Training

Prepare your training and involve the whole group with learning capsules, timed quizzes, polls, scales, rankings and word clouds.

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Training combines course preparation and live facilitation in the browser. The facilitator opens a session, shares its code or a QR code and starts each activity. Participants join from their phone or computer using a nickname, without installing an application.

Capsules contain text and links to HTTPS resources. Quizzes, with a single or several correct answers, check understanding and can be timed: speed earns points and a leaderboard builds up question after question. Polls collect opinions, scales measure a level, rankings put proposals in order, word clouds group contributions and open questions encourage discussion. The facilitator decides when to reveal results, hides any inappropriate contribution and can use presentation mode. Results refresh every three seconds.

Courses belong to the Etrebil organization. Sessions keep their original course and answers, with JSON or spreadsheet (CSV) export. On Windows and Linux, a desktop version works without an Internet connection and, in classroom mode, welcomes phones on the local network; an Android app opens Training on the website or on that computer. These versions, like the web version, still need to be published.

Training is in preparation. It will join the Etrebil subscription catalogue when it is released.

Every feature of Training

87 features in 13 areas

Prepare a course

Creates a course with a title and a description, and edits it whenever you like.
Gathers up to 250 steps (slides included, at most 50 activities) that you add, remove, drag, or move up and down with the arrows to set the order of the session.
Starts from an editable example of eight activities covering the seven formats; nothing is saved until you confirm.
Gives each activity a title or question, an instruction or text (up to 10,000 characters) and, if you wish, an HTTPS link to a resource.
Refuses to save an incomplete course and says why: duplicate choices, missing correct answer, duration out of range.
Protects against simultaneous edits: if someone saved the course in the meantime, you must reload it before trying again.

Import a PowerPoint presentation

Imports a PowerPoint .pptx file: each slide becomes a step with its title, multi-level text, images and notes, in slideshow order.
Also reads the old .ppt format on the desktop computer when LibreOffice is installed there; on the website it must be saved as .pptx.
Turns a table into lines of text, skips hidden slides and says what was not taken over: charts, diagrams, videos, images in a format the browser cannot display.
Does not reproduce the original layout (theme, colors, shapes, positions): only the text, PNG, JPEG or GIF images and the notes are taken over.
Saves the course right away: you then place the activities between the slides.
Accepts a file of up to 64 MB and 200 slides; each image is at most 6 MB, a slide carries at most 12 and all images together stay under 24 MB. Beyond 700 KB of text and notes for the whole course, they are shortened.
Reads the file as untrusted: sizes capped after decompression, no external resource opened, images recognized by their content and not their extension.

Slides and activities

Treats a slide as a step with no answer: title, text, images and facilitator notes.
Attaches each activity to the slide that precedes it; the editor groups them under it.
Drags an activity from one slide to another by its handle, or moves it up and down with the arrows (keyboard, touch screen).
Drags a slide together with its activities; it lands between two groups, never in the middle of another.
Adds an activity to a slide from the list under it, and folds the steps of a large course without losing what is being typed.

Seven activity formats

Capsule: a text and a link to a resource; participants say they have finished it.
Quiz: 2 to 8 distinct choices and one or more correct answers; with several correct answers, exactly the full set must be ticked.
Poll: 2 to 8 choices, one or several answers allowed, no correct answer; each choice shows its number of votes.
Scale: 3 to 10 levels, with, if you wish, a label for the start and the end; shows the average and the spread by level.
Ranking: participants put 2 to 8 proposals in order using arrows; the result gives each proposal’s average rank and its number of first places.
Word cloud: one word or phrase of up to 40 characters per participant; identical words, regardless of capital letters, are grouped and shown larger the more often they come up.
Open question: a free answer of up to 500 characters, which participants read without its author’s name.

Timer, points and leaderboard

Adds an optional timer, from 5 to 600 seconds, to any activity except a capsule and a slide; the countdown appears for the facilitator and the participants alike.
Closes answers at the deadline, with a one-second grace period to absorb network latency.
Awards 1,000 points for a correct quiz answer; if the quiz is timed, from 1,000 down to 500 points depending on speed.
Ranks participants by their quiz points, with ties sharing the same rank.
Shows the top ten as soon as a quiz is closed: to the facilitator continuously, to participants when each activity closes and at the end of the session; each participant also sees their own place, points and number of correct answers.
Sends the correction of a quiz to participants only once answers are closed.

