Question

Users Retaking Training

  • 27 September 2021
  • 14 replies
  • 946 views

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Hi All

I’m hoping that you guys might have a suggestion to a problem we’re experiencing!

 

We have a mix of customer and staff taking training. Some customers go back into certain courses and retake training courses annually as part of their own internal training procedures.

When users are going in and retaking courses, I assumed that their certificates and records would be overwritten with the new completion dates and scores but Docebo is still only keeping a record of the first time that they took the course.

 

I got the suggestion to set the courses up as certification/retraining but I’m reluctant to do this partially because we have a lot of courses that would need to be re-set up that way but mainly because from our users perspective, it isn't intuitive for them to navigate to the ‘retraining’ tab to renew - many have very little IT capabilities and don’t have a good grasp of the English language so we have got them used to taking courses by the catalogue which we’ve done in a visual way.

 

Any suggestions on how we can have Docebo overwrite training scores and dates on retaking the course? Is this just a drawback to Docebo or do we perhaps have a problem with our set up?

 

Thanks


14 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

@cattaylor,

Good afternoon. I would imagine this is happening for auditing purposes - that folks cannot get a time stamp that overwrites the stamp of when they originally completed the course and it aligns with a completion of the training material within. This is simliar in other LMSs, but the idea of recording multiple attempts could really help you out here is what I am hearing.

Using your line of reasoning though - you are suggesting when a person successfully re-completes said course, that they should get a new date and time stamp for completion.

This is purely a thought, what if you were to quietly add a copy of the training material to the course at regular authoring windows at your organization and remove the old. The course container will retain the completion as long as your users have completed it….without the older training material - I believe the course will recalculate the completion when the new training fires off its completion - and the newer time/date completion stamp should be put in place for it. Notice - I am not talking about replacing….add a new copy of the training material….the material? technically has no score...and should attempt to send a score / date / time stamp to its container.

Note there is also a risk - any training material that was underway and also not completed? would essentially lose any bookmarking…this is when the replace action helps….

Purely a thought….please dont quote me on it...give it a try somewhere safe in a corner.
This must also seem awkward as heck for others.

Scoring Multiple Attempts should be an option to us with some high level ways of calculating what the course score is….without it - re certification becomes one of the few options at the table that really wont fit many.

Other course scoring options that could help along these lines:

  • retain highest score
  • relain last attempt date

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Last note - and again - I would test it - I believe with further review? That my suggestion that I passed along may not be spot on :sweat: I tried. The article suggests that the container (the course) will retain its first time and date stamp for completion.

I would say try banging around the tires some….

Read through this article for what seems like it is what makes sense…….:

https://help.docebo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360020126739-Marking-Training-Material-as-Complete

Please consider - and this is a much rougher way to go about this?

You may want to try publishing around annual windows of time - this can be mostly copying….and marking because it is not the same course with a slightly different name (for example the year at the end of it) you should be golden…..

 

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Hi @dklinger thanks so much for taking the time to have a look at this and share your thoughts!

I’ll do some playing around and see what I can come up with!

Cat

Userlevel 7
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First off, this is a probable many of us have! There is an item in the ideas portal on this you can vote for!!!


Second, I will be very honest and say, no matter what there is a lot of work to find a solution that works best for your staff. It’s unfortunate they don’t allow multiple tracking records, but I am optimistic it will come soon. Here are the two options we use: 

Creating a new course:

For instance we have Bank Secrecy Act and other annual courses our staff must complete. We create an eLearning Course appropriately names such as, BSA for Front Line Staff 2021, Bank Secrecy Act 2021​ and tie the course codes to them BSA2021, BSA2020, etc. to help with our reporting. We create new courses each year for all our compliance and audit required courses. This makes tracking, reporting and assigning much easier for us to manage. We copy the courses if the content hasn’t been updated, and then if we have an update we use the Versions in the CLOR (Central Repository) to help.

