1.0 e-Training Site Conduct Your access to OETC’s systems is provided on good faith. All communication must be kept clean, decent and of a respectful nature. The administration of OETC has full right to alter, delete or append any comments or communications made by the user. Any complains arising from the users actions may result in a “recorded” warning to the user. After 3 warnings, the users account will be temporarily suspended or permanently terminated (incl. all student records) and your IP address(s) could be banned from the e-Trainer system. If you are registered in courses at the time of account suspension or termination, your fees may be refunded. If you are suspected of inappropriate conduct and you are part of a Municipal Account, usage records and example communications could be provided to your employer. 2.0 Registration Registration for courses is accomplished either through creating an account through OETC e-Trainer system and purchasing each course of interest. Alternatively, courses can be purchased in bulk via the C ourse Store , or in bulk via the Invoice Set-up (see #12 below for more information related to Groups Enrollments). If you are an operator looking to register for a course and would like an OETC Representative to contact your Supervisor or Training Administrator for approval on your behalf, submit the Supervisor Request form. We will acquire payment information from your employer if approved and will contact you with either an employer denial or registration and login information. 3.0 Payment - Bandwidth Course Fees DO NOT include cost of internet connection or bandwidth used for e-Training. The maximum bandwidth used for e-Training is 0.8MB/s but bandwidth resource requirements are normally much lower than this. Each course is a maximum of ~ 500Mb / 0.7CEU’s. Unless otherwise stated in the course description the cost of print manuals are an extra to the course fees. 4.0 Tax Information GST / HST will be charged if in Canada and are calculated dependant on province where the student resides. USA and international students are not charged local taxes. Costs for your OETC course may be tax deductible as a business expense by the attendee. Contact your tax advisor to ascertain whether you qualify for this tax deductible business expense. OETC will provide our HST Business number if requested. OETC provides HST / Corporate tax number on all invoiced accounts. 5.0 Cancellations - Refunds - Payments e-Training - Cancellations for a purchased e-Training course must be made in writing via e-mail to Admissions . If the course is less than 10% complete AND less than 30 days from date of registration, fees will be refunded less a 20% processing fee and any fees for print manuals (OETC Manuals, text books & any shipping fees, if applicable). Students who do not cancel and do not attend the course are responsible for the full registration fee & not eligible for refund. Online course access remain active for 1yr, and the eTrainer System will provide the enrolled student pending expiry emails 3-days prior to course expiry. If you have extenuating circumstances, please contact us to provide more information. Invoiced payments are due upon receipt of invoice under a Net 30 day term. Late fees of 2% per month compounded will be applied to overdue accounts on the outstanding balance (26.82% per annum). OETC reserves the right to withhold regulatory uploads on habitually overdue accounts. 6.0 Transferability e-Training - pre-paid course fees may be transferred to a different course or may be transferred to a colleague only if no more than 10% of the course is complete AND less than 30 days has elapsed from date of registration. Please notify us by emailing Admissions with: Subject: “Transfer to Colleague” OR “Transfer to Other Course” OR “Cancel and Refund” Body: - Course Name and date enrolled - Original attendee full name and Operator number if known - Name of new attendee - Username & First/last Name & Operator Number number if known (if transferring to a colleague) NOTE: If choosing a different course and there is a difference in fees, you will be responsible for any added cost. If choosing a less expensive course, the balance will reside as a Store Credit towards a future course. 6.1 Unerollment Upon course completion, students are unenrolled and access to information is limited. The course completion certificate is retained for up to 5yrs. Similarly, activity logs, IP addressing and other security and anti-plagiarism / anti-cheating data is retained for a period of up to 10yrs. In most cases you have up to 1-year from date of enrollment to complete your course. You will be notified of an impending unerollment 3 days before your course is about to expire and you have not completed. It is the responsibility of the enrolled user to complete their course within the enrollment period, no refunds are issued for non-completion. 7.0 Prerequisites Some courses have prerequisites that the OETC registrar believes to be the minimum requirements for successful course completion. If a prerequisite is required for a specific course it will be indicated in the course description. 