Methods and apparatus for preparation and administration of training courses

A training management system comprising:

• a course library including course information for plurality of training courses, each training course comprising a plurality of course documents organized in a sequence for presentation to a student, the course information for each course including assignment information indicating classes of users to which the course may be assigned;
• a user database including user information including a user entry for each of a plurality of users having actual or potential responsibility for one or more courses, the user database including user status information including the status of a user with respect to one or more courses;
• a training administration module for associating courses, students and other users having responsibilities for courses, and for retrieving and reporting user and course information, the training administration module being operative to retrieve user information from the user database and course information from the course library and to process and format the user information and course information for display, the training administration module being further operative to modify the course information and user information to assign courses to classes of users;
• and
• a course creation module for creating courses, the course creation module including a document editor having access to a template database comprising a plurality of stored templates, the course creation module being operative to create a course comprising a plurality of course documents, the document editor being operative to create a document by retrieving a stored template and placing appropriate text, graphics and other material in the template in response to user entries, the course creation module also including a course creation buffer for temporary storage of course documents after creation by the document editor, the course creation module being operative to store course documents as they are created, the course creation module being further operative to organize the course documents into a desired sequence in response to user selections in order to form a completed course and to store the course in the course library.