Best practice forum (Archived)

Program vs. Certification - high level and use case comparison

Hi there, how are you doing?

I'm coming from Moodle world so I'm a bit new to the "Program" and "Certification" feature in Totara. Can someone please highlight some of the high level differences between "Program" and "Certification" in Totara? I sensed that the "Certification" feature seems to be different from the Moodle 3rd party plugin "certificate" (https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_certificate). Can someone please use some examples or real world use cases to show best practices about when to use "Program" and when to use "Certification?" Thanks!

Wen

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Hi Wen,

Programs can provide a way of presenting a structured set of courses to the learner - say Course A THEN Course B OR Course C and so on.

Certifications are based on recurring Programs (that is a method of presenting a course repeatedly to the learner with a set periodicity) but with far greater control over the learning pathway.

Certifications are best used, when for example, people have to retake training over a set period - say First Aid every year, various conditions can be set as to the validity of the certification ie how long your First aid certificate is valid for, when you can retake it etc.

There's a training video here. Lori talks specifically about Certifications around 32.00.

Certificates are a way of awarding learners with a certificate, its perhaps worth looking at our Open Badges functionality.