Hi Jacque,
thank you for clarifying.
If you are making a separate course for every version of the training, then you can (I think) employ a similar solution that we introduced.
We created a custom course field named Number of learning credits and created a specific report similar to course completion where the most important column is Learning credits. After that you can put that report to every user's dashboard, but with the limitation that Progress for that course has to be Completed or Completed via RPL. That way, people can track their continuing education points.
As for amending the settings for the programs, I am not sure which logic you are using for program completion, but if this particular topic is mandatory for the completion of the program, you can make a separate course set and for this topic and set that colleagues can take any of the versions to complete the program. I may be way off the mark here, as I'm not sure what a completed program should signify in your organisation, but just an idea, hope it helps.
Best regards,
Vlad