About Completions

Courses are assigned to learners when an administrator adds the course to a Learning Plan Assignment. The Learning Plan Assignment establishes the requirements that must be met in order for the assignment to be marked as complete. If the Learning Assignment is recurring, the learner will have to take the course again sometime in the future. Therefore, even though a learner completed a course in the past, that completion may eventually not meet the completion requirements set forth in the Learning Assignment.

Note: Individual courses have completion criteria that determine everything the learner must do to complete a course. This can include achieving minimum test scores, visiting all content pages, spending a minimum amount of time in the course, etc. Course completion criteria is different from Learning Plan Assignment completions discussed in this topic.

Valid completions

A valid completion is one that, as of today, meets the requirements established in the Learning Assignment.

There are many instances when the system must evaluate whether or not a completion is valid. For instance, when an administrator runs a training status report, the system must determine which completions are valid on the day the report is run. Or, when a course exemption expires, the system must determine if a valid completion exists for the course on the day the exemption expires.

To determine if a completion is valid, the system uses values from the following parameters:

Today - the date the system is performing the evaluation.
Completion date - the actual date the learner completed the course, or the course completion was recorded by the system.
Validity period - also known as the recurrence interval, the validity period is established by the administrator when the assignment is created. The administrator must decide if learners only need to take the course once during their employment (a One Time Only assignment), or if learners need to take the course on a recurring basis (a Recurring assignment). If it's determined the course should be recurring, the administrator must decide how many days, weeks, or years can pass until the learner has to take the course again. This number of days, weeks, or years is the Validity Period.
Note: The validity period for One Time Only (OTO) courses is 99 years. The validity period for Recurring courses can be the number of days/weeks/years from the previous completion date, or the number of days/weeks/years from a beginning due date, which is also established by the administrator.

To make the calculation, the system uses the date value of today, then subtracts the number of days established in the validity period. To be valid, the completion date must be newer than the calculated date.

In other words, the completion date must be newer than <today> - <validity period>.

Example

Let's say Sarah and Abby work in the warehouse for a shipping company. Their administrator assigns a recurring course on Preventing Back Injuries. The course is due every 365 days (the validity period) based on the learner's prior completion date.

Both Abby and Sarah complete the course on May 1, 2019. Their next due date for the assignment is May 1, 2020.

In 2020, Abby retakes the course and she completes it on April 30, 2020. Sarah, on the other hand, takes a month long vacation from April 29, 2020 to May 20, 2020 and does not retake the course before she leaves.

On May 15, 2020 their administrator runs a training status report. To determine if their completions are valid, for each learner, the system must decide if the completion date is newer than:

May 15, 2020 (today) - 365 days (validity period) = May 15, 2019.
To be valid, the completion date must be newer than May 15, 2019.

Abby's most recent completion is April 30, 2020 which is newer than May 1, 2019. Abby's completion is valid as of today.

Sarah's most recent completion is still May 1, 2019 which is older than May 15, 2019. Even though Sarah has an historical completion for the course, that completion is not valid as of today.