Using Certifications/Retraining: 

We use this option for non-compliance related items that our staff need to complete for their own benefit. Such as a product refresher or process recap. These courses are much less official and if a staff member misses getting recertified it’s not ideal but also not going to ding us on an audit. I would need to do a little testing but I am not sure these are retro active, I think I remember running into that issue. Double check that before you go updating them all. Pro of doing this is the system will send notifications when the certification is going to expire and puts the responsibility back on the user, just make sure your notifications are clearly written and explain expectations.

Hope this helps a bit, let me know if you have any other questions or if I can clarify anything! Happy to help!

​​​​

Userlevel 4
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We also have an annual refresher requirement, we are new to Docebo so I’m trying to get these established ASAP since we have two courses that have to completed before the end of the year. One has new content, so that’s not an issue right now, but the other is reusing a learning object from last year that many people will have previously completed. For example mine is marked complete because I already have a training record for that LO. Do I really have to upload a second copy of that LO so it’ll be counted as new?? Your description makes it sound like you’re only having to copy the course, but how does that work since there is a completion record tied to the training content?

Userlevel 7
Badge +5

This most certainly a pain for us as well.  We made the assumption when we signed onto Docebo that the ability to re-take a course was a feature (as it is with other LMS platforms) and were pleasantly surprised when we learned Docebo only keeps a single attempt of a course.  On top re-taking courses, we are also running into this issue in terms of being able to re-purchase courses, since we sell content.

If we have courses that should be re-taken every year, we just copy the course, and keep the training material out of the CLOR, only because of that shared tracking.  

Userlevel 7
Badge +6

I find myself back at this article…because it touches on something that is really fundamental. How a course / training material track a completion is at the core of an LMS and there really are two schools of thought:

  • support once and done (burden is on the admin group)
  • support multiple attempts (burden will be in your records and audit).

I think really the right approach? Is to give us the option on how a course behaves. Period. If you swing one direction or the other? A system can seriously impact adopted practices.

My point? I try to listen for whispers about where the product is going? And I hsvs heard support for multiple attempts is slated for a the future release. That said?

Please don’t force all of us down that path!

Multiple attempt records for a single SCO/course can become extremely noisy in terms of your learning record database, your learner transcript experience, and how it is reported on.

What we should get is a magic option in Advanced Properties for courses or the training material that covers its multiple record behavior.

So those of us who work with annual windows for publication and compliance cycles  can stay with them. I am telling you all? Being friendly with a few consultants over the years? They have watched teams go back and forth on this. And they just reap in the consulting dollars.

Good luck where ever this one pulls us.

Userlevel 4

I know you mentioned not wanting to use the certifications/retraining app but if that ends up being the last resort it does look like you could set the course to overwrite previous activity using the app and get a new completion date each time. 

 

Userlevel 4
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Recertification isn’t always the point of keeping multiple records. Sometimes people just need a refresher, whether compliance related or not. As with any educational institution, it’s the learner’s right to have a record of every time they complete material. Right now I’ve got someone who has completed the ILT version of course and wants to take the online version of the course to review the learner experience for his staff. I can’t assign it to him without removing his ILT completion date because it’s a bi-directional equivalency. I should be able to reassign content to him.

From a “compliance” standpoint, consider the employee who may be breaking a company’s code of conduct. The first response might be to have them retake the code of conduct training. This isn’t a recertification, and it’s not something that we’d need to assign to all users. Creating a copy of the course for this purpose is just not a realistic solution. They should be able to retake the same course and have all of the retakes show up on their transcript for easy reporting and easy auditing. 

Userlevel 4

I’m trying to solve a similar issue and think I have it figured out. I’d like to share my solution in hopes that more experienced users can poke holes in it or make me aware of any potential issues that I may encounter.

Training Requirements

  • We have a set of compliance trainings that we require all employees to complete annually.
  • These trainings are recycled elearning courses, i.e. the content is exactly the same from year to year.
  • The retraining date is dependent on the initial training completion, i.e. a year from completion of the first training.
  • Training completion data must be retained for each course, i.e. completion data for each year’s course must be retained.

