option with features that more fully support the training staff at flight schools, academies, and university programs – including those offering Part 141 training. 

Advanced Curriculum Tracking users may have up to 250 open curriculum enrollments (does not include dropped or completed enrollments). Subscribers nearing the 250 open curriculum enrollments limit are automatically prompted to audit their curriculum enrollments or to upgrade to the chargeable Unlimited Enrollment option if needed. Please see MyFBO.com Current Rates for more information.

Advanced Curriculum Tracking

The Advanced Curriculum Tracking (ACT) feature has four elements:

• Curriculum definition, where the details of individual curricula are "explained" to the online system
• Operational support including student enrollment and individual flight, lesson, and maneuver/sub-activity support and tracking
• Detailed and summary student reporting, available to the student, to staff, and (optionally) the FAA
• General reporting, available to flight school management and (optionally) the FAA

Curriculum Definition

A flight school can define an unlimited number of curricula within their online system – as many as are needed to support their offerings.  ACT supports both "classic" curricula as well as FAA-Industry Training Standards (FITS) offerings.  Some schools have also defined "mini-curricula" for aircraft checkouts, cockpit and aircraft transitions, endorsements, etc.

Each curriculum definition includes the syllabus, course, and the number of stages and lessons in the curriculum.  Once a curriculum is defined, individual students can be enrolled, and their training flights and ground briefings linked to that curriculum.

Because ab initio curriculum definition can be time consuming, a "public" library of curricula defined by MyFBO.com and/or other subscribers is available.  This library includes the full range of programs from Jeppesen and ASA.  The private sharing of curriculum definitions between subscribers is also supported by the library function.

Operational Support

ACT is fully integrated with the balance of the online system.  Once a student is enrolled in a curriculum, each reservation and the resulting flight dispatch carry curricular data.  The reservation can specify a particular lesson, or the online system will automatically select the next incomplete lesson when the flight is dispatched.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of using ACT is the support provided to flight instructors.  Each curricular flight is accompanied by an Instructor Briefing Sheet or IBS.  The IBS optionally includes recent flight data, a previous flight graph, an overall student progress chart, results from the previous lesson, a description of the current lesson, lesson objectives, elements of the preflight discussion, and the lesson completion standards.  A matrix where the lessons maneuvers / sub-activities are listed along with the required proficiency level and blanks for entry of scores / grades and remarks are also included.

The IBS frees instructors from researching and maintaining paper files while assuring their preparedness for every lesson.  Online entry of the lesson results provides the ideal opportunity for the post-flight discussion between instructor and student.  At the same time, the online system requires the entry of pre-flight briefing time and automatically captures the post-flight discussion time, assuring both are billed to the student.

Optionally, the online system can prevent inclusion of the instructor flight hours in the staff time and commission report until lesson results are entered.  This financial enforcement tool helps to assure record completion.

Student Reporting

Flight instructors, students, and their mentors can then review every aspect of a student's learning experience including hours assigned to dual, solo, cross-country, multi-engine, day, night, and hooded flight.  Simulator times as well as briefing times are reported along with the number of approaches and landings.  Each of these items is reported by flight with a notation of the lesson and a subtotal by curriculum stage.

The details from individual lessons (including maneuver / sub-activity scores / grades and overall results) are also available to both student and instructor.  This gives students greater ability to prepare for and benefit from future flights.

General Reporting

Chief instructors and flight school managers (and, optionally, the FAA) can quickly review the progress of all students in a selected curriculum.  With Advanced Curriculum Tracking, the online system provides student enrollment information that can be sorted by enrollment date, instructor, mentor, and other characteristics.  Student progress reporting is readily available in graphical format.  And the familiar fold-out tracking sheets for each student remain available on screen.

01/13/11 cli