"Compliance courses" is a feature for recurring courses that users need to retake periodically. Typically, these are courses needed for certain certifications for food and health, financial, insurance, and other types of compliance, but can be any course that you want your users to retake periodically.
When enabling a Compliance Course, the first thing you need to decide and configure is the Compliance and Retake periods.
ℹ️ Changes to your compliance settings can take up to one hour to apply.
The Compliance Period is the number of days the user is compliant for once finishing the course. For instance, if you set the Compliance Period to 365 days and a user finishes the course on May 6th 2022, the user will be compliant until May 6th 2023.
The Retake Period is the period during which the system should notify the user that the compliance period for the course is starting to run out and it's time to retake the course. If you, for instance, set the period to 90 days, Learnster will move the course to the user's Ongoing Courses and start prompting the user that it's time to retake the course 90 days before the course compliance runs out. Per the example above, if the course compliance period runs our May 6th 2023, Learnster will move the course to the user's ongoing courses on February 5th 2023.
ℹ️ Want to allow your Learners retake the course outside of the retake period? Then you can activate Course Reset in your course settings.
So, what's actually happening when a Learner retakes a compliance course?
When the retake period starts, progress resets to 0% and the course is shown for the Learner as Not Started under My Courses in Learnster U. This will also generate a new enrollment date to the course for the Learner. For each time that a Learner retakes the course a new entry is added to their course history so that you'll be able to see how many times they've been certified.
💡 Be sure to set your preferred completion criteria to your compliance course too. Use "Static" to be able to add new content without it affecting already compliant Learners. Use "Dynamic" if Learners should have to retake the course immediately when new content is added. Or use "Manual Approval" if an Instructor or Course Administrator needs to manually set a Learner is compliant or not.
Are your Learners compliant?
When using the Compliance Course functionality, an extra column will be shown under the Learners tab in your course. This column says "Compliant for" and shows if, and for how long, your Learners are compliant.
Recertification Notifications
There are three notifications connected to recertifications.
Recertification Notification – notification sent when the retake period starts notifying the user that it's time to retake the course. By default, a standard notification is sent (Settings > System Messages > Recertification period has been started). You can also choose to send a custom message.
Nag Reminders – notification sent to remind the user to retake the course. You can choose how often it should be sent by changing the "every X days" setting. By default, a standard notification is sent (Settings > System Messages > Reminder about recertification period start). You can also choose to send a custom message.
Expiration Notification – notification sent if the user misses to retake the course before the compliance period ends. By default, a standard notification is sent (Settings > System Messages > Certificate expired. Recertification period ended). You can also choose to send a custom message.
❗️ Be careful with using Actions in Compliance Courses. Actions are triggered depending on a Learner's progress and can also be combined with specific dates. When retaking a compliance course progress is set to 0% and the course can span over a long period of time. Therefore, there's a chance that your actions will be repetitive or out of date.
Remove Learner Once Compliance Expires
By default, users that don't redo courses set for recertification will stay on users My Courses and the users will keep being enrolled in the course. By enabling the Remove Learner Once Compliance Expires setting, you can let Learnster automatically remove users that haven't re-certified after X days. When Learnster removes the user, by default the "Course participant removed after compliance period expiration" notification is sent. You can also choose to send a custom message.