Proposed Solution

  • Create annual compliance elearning courses
    • Do not use CLOR because training completions will carry over to duplicated course
    • The code and name of the course should be based on year or time period, e.g. 2021 Annual Refresher, 2022 Annual Refresher, etc.
    • Each course has start/end dates for each year, e.g. 2021, 2022, etc.
  • Set up a certification for each training with an annual expiration.
    • Do not allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew their certification.
    • Associate the compliance courses with the certification.
  • When a user completes their initial training, they will receive a certification. When the certification expires, they will have the option to renew using the course for that year.
  • Set up notifications for initial enrollment, reminder of deadline, journal email to managers with folks that have incomplete trainings.

I’ve done a bit of testing and think this will work for all of our compliance trainings, but am interested in what others think.

Userlevel 5
Badge +2

For those of you not using the CLOR for your compliance retraining….. help me understand please.

 

Do you re-import the training material via course management each time?

How is not using the CLOR different from re-importing the training material to the CLOR and just naming it something different?

 

The main benefit I can see from continuing to use the CLOR for all training material is process consistency. Feel free to poke holes in my theory.

 

To @dklinger point about not forcing everyone down the same path… I have one compliance group that is THRILLED, no really, that the original completion date is not overwritten. And then the rest of my annual training that doesn’t fit that model very well.

We also have an annual refresher requirement, we are new to Docebo so I’m trying to get these established ASAP since we have two courses that have to completed before the end of the year. One has new content, so that’s not an issue right now, but the other is reusing a learning object from last year that many people will have previously completed. For example mine is marked complete because I already have a training record for that LO. Do I really have to upload a second copy of that LO so it’ll be counted as new?? Your description makes it sound like you’re only having to copy the course, but how does that work since there is a completion record tied to the training content?

JEntis - did you find a workaround for this? I have courses with content from the Central Repository that are going to be annual requirements and I can’t figure out how to duplicate the course for people without Docebo auto-marking them as complete from the past year. I can’t create a new course and upload the content again because the content is from Docebo’s Content Marketplace, so it tracks from the Central Repository. I also can’t re-import a second version into the Central Repository either because the platform doesn’t let you import things twice. 

 

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Userlevel 4
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@Shannon McGregor Unfortunately I have not found a workaround, there a couple active Ideas in the Community asking for the ability to have multiple course completions and it sounds like it’s on the Docebo’s roadmap, but I’m not sure when it’ll happen. In your case since it’s not your content I’m not sure what the solution is. I can upload a file twice in the CLOR as long as I change the filename and give it a different name in the CLOR, but those are our own files so we have the freedom to do that.

Userlevel 4
Badge

I’m trying to solve a similar issue and think I have it figured out. I’d like to share my solution in hopes that more experienced users can poke holes in it or make me aware of any potential issues that I may encounter.

Training Requirements

  • We have a set of compliance trainings that we require all employees to complete annually.
  • These trainings are recycled elearning courses, i.e. the content is exactly the same from year to year.
  • The retraining date is dependent on the initial training completion, i.e. a year from completion of the first training.
  • Training completion data must be retained for each course, i.e. completion data for each year’s course must be retained.

Proposed Solution

  • Create annual compliance elearning courses
    • Do not use CLOR because training completions will carry over to duplicated course
    • The code and name of the course should be based on year or time period, e.g. 2021 Annual Refresher, 2022 Annual Refresher, etc.
    • Each course has start/end dates for each year, e.g. 2021, 2022, etc.
  • Set up a certification for each training with an annual expiration.
    • Do not allow users to retake the same course or learning plan to renew their certification.
    • Associate the compliance courses with the certification.
  • When a user completes their initial training, they will receive a certification. When the certification expires, they will have the option to renew using the course for that year.
  • Set up notifications for initial enrollment, reminder of deadline, journal email to managers with folks that have incomplete trainings.

I’ve done a bit of testing and think this will work for all of our compliance trainings, but am interested in what others think.

 

We have been using Certifications for compliance renewals. My one concern on this one is that it doesn’t keep track of the previous completion once the certification is renewed. It would be helpful to have that record if it is needed to support a legal case.

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