1. Background and Purpose Background: MPT is a leader in the public television community. It is a statewide station and one of the 340 Corporation for Public Broadcasting member stations. The mission of MPT is to educate, entertain, and engage the people of Maryland. To fulfill its education agenda MPT develops online content and delivery systems. One of the online delivery systems is Thinkport.org. Thinkport is a web based learning portal that has an array of educational resources including high quality professional development courses targeted to Maryland’s early childhood education (ECE) and K-12 education community. MPT’s professional development courses are divided into two (2) categories: Early Childhood and K-12 courses. Links to the two categories are displayed on the Thinkport course enrollment page: https://thinkport.org/online-courses-overview.html. MPT maintains agreements with providers to offer and/or link to their professional development courses on Thinkport. The providers may have separate registration systems. Historical enrollment for standard course offerings is 1000 – 1500 registrants per year. On occasion MPT accommodates requests to enroll special cohorts of learners above the standard number of registrants. Numbers of learners and frequency varies. Purpose: MPT, as a leading provider of educator professional development courses in the State of Maryland, is seeking an online software platform to register students for its online courses. The system shall be innovative and cost effective to manage course enrollments, streamline data management and decrease administrative time by automating the data transfer between the Moodle and the registration system. The system shall have a number of features including waitlist capabilities, analytical reports, customizable fields and a responsive design, allowing phone, tablet or desktop display. 2. Data a. Data collected, manipulated, or directly purchased shall become the property of the State; therefore, MPT is considered the custodian of the data and shall determine the use, access, distribution and other conditions based on appropriate State statutes and regulations. b. Licensed and/or copyrighted data shall be governed by the terms and conditions identified in the Contract or the license. 3. Thinkport Display/Scope of Work a. The Contractor shall provide a 24-hour online course registration system (CRS); b. Thinkport headers shall be displayed on the registration system pages. All open and upcoming courses shall be embedded into Thinkport by a calendar or list. c. Courses shall be classified and displayed in multiple lists/calendars shall link to a separate web page: https://www.thinkport.org/online-courses-overview.html d. Enrollees shall have the ability to sort each list/calendar by a customizable dropdown list that includes the number of credits for K-12 courses, number of clock hours for ECE courses or other items. e. Each course in list or calendar shall link to an individual course page that opens in a new window. f. There may be specific grants or cohort-based programs that necessitate the creation of a secondary instance of the education registration system. This separate instance would require distinct branding to clearly differentiate it from the primary system. While the underlying databases must remain independent, the API integration can utilize the same framework to connect to the Moodle server. This additional cost is project specific and may not be needed every year. 4. Course Details in Registration System a. System shall have the ability to create custom financial and registration fields with details specific to each course. b. System shall have the ability to query on custom field. c. System shall have the ability to create multiple sections of a course in one session or in multiple sessions without reentering data. d. System shall have the ability to individually price courses. The course price varies by type, provider and number of credits. e. System shall have the flexibility to set up individual or group course discount offers, such as automatic discounts by date (for discounts and refunds-set rules), discounts with promo codes and multiple course discounts. f. System shall automatically open/close registration by date. System shall also have an option to close or pause registration on demand by an administrator. 5. Registration Checkout and E-Commerce a. System shall allow enrollees to browse and select courses without creating an account. b. System shall interface with PayPal to collect course fees. c. System shall allow refunds in full or partial amounts set by an administrator. d. System shall send a payment received notification email with an attached receipt to the enrollee and administrator that confirms name of enrollee, course title, course cost, amount paid and information about course next steps. e. System shall provide a wait list for a section of the course that is closed. f. System shall have customizable registration questions based on course type.