8.0 Copyright All intellectual property rights, including copyright, patents, design rights and know-how in or relating to the course or course materials provided or made available in connection with the course, remain the sole property of their authors and no copies of course materials may be made, whether electronic, print or otherwise, unless expressly agreed to in writing by the OETC Managing Director. Some OETC manuals include third party copyrighted information which OETC has negotiated and paid for. Copyright of third party materials remain the property of the original copyright owner and is used under specific or fair use license by OETC. This third party copyright information can only be reproduced with the license and permission of the original copyright owner. 9.0 Schedule Changes - upgrades OETC reserves the right to make changes and updates to its Web-Network-Server Infrastructure including all services and options available via its website. We do not guarantee accuracy or availability of these services, nor make any claim of uptime maintainability (but we aim for 99.9% uptime). OETC also updates courses from time to time, which may reset a course attendants location, requiring the student to restart their course or unit following an update (if the course is not complete). While we will make every attempt to notify all course attendants in advance of a course update, we suggest completing your course within 30-days from starting. If you do experience issues with your course and your location within has been lost, contact us to discuss as we can make adjustments to minimise repeated material. OETC reserves the right to make changes in any scheduled programme(s) or cancel an event/course should circumstances require. We will give registrants the maximum possible notice of such changes and either refund 100% the course & manual fees or allow transfer to another date. OETC is not responsible for penalties incurred. 10.0 Freedom of Information OETC’s e-Trainer system retains some information about the user. Information such as marks & grades, course attempts and communication. We also track IP addressing, and software version information for any required local plug-ins (if applicable). This information is only used to provide e-Trainer and web services to the user and is not / will never be sold or provided to any third party except what is accounted for in this section 10.0 Freedom of Information. Cookies: e-Training maintains cookies on your system. One to track your progress in your courses and others to track each session so your experience is smooth and responsive. Email Address(es): Your email address in your User Profile is used by the eTrainer System to communicate 1) course expiry notices (within 3-days of expiry), 2) Your Course Completion PDF Certificates (upon successful completion), 3) For OETC representatives or trainers to contact you should the need arise; and 4) To enroll you into our periodic Newsletter circulation. Newsletter enrollment informs the user of newly approved courses as well as our periodic industry information newsletters indicating regulatory changes or emergency operator information. Newsletters are normally sent out usually no more than once/month. Automatic newsletter enrollment normally only occurs every 6-months. To manual enrol yourself click here . Course Completion: OETC uses your course completion status and/or marks to update the regulator in your jurisdiction if your course is regulator approved. Grades, Marks and Course Completion: This information will be made available to your employer if you are part of a company or municipal group. If part of a Municipal Group, your internal administrator will inform you of your membership in this group. IP addressing, location logging and other infrastructure type data: OETC uses this information to populate our anti-cheating algorithms. If the system flags an account, a human is notified and scheduled to investigate. See section 11 for more information. Financial: All credit card information is handled by a third party (Stripe) and as such, OETC does not retain or record. Invoicing information is kept in off-line on non-networked files. Responsible Party: All data and information regarding users is available for viewing by OETC’s Managing Director. Partial responsibilities are delegated from the Managing Director so it is this corporate position that maintains full responsibility for keeping your information safe. All data more than 10yrs old (in most jurisdictions) is deleted. Only data retained is to continue your e-Training account. Account Expiry: If your e-Training account has not been logged into for 5-years, we delete your account, including all user data. If you ever need a copy of an old Course Completion Certificate after this 5-yr period, just contact us. We keep certificates for 10yrs. If you don’t want us to delete your account, just log in once every 5 years. 