Instant Completion Possibly Due to Hidden Training Materials and Central Repository Trickiness

I read this: https://community.docebo.com/product-q-a-7/benefits-of-overwriting-vs-hiding-training-materials-7814

It’s helpful but doesn’t answer my questions.

We had a similar thing happen to us (thankfully we caught it before we pushed out the training). We had created a new version of the material, but it was still looking at the original SCORM file and marking people as complete.

What we ultimately ended up doing was loading in a new SCORM file and calling that 2025 material. We opted not to use the archive feature (which you might want to check out) because the reporting for archives only produces a few pieces of information (instead of their whole profile) and it wasn’t robust enough for when we are audited. If they every enhance the archive reports to include the full profile, we would re-look into the archive option. So reloading and creating all new courses it is for us! 

Good luck and let us know how you end up resolving it!

because of the issues already written, were doing it exactly like ​@truffino for some years now.

Your hypothesis sounds plausible to me on the surface at least, ​@JKolodner. And your plan going forward is how I would approach this.

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what was the reason for including the 2024 training materials when duplicating the course? Hidden or not, I’m not sure I understand the rationale for including them in the first place, but I’m curious.

I wonder if this is an artefact of the SCORM object. We do this with native tests where we hide the old version to preserve data for reporting and load a newer version of the test. We never had any issues with this. We dont deliberately mark any object as the “end object marker” - perhaps this is also part of the issue when copying a course? Sounds like it would be an interesting series of tests to figure this out.

​@JKolodner I think your proposed approach is a good option right now.  When we duplicate a course for re-use (mostly for consistency in settings), we delete the previous SCORM content after the copy (unless it’s the same material), and upload new SCORM file.  We’ve been able to duplicate all previous content without incident, but we don’t use the Central Repository (except for surveys) due to it ‘remembering’ the completions for learners that had previously completed the material (even from a different course); which may be where the issue originates.  Found it easier (fewer issues) to load directly into the course.

Not clear in retrospect, but probably because there was an interim period before the 2025 course materials were finalized.

We tend to mark something as an end object marker if there is a learning module (indicated as the end object) and an optional survey that comes after it.

I don’t know if this will help you guys out at all, but we have annual compliance training we need to do and we use the archive/re-enroll option and I have it reset the status of the training material on re-enrollment (in one course it’s a SCORM, and in the other we two we have it’s a regular video) so the learner just has to do the new training again. However our compliance is internal rather than needing to report to a state or national agency, so the archived enrollment data (with the learner’s certificate preserved) is fine for our purposes. Before the archive/re-enroll option we did the same as you where we had to create a new course shell and upload another copy of the training material to be a separate instance, it was a pain to keep track of. Is the archive/re-enroll not an option for you? I do think your issue stemmed from having older hidden material that learners had already completed, I would think that one MUST have been an end-object marker for it to instantly set all those people to completion before they’d even opened the course.

I’ve seen this happen when there are equivalences tied to the course or the training material(s) are in central repo connected to other courses that were already completed. Not sure if this is relevant in your situation though.

No, we don’t use equivalencies. But thanks for the thought!

The “CR connected to other courses” is what we think is going on here too, due to having copied old courses and having the END OBJECT MARKER set to Yes in one case on one of those old SCORM files.

This what I am planning to do but only after downloading all the reports for compliance. If the archive data is insufficient - that shouldn’t matter if you have a local record saved. 

When we create new courses, we generally publish/associate new SCORM files so that we don’t have the “auto-completion” issue indicated by me at the start of this thread. However, this was an odd instance where the person who duplicated the 2024 course to make the 2025 course left the 2024 content in place and just hid it. We have learned NOT to duplicate content when duplicating a course so this doesn’t happen again.

Whether to load courses into the Central Repository or not has been a topic of discussion on my team. Some find the CR and what it can do for us hard to grasp. However, through extensive research and testing, we’ve learned that if you want to track/maintain scores and you may need to refresh a training material at some time, maintaining/updating your training material in the CR is likely necessary.

If you are only keeping your SCORM file on the course level (not in the CR), you can track your score for a particular SCORM file but if you hide it and instead add/show another SCORM file (in the Training Materials area), some of your learners will have a score and others will have 0 or blank. This is the case whether you use the scoring option for “Use the score of the last training material in the course” or “The score is generated by a training material.”

Having the SCORM file in the CR allows you to update it through overwriting or versioning, while still maintaining all of the scores earned by learners on the course.