Totara Learn Open Discussions

Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning

 
Jane Rutherford
Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Jane Rutherford בתאריך 9/07/2025, 07:17
 

Hello, sorry for the long post!

I notice this topic has come up several times over the years (since 2015).

I want to bump it to the front again because my managers want a solution.

I realise Totara is based on Moodle and Moodle was developed for the education sector, but many businesses use Totara now, where training must be redone or refreshed, often at the choice of the learner.

Currently, once a learner has completed a course and a completion date has been recorded, this is not updated if they do the course again. For instance, I've done the courses below several times, most recently last year.

This is a problem for us, because learners and their managers want to keep track. We’re a public sector organisation and the records are required for audit. We have almost 3000 registered users and managers want them to use their record of learning as a guide.

Totara support once suggested Certifications were a solution to this, but for us they’re not. We're not 'all under one roof'. We’re a membership model and our member network is 59 individual offices, with their own managers and 'audiences', but those 59 sites don’t have admin rights to the LMS. So, they can't set up certifications, and not all learners start and complete learning at the same time.

Also, certifications don’t help the learner when they review their entire record of learning. The ROL just shows the original completion date.

It would be perfect if a user’s ROL showed the most recent date that a course is successfully completed. I’ve got a report based on scorm data that can show all those dates, but again, this doesn’t contribute the user experience.

 For context, here’s a couple of responses I’ve had in the past:

Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date

by George Angus - Thursday, 24 March 2022, 1:55 PM

Hi Jane,

Keeping the first 'course completed date' is kind of baked-in behaviour with Totara. The philosophy behind it is exactly the same as you'd have with, say, an actual real life examination paper - when you've passed then thats when you passed. You can do the paper again if you like but the fact remains you passed it when it was first presented to you.

by  Paul Lowndes (community member)

I understand the logic in an academic setting that once you've passed a course you've passed but in a business setting training is used more as a cyclical activity so having a more flexible option to track the latest completion would be helpful. 

 

Can Totara support point me to where I can make a product enhancement request please?

I appreciate your help.

Thanks again.

Jane

Daniel Bond
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Daniel Bond בתאריך 9/07/2025, 08:06
קבוצה Helpful contributor 2024קבוצה Most helpful contributor 2023

Not Totara Support, but enhancement requests would either be https://totara.canny.io/ or via your Totara Partner.

There have been some more recent discussions about how you can allow users to repeat learning without having to use Certifications (although I can't immediately find the threads), but Totara has the capability (which can be set globally, or right down to the course level) to let a user archive completion and progress data (totara/core:archivemycourseprogress). This would allow your users to reset the course, complete it again and when they view their Record of Learning the new and old dates would be available.

Lee Cooper
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Lee Cooper בתאריך 10/07/2025, 00:19
קבוצה Totaraקבוצה TXP Site Administrator

As Daniel rightly pointed out, you can give users the capability to reset the course themselves; more details can be found on how it works here: https://totara.help/docs/course-reset-settings

Users get this additional option when they navigate to a course

Melissa Guild
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Melissa Guild בתאריך 15/09/2025, 21:22
 

I just stumbled across this post and wanted to put my 2 cents worth in. This is something that my organisation struggles with also. I understand the background regarding academic records but likewise it doesn't fit with our organisation.

One example I can give is that we provide Te Reo Maori language courses for our staff, with courses at different levels depending on the skill level of the individual. So, John Smith might have completed Te Reo Maori Level 1 in November 2024 and then is offered to complete Level 2 in May 2025 but he decides to do Level 1 again as he feels he has lost that knowledge and wants to start again. However, reporting shows that he only did the course in November 2024.

This is problematic because our leadership team likes to see how many people are attending these courses for future improvement. But running the report is inaccurate as it shows that John only completed it in November 2024 and not again in May 2025. This is not a unique situation, as our staff quite often repeat courses.

When I generate reports for our leadership team, it takes me a long time to manipulate the Excel file between a course completion report and the seminar attendance report. It's frustrating to say the least.

Rachel Griffith-Boyes
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Rachel Griffith-Boyes בתאריך 16/09/2025, 09:26
קבוצה Totara

Hi Melissa,

Thanks for adding your thoughts here - it's always useful to hear additional use cases for feature improvements.

I can see that Jane who started this thread created an item in our suggested features board Canny - you might like to add your vote and comments to that too. Items that get a higher number of votes are reviewed by our Product team for prioritisation.

To view suggested features, go to the Suggested features dashboard and select Make a suggestion. This request has been added under the title 'Retaking courses - Show latest course completion dates on record of learning'.

I'll also flag this discussion to our Product team in case there's anything further they can add here.

Thanks again for your thoughts!

Melissa Guild
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Melissa Guild בתאריך 16/09/2025, 12:55
 

Thanks Rachel, I've now made my vote! 🙂

Larry Mitipelo
Re: Learners retaking courses and completion date on record of learning
על ידי Larry Mitipelo בתאריך 30/09/2025, 19:12
קבוצה Helpful contributor 2024קבוצה Most Helpful Contributor 2021קבוצה Most Helpful Contributor 2022קבוצה Most helpful contributor 2023

Kia ora Melissa,

We use the Site logs report, it's not ideal but better than nothing. You'd have to check that it has a line for workshop attendance that you can use.

These posts have a bit more info about using them and also the amount of time they are kept changed.

Ngā mihi,

Larry