11.0 Cheating and Plagiarism We at OETC take the act of cheating & plagiarism very seriously. Due to the technological nature of our program delivery, we have the ability to conduct various authentication strategies in flagging potential cheating. If our system suspects an instance of cheating, it will flag the suspected accounts for closer scrutiny by human eyes. If our investigator suspects a case of cheating, we can institute mandatory authentication on all suspected user accounts. If suspected cheating has been narrowed to a company or municipality and not a user, all students from that company or municipality may be required to undergo mandatory authentication; At which time, the workplace director will be contacted. If you have been found guilty of cheating by an OETC investigation, your account will be terminated and you will be restricted from taking Director/Regulator Approved courses via our e-Trainer system for a minimum of 1yr throughout which time no CEU’s can be acquired. During this suspension, your legal and used names will also be flagged and we will terminate/block all IP addresses used throughout the life of your account. This means that if you’ve taken courses at your workplace, your entire workplace will be suspended. Your workplace may have the ability to re-instate it’s access by committing in writing, that the cheating individual(s) will be bared from accessing the OETC e-Trainer System while on workplace computers. OETC reserves the right to require User Account restrictions at the workplace to ensure the integrity of our system to facilitate reinstatement of a workplace IP address or IP pool. If you suspect a colleague of cheating, please use our Whistle Blower form to report. We will take all precautions to keep whistle-blower information anonymous; however, we will not guarantee anonymity in cases of false reporting. Suspected individual(s) will have the right to explain and defend before final action is taken. OETC reserves the right to institute periodic authentication without notice to the student. OETC does execute randomized authentication procedures when accessing quizzes and certificates. If you’ve had an Authentication call / email / e-message, please don’t be alarmed, as you may be experiencing a randomized procedure. Finalized cases of cheating will be reported to the provincial or state certification regulator representative unless expressly forbidden by law in that jurisdiction. 12.0 Group or Municipal Accounts By completing a Group Enrollment Form , you can set up a group account with OETC to administer multiple operator accounts. • Whenever you want to: ▪ Enrol an operator in a new course(s), or ▪ Add an operator(s) to your list Simply email your OETC Account Representative or let us know through our admissions email address. You can obtain a GROUP ENROLLMENT FORM from our website anytime at oetc.ca/invoice. This Excel based form is the simplest way to communicate new staffs and/or new course enrollment requests. • Whenever you want to: ▪ Obtain copies of your staff’s Course Completion Certificates, ▪ Inquire about Progress Status, ▪ Obtain a list of OETC earned CEU's in a certification update cycle, or ▪ Request copies of all Certificates obtained within the 3-year update cycle, simply email your OETC Account Representative or make your request to our certificate email address. If staff purchase courses via our Shopping Cart systems, you can have these folks added to your Municipal Account by contacting your OETC Account Representative or making the request to admissions . Benefits of your Municipal Administrator Account with OETC: 1) You will be provided a PDF based Progress Report - Quarterly. Reports will be distributed on the following frequency: a ) Q1 – Apr 1-15th (Previous year staff completions are removed - Operators still in progress appear for the current year) b ) Q2 – Jul 1-15th c ) Q3 – Oct 1-15 d ) Q4 & Year End wrap up – Jan 1-15 (of the following year) 2) You will receive a copy of all Course Completion Certificates for Operators within your group when the regulator upload occurs. At OETC, we guarantee this regulator upload within 72hrs (3 Business Days) of course completion. OETC guarantees CEU upload to your regulator (if required in your jurisdiction) within 72hrs or 3 business days of course completion. The Student/Operator will receive a confirmation email when upload is complete. Operators/Students can obtain historic copies of all Certificates of Completion earned via OETC’s eTrainer System from within their profile page or by selecting “ My Certificates ” via their profile drop down menu. OETC Email addresses of note: Certificate – To request a Certificate of Completion copy for yourself or one or more of your staffs. Admissions – Sign up operators to new courses or send the GROUP ENROLLMENT FORM to. Accounting – To inquire about Invoicing, payments, electronic transfers, receipts, tax or insurance information. HelpDesk – Inquiries from Admins or Students/Operators related to the website, eTrainer System or course. Information – Catch all email monitored by the Help Desk staff. 13.0 Operator Responsibility for Regulator Uploads To avoid errors & delays, ensure your Operator ID is accurate and your First/Last names are as they appear on your Regulator Provided Operator Certificates. Your C.E.U.'s will be uploaded to your regulator within 72hrs and you'll be provided an email verification once complete. If you are NOT a Certified Drinking Water or Wastewater Operator in Ontario, this number does not apply to you and you can proceed to "View certificate". An Ontario certified operators' failure to include an accurate Operator ID, First & Last name in your profile can result in CEU's not being uploaded to the regulator. It is the responsibility of the Certified Operator to ensure their OETC Profile information is complete and accurate. The MECP-WWOCS database of Certified Operators can e accessed at: https://owwco.ca/operator-listing-report/