Facilitate a session

Opens a session from a course; it keeps a frozen copy that later edits to the course do not affect.
Provides an eight-character code, a link to copy and a QR code drawn by the server.
Shows a waiting room until the first activity is launched.
Starts the session, moves to the next step or back to the previous one, reveals the results and closes answers, then ends the session.
Shows the facilitator live results, refreshed every three seconds, with the number of registered participants.
Shows participants the results only once the activity has been revealed or closed.
Offers a presentation mode for the room screen, closed with the Esc key; the facilitator’s notes never appear in it.
Draws up a summary at the end of the session with the results of each activity.
Shows a floating QR code with the session code during the presentation, which you hide or bring back with a click or the Q key.
Can be driven from the keyboard: left and right arrows, and in presentation mode Space or Page Down to move forward.
Never reopens a step that has already been launched when you go back: its answers stay closed and its timer does not restart.
Sends participants’ phones only the title of a slide: no text, no images, no notes.
Closes the session after 24 hours.

Moderating contributions

Shows the facilitator the author of every word and every open answer; participants never see authors.
Hides or restores a contribution with one click; a hidden contribution disappears from the participants’ results.
Keeps a trace of hiding: the matching column of the CSV export shows it.

Taking part

Lets people join with the code or the QR code and a nickname of up to 60 characters, without an account or installation, from the browser of a phone or computer.
Welcomes up to 200 participants per session.
Records one answer per participant and per activity, and confirms that it has been taken into account.
Refreshes the screen every three seconds without erasing an answer being typed.
Provides labels for screen readers on answers, the scale and the timer; rankings are done with arrow buttons, without drag and drop.

Export, import and deletion

Exports the organization’s courses, its sessions, their participants, their answers and the slide images as JSON, without access fingerprints.
Exports a session as CSV for a spreadsheet: one line per contribution, with participant, activity, type, title, answer, correctness, points and a hidden flag.
Neutralizes cells that would start with =, +, - or @, so an answer cannot make a formula run when the file is opened.
Imports an export: courses become courses again and sessions become closed archives with their answers; everything is checked as it is on creation.
Permanently deletes a course, or a session and its answers, after confirmation; images that no document cites any more disappear with it.

Accounts, rights and security

Signs facilitators in with their Etrebil account, through single sign-on; participants need no account.
Keeps data separate by organization.
Shares courses within the organization: every member whose license covers Training creates courses and opens a session from any of them.
Reserves editing and deleting a course, like running a session, for their author and for the owners or administrators of the organization.
Switches to read-only when the license does not cover Training: you can read and export but change nothing.
Protects every write against request forgery and limits the rate of registrations and answers per address.
Displays all text as is, without interpreting HTML, and opens linked resources in another tab.
Keeps on the server only the fingerprint of each participant’s browser token; it appears in no export.
Keeps slide images for the organization: they are never served to participants, and the imported PowerPoint file is not kept.

On your computer: Windows and Linux

Offers the same interface as the website, on your computer, without an Internet connection or an account; data lives in a SQLite database in the user’s folder.
Opens in the browser at a token address drawn at random on each launch: neither another program nor a web page reaches the facilitator area without that token.
Offers a classroom mode that also listens on the local network, shows the address phones must open and puts it in the session’s QR code.
In classroom mode, limits phones to taking part; courses, sessions, export, import and shutdown remain reserved for the facilitator.
Moves courses from a server to the computer, and back, through JSON export and import.
Closes with the Quit button, which stops any running sessions.

Android app

Opens Training in an app: the official website, or a Windows or Linux computer in classroom mode on the local network.
Remembers the server chosen with the Server button.
Accepts an https address, or an http address only towards a local network (192.168…, 10…, .local), never in clear towards the Internet.
Opens participation from a training.etrebil.com link when Android hands it to the app; the address of a computer in classroom mode is pasted into the Server button.
Saves exports to Downloads, with no permission to grant.
Keeps the screen on in the foreground, opens outside links in the browser and goes back a page with the Back button.

Current limits

Keeps neither the imported PowerPoint file nor any video: only the text, PNG, JPEG or GIF images and the notes are taken over, and media remain HTTPS links.
Does not send slides to participants’ phones: they are presented on the facilitator’s screen.
Does not yet offer self-paced courses, SCORM format, certificates or participant questions with votes.
Does not moderate in advance: participants see contributions when results are revealed, unless the facilitator hides them.
Works by regular polling, without pushed real time: a result may take a few seconds to appear.
Remembers participants in their browser tab: if they close it, they lose their place and must register again.
Limits a course to 250 steps including 50 activities, a session to 200 participants and 24 hours of opening.
Does not work offline on Android: it needs the website or a computer in classroom mode.
Is not online yet: the website, the Windows and Linux versions and the Android app remain to be published.