Question

Can class attendance be auto-reset?


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We have ILT courses that become very specifically “relevant” during certain business phases of the year. This is to support activities that we want our managers to complete. 

We just entered another phase and scheduled new ILT sessions. Here’s the issue - we have managers to have attended before who would like to attend again to refresh their memory on the topics involved. 

But they cannot enroll, because they have a completion already recorded. We don’t want to have to remove the existing completion - that’s not fair and accurate reporting. 

Is there a way for them to re-enroll without a) losing their previous completion or b) having to manually make the change (ultimately, we don’t know how many will want to retake). 

Communication has already gone out - so creating a duplicate course is not an option (and that would create confusion in the system, too).

This is also NOT a certification. It’s an optional course.


18 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hi @JGildea don’t think this is possible at the moment..perhaps once we have the ability to track multiple completions for the same course, user will be be able to register for a another session in the same course. This is anticipated for the end of this year but nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

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@lrnlab - there are really scary subtle things with “recurring ILTs” that I hope product will keep clean.

Overall the biggest concern (and it is actually not a concern for Docebo) is to understand what that recurrence should be based on.

Also - The virtual world is much more kind to recurrence that the real world...for example where classroom bookings were an important portion of ILTs….

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@dklinger I am curious about what you mean by “recurring ILT?”  

We need multiple course completions for compliance training (sometimes it needs to be refreshed, and sometimes we need to be ready and able to show all completion dates in case of legal action). And sometimes people just want to retake a course, whether ILT or self-paced. Fair and accurate tracking would record every completion, and allow people to enroll more than once without losing the previous completion. 

Userlevel 7
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Good point @dklinger ...hadn't thought about just adding another event to the same session…

@JGildea what if you add another event. called, “refresher” or something similar and you can also add in the event description, a little more about who should attend and why...would that work? I think they would still appear as completed but you might be able to regulate this depending on the tracking option you choose.

 

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Hey @JGildea - here was the thought surrounding my statement.

High level: ILTs are an example of synchronous learning. ILTs count on human logistics to make them happen - a time, a place, an instructor assigned to it, someone marking a person’s attendance. Its my opinion? This type of learning cant really drive itself with a single setting to recur yearly.

Self paced learning is an example of asynchronous learning. You set the material to self govern and watch for a completion criteria - and it will do its thing-y. With multiple completions - you are in good shape...it will record a person needing to take a compliance course yearly.

Having synchronous learning recur (at least for me) means that your learning record is also storing those human logistics year after year…the where and when it occurred being critical for the ILT itself causes a problem because it wont stay neat. I dont know if there is a clean way to make something like that to happen with recurrence patterns and wasnt something that in another learning system I came from. For example - where the when gets challenging - something calendared for a business day this year may land on a weekend next year.

It sounds like you attempted to slide another session into a course. I am purely a newbie at ILTs in this system, but it sounds like the completion for the course is locking out the ability to register for other sessions.

Now there is a way to say “hey everyone enrolled in course A should be enrolled in the next course B...I will need to fully respond later because I have a meeting to be in - but I hope I am covering the idea...I am saying that with the caveat of being a newbie at ILTs...I know this would work with eLearning though.

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@jbridges @cathyp Does something like this make sense for us?  

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@dklinger It’s not nearly as complex as all of that.

We have a tool that allows managers to see certain data, and we have a workshop style class to show them how to use it. Twice a year the data is collected and refreshed, and so we offer the workshops again - same exact content - to show the managers how and what to do. Not all managers have attended previous sessions, so their enrollment is no problem. But some managers feel like they would benefit from retaking the course and attending a new session even though they have already completed the course six months ago. 
This is not a new event for a previously scheduled session. These are new sessions for an available course, and learners who want to retake the course. 

All of the previous LMS systems that I have worked with had no problem with this. 

 

Another example could be an in-person compliance course that was completed as a certification, but HR wants the person to attend again. Should be no problem to reassign and reenroll the person without losing the previous completion. 

 

For assignment, previous systems have also allowed us to mass assign with the caveat that if someone has completed the course within x days/months they would not be reassigned.

Userlevel 7
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@JGildea - I see your point. And thank you for the clarification - I have seen ILTs used like what you are describing - with little to no detail about the where and the when the course would be held...you just need the record that a person attended something.

Because I come from a space where our audit risk is high? We had to be able to provide a classic attendance roster for an instructor as well as those details on the fly.

