QUESTION: When tracking e-learning course completion rates, how do we determine when to give a student credit for finishing a course?

This is a question that we ask on the front end of course development because it has a dramatic effect on course design. Will the learner be working towards Continuing Education Unit (CEU) credit? Or do you simply want reassurance that the student learned from the course rather than clicking the "Next" button to get it over with? You need to look at the course material and its function.

In the simplest method, you can credit learners with completion as soon as they reach the last frame of the course. This metric works well for course material on HR policies and processes, managerial or supervisory skills, and courses structured as seminars.

At my [Larry's] company, we assign pass/fail status to those types of courses. The score isn't what's important; we're more concerned about whether the learner attended the course. In some cases, those types of courses are part of a curriculum track and may be a prerequisite for other courses; thus requiring completion, but not a particular score.

To track course completion, I [Larry] built a report that, for each individual in a defined time interval (usually a quarter), returns the

• number of courses registered for during the timeframe
• number of courses completed during the timeframe
• individual's training history (a line entry for each course showing registration date, completion date, and score).

I can also generate summaries of departments to compare departmental activity.

The first two measures tell you which individuals and departments have high training activity. If someone has three or four courses open and they've been open for more than three weeks, I know we have a problem with the person finishing courses. If a number of people in a department exhibit that behavior, I know I need to investigate how the supervisor is managing the training activity of their direct reports.

For courses covering technical material or leading towards certification, you may want to track more than just attendance. The most commonly accepted tracking method is to require that learners pass a skills assessment at the end of a course which tests their understanding of the material. The assessment usually requires a minimum passing score, and once that score has been achieved, completion credit is granted.

If you need even more reassurance that learners aren't just skimming through pages, you can try one or more of these methods:

• Track all interactive exercises and unit quizzes.
• Put a timer on each page so that the "Next" button isn't activated until a certain number of seconds after the page loads.
• Ask the learner to click "Agree" to a message indicating that he or she will complete the course in full.
• Lock down the course so the learner has to proceed linearly (Unit 1, then quiz mastered before Unit 2, then quiz mastered before Unit 3, and so forth).

Published: June 2001