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Certification with multiple recertification scenarios

 
Nevin Butcher
Certification with multiple recertification scenarios
by Nevin Butcher - Sunday, 13 May 2018, 7:09 PM
 

Hi Everyone

Apologies in advance for the long post, have been mulling this one over for ages to no avail so am seeking some advice from the community on the best way to structure the following scenario

SCENARIO 

A client is looking to build a suite of ethical decision making training and structure it into a 5 year certification

Course A - "Full" ethical decision making course (consists of 4 learning objectives)

Course B - short refresher covering off 1 learning objective from A

Course C - short refresher covering off 1 learning objective from A

Course D - short refresher covering off 1 learning objective from A

Course E - short refresher covering off 1 learning objective from A

User completes course A to achieve certification valid for 12 months

To recertify, user completes course B, again valid for 12 months

When that's up for expiry, course C etc

This has all come about as historically we have only had the single ethical decision making course with a 12 month expiry, and it's been in action now for the past 7 years and everyone knows (and has grown to hate) the assessment scenario. 

ISSUE/BLOCKER

Certifications currently only have the single re-certification path - so could only set up with course A and course B in theory

I've had a crack at coming up with some potential workarounds

WORKAROUND A 

Was based on the assumption that I could hinge an audience off of certification completion (as you can with course or program) and basically would have involved multiple certifications which would be assigned to the user in a cascading fashion. 

CERTIFICATION A includes courses A & B and is assigned to our general all staff audience

CERTIFICATION B includes courses B & C and is assigned to an audience of staff who have completed certification A

CERTIFICATION C includes courses C & D and is assigned to staff who have completed certification B etc

Anyway, didn't get very far with testing that scenario out as I can't base an audience off of certification completion. 


WORKAROUND B

Far simpler - Course A as the certification path

Courses B, C, D & E as the re-certification path with the user only having to complete 1 to recertify

User gets to choose which 1 they do each year, isn't ideal as we can't force them to complete all the recertification content, but at least we're not forcing them to do the same re-certification every year. 

Also not ideal as if user allows certification to expire, then they're kicked back to the original certification path (not sure if there is a way around that)


WORKAROUND C

Not our preferred solution, but basically involves us manually swapping out the re certification content on an annual basis

1 July 18 to 30 June 19 use course B as the re certification path

1 July 19 swap out course B for course C etc. 


Would appreciate any advice from the community on how you would go about structuring something like this, or if you have any great ideas that I'm missing or can point out any gotcha's with the workarounds I have in mind. 

Thanks in advance

Nevin


Craig Eves
Re: Certification with multiple recertification scenarios
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Sunday, 13 May 2018, 8:44 PM
Group Totara

Hi Nevin

There is a current feature request TL-7918 https://totara.community/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10788#p47904 to add certification to audience rule that would mean A would work. 

B could work and also be combined with audience visibility to make courses not visible to people who haven't completed a prior course. It is possible to increase the Re certification window period window opens before expiration so the re certification takes longer to expire.

Possibly another scenario would be to have all of the content for course B C D in one course and restrict access to activities from a section  to completion of a set of activities from the section beforehand.

regards

Nevin Butcher
Re: Certification with multiple recertification scenarios
by Nevin Butcher - Monday, 14 May 2018, 11:04 PM
 

Hey Craig, thanks for taking time, appreciate it, you have given me much to ponder - workaround B may be the way to go. 


Just confirming - If we had one course with the BCDE etc in as activities with restricted access, there wouldn't be a way to "certify" the user between those activities with a 12 month time frame would there?


Thanks again, appreciate it


Cheers


Nevin

Craig Eves
Re: Certification with multiple recertification scenarios
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Tuesday, 15 May 2018, 1:43 PM
Group Totara
Hi Nevin 


 The course with BCDE could have course completion on completing one of the activities in B C D or E or a course grade total so they would complete the course and certify. 

However when they recertify the activities are reset so they wouldn't be able to access the later section until the previous section is completed so this wouldn't work as required.

regards