Can I ask - can you move your enrollment records into the system post the actual workshop/event with an upload of enrollments? You can flick their statuses to the appropriate one with a little bit of admin handling.

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@dklinger - these are all scheduled events with dates and times like any other classes. They’re just held virtually and we’d like people to be able to register in Docebo like any other class, click the join button, etc. 

In this case, it’s not a compliance class. But the entire purpose of an LMS is to be able to schedule classes, have people sign up, connect, attend, and get credit, all using the same system.

The alternative would be to create a calendar event with an MS Teams link and ask people to join if they want, and publish on our intranet. 

But we pay a lot of money for an LMS to manage this simple process. Why should we have to do something outside of the system when it works for every other class?

The only outlier is that we’ve got some people who want to do it again.

Userlevel 7
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@JGildea - as I read and re-read...I understand better.

It is only for a few that you want to give credit to again.

Can you create a new course and give them credit there?

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@JGildea To my knowledge there is no way to do this without unenrolling them from the session they have completed so that they can re0enroll.  I think what you are looking to do will be address by this,  idea, although, it doesn’t explicitly say it is for ILT courses.  

It is supposed to be delivered later this year according to the last post on it.

We also have a need for this for employees for reasons similar to what you described and also for customers.  We don’t allow customers to unenroll from events due to cancellation policies but many times after a customer has attended an ILT event and completed the course, they want to retake the session.  Since they can’t unenroll themselves, they have to contact us to do that for them so they can enroll in another session.  This then loses their original completion info.  They shouldn’t have to do that, and should be able to self-enroll in another session for a course they previously attended. 

@kferguson fyi..

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I love the possibilities - but what I see is two camps evolving - folks that need things with multiple attempts and folks that would like to keep it cleaner. I think the reporting on multiple attempts will get some people batty...and others will think it is exactly where this needs to land.

I am holding my breath on the release (it feels like we are watching Oak Island or something)...because if it is done right? We all win.

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@DKlinger trying to avoid having to duplicate courses - that just seems backwards to me.

But, yes, had we not already sent out the communication with the scheduled classes, a workaround would have been to duplicate the entire course, create a new schedule, and let everyone register. 

 

As a standard practice, it works, but now creates a reporting nightmare - gotta make sure you capture every copy of course or you won’t get the numbers right.

 

That’s why this is a suggestion - we need to have the ability to enroll in and record multiple completions. Every other LMS I’ve ever seen can do it as a standard. 

 

What if I just want to take a LinkedIn Learning course twice? I should get credit for both completions on my record. It’s an accurate reflection of my learning activity. 

 

From an auditing perspective, I’m surprised that you haven’t come across this scenario already. I used to work for big pharma, so I understand the need.

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@jbridges - I see it as a need for both ILT AND eLearning courses. Every learner should have the ability to attend/complete courses more than once and have their transcript accurately reflect their activity.

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@jbridges - and oh, yes, I’m already all over that thread. LOL

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“I think the reporting on multiple attempts will get some people batty...and others will think it is exactly where this needs to land.”

@dklinger  - I think a “most recent attempt/completion” check box could take care of that. 

Otherwise, I have done this previously, and it does require either a descending sort in Excel or a PivotTable with “max” value set.  Agree that it can be challenging.

Userlevel 7
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From an auditing perspective, I’m surprised that you haven’t come across this scenario already. I used to work for big pharma, so I understand the need.

Actually we are there all the time - and with some web based training - yep it fits. We are babies in our implementation - literally closing on year one into September. So I will be making implementation decisions shortly.

I came from a space though where we took the whole problem outside of the LMS and kept a certification system maintained outside of the LMS….because the nuances and flavors of multiple attempts...only needs a small nunace missed? And it doesnt fit the organization.

Being friends with LMS consultants? LMS consultants love this problem - because they bring organizations in and out of either working with a many to 1 relationship = multiple attempts (multiple records against a learning object) versus a 1 to 1 relationship (learning record for a learning object).

Userlevel 6
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I asked about this in another post.  It seems quite straight forward to me and I'm not sure the discussion needs to be so complex. 

Simply allow people to take a course more than once with an option to retain original completion date or update.  At the moment Docebo doesn't let you.

Its unrealistic to expect people to have to work out they have to unenrol first (especially as the unenrol button isn't obvious).

So hopefully the new update (whenever it comes) will sort this out 

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