Learning Plans - An observation of a different gotcha if you leverage enrollment validity periods

dklinger
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Hi - so we have been deploying learning plans for a bit. It seems like there is a minor gotcha for doing this that I havent encountered as of yet? But I figure check in with folks to see how they are dealing with it.

What if a person wants to go back into a course that they have successfully completed but it is beyond the validity period of the LP?
It seems that the courses that I have taken (and acted on within the correct timeline) are NOT available to me after the validity date expires.

Something feels wrong about that. Unless I am thinking about that wrong?

I can think of ways to work around that because I have an open catalog, but they involve multiple versions of the same content…not a good idea if you have decentralized your reporting to power users.

I really hope this is just my observations and someone will say “well Dan, did you try this?”.

Purely an observation - it feels like there are so many “gotchas” with LPs.

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Bfarkas
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Hmm. This does feel like another item on the ever growing list of LP issues. I do like your logic of if completed and course isn’t expired than should still get to access. Having read a few reads on course statuses today I wonder if a more wholistic look at states needs to be done and though through with all the various access ways now. 

dklinger
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@Bfarkas - I think soft deadlines on LPs (same like the function in courses) does the trick we are looking for.

i would hate to say that I may need to rethink an entire enrollment strategy to avoid LPs. As a container? They are a necessity (giving us a chance to report on all the stuff in them) but the gotchas are literally getting me.

LPs have so much promise to them. I can tell you flat out other products miss it as a container all together…and that is a boulder all on its own. But we have literally built workflows to work through the validity period “hard deadline” and extending enrollments learner by learner.

That keeps us away from the many learning objects necessary to support the basic functionality that we need.

@Bfarkas - what would you fix with LPs?

What about @lrnlab or @alekwo? @lhubbard? @Eric M VanAuken?

Eric M VanAuken
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This is something that I have discussed with the development team about 8 months ago.  I put together a use case to show how renewals or both courses and learning plans need to be fixed.   They are currently working on this.  They expect to have the ability to track multiple completions for courses in the next one or two releases.   Once they have that they will be working on the renewal portion of the problem.   If you like I can share what was shared with the development team and their response and timeline.

Eric M VanAuken
L
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For 90% of our learning plans, no soft deadline and no expectation that they will need to go back and take the content again. For the remaining 10% I think we just haven’t hit that obstacle yet.

One of the reasons for no soft deadline is we’re trying to get as close as we can to a “calendar date” deadline instead of relative due date.

 

dklinger
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For 90% of our learning plans, no soft deadline and no expectation that they will need to go back and take the content again. For the remaining 10% I think we just haven’t hit that obstacle yet.

 

Thank you @lhubbard.

I think the greatest challenge with this is if the course has material that is acting as a reference on a subject. Having it locked up cant help anyone if a person successfully completed it.

I do get what you are saying though. If you didnt do it by X…..yeah locking the user down? Is a good thing with your use case.

L
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@dklinger Depending on the content, maybe a job aid channel, catalog, or page full of hyperlinks would make sense? I get that supporting 2 different objects and keeping them accurate could be a pain, but job aids are fairly common, so maybe they already exist and you just need to link to them.

Bfarkas
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@dklingerDepending on the content, maybe a job aid channel, catalog, or page full of hyperlinks would make sense? I get that supporting 2 different objects and keeping them accurate could be a pain, but job aids are fairly common, so maybe they already exist and you just need to link to them.

This is an interesting idea. What if content in completed courses could auto add to some sort of “review/reference” channel for users?

dklinger
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I don’t have DCS going, but yeah - anything is possible. And yes I can leverage course completions to drive a person into a group and then they can be directed to a page as part of their UX that would show those materials.

Here goes the challenge though. And I truly say this respectfully. Working around a function that is already available in the platform (just to keep material accessible like in other courses) seems to be going a long way to solution for a common feature.

I hate to say this again in a sentence following what I just said - it is so common - it is already available in this platform for content that’s not in learning plans that do not have deadlines or are being supported by soft deadlines).

L
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@dklinger  So I just found this gotcha exists at the course level too. And you probably were saying that in this thread and I just plain missed it.

 

dklinger
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@lhubbard - yup. Once you use validity with LPs - you are in a whole new space.

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