There are times where we host an ILC that is the equivalent to a WBT. It would be really helpful to be able to apply credit for courses that are equivalent. This way our learners have multiple options for fulfilling a requirement within a curriculum.
I'd like to request that it be possible to create course equivalencies between online and instructor lead courses.
I agree with all previous posts regarding the need for equivalent courses to automatically be marked as "complete" once a user completes the equivalency. We have nudges set up for required courses and we don't want learners or their managers to continue to receive past due notices if they've completed the equivalency.
We also need to be able to have the functionality to mark the learner as complete when a previous version of the training is deemed as equivalent. I have personally misinterpreted how equivalencies work in this system vs other LMSs, which now means cross checking and editing 500+ records which is painfully slow as you have not option to mass credit and document the changes.
We would personally love an option where a user completes one course, it’s equivalency is also marked as complete (both from the learner's point of view and admin)
+1 for getting this feature to help with updating courses in a curriculum! It would be great if the new courses being marked as "equivalencies" to the old courses could provide a seamless experience for learners.
For example, a curriculum currently contains a course called "Program 2.0" that we'll replace with a new course called "Program 3.0". It would be great if all learners enrolled in the curriculum could tell that the Program 3.0 course is what they should be taking, but if they have already completed the Program 2.0 course, we will still accept it towards completion of the entire curriculum.
Hello Everyone,
With the August release, we’ve added Course Equivalency functionality for Online Courses. This is our initial iteration and implementation of this functionality, with the understanding that additional work will need to be completed for this feature before it can effectively serve the majority of use-cases in this space.
Our primary objective with the initial iteration of this functionality was to enable clients with content which is considered equivalent to link those pieces of content together and report on them simultaneously without the need to create multiple reports.
As we release this functionality, please continue to provide feedback so that we can get a good understanding of potential opportunities for enhancement such that we can then review and prioritize these ideas for a future iteration.
Administrators will need to have the following permissions to configure Course Equivalencies:
Online Courses – Modify – general
Online Courses – Modify – Equivalent Courses
Additional information on Course Equivalencies can be found here: https://support.absorblms.com/hc/en-us/articles/18693448754835-Course-Equivalencies
There is a workaround but it only works when you create a new course. In this example, we have an ILC but later want to offer an Online Course (with a video object) to learners who were unable to attend.
1. Create the Instructor Led Course.
2. Create the Online Course, but do not add any objects at this time. Set Allow Self Enrollment to Off.
3. Add a Post Enrollment Rule to the ILC that upon completion, they will be enrolled into the Online Course. As the course does not have any objects, they will be automatically marked complete. Please note that these enrollment rules will only be effective for new enrollments.
4. When the ILC sessions have been completed, the attendance has been marked, and you have a video ready, add the video to the Online Course and set the enrollment rules.
5. Anyone who completed the ILC should have a completion for the Online Course.
Having equivalencies would help us a lot for situations like:
compliance courses that cover the same topic - in some situations we don't want to encourage completion of the older course, we want to give credit for the completion of the topic to users who did it in the past, and be able to report on the level of the new course on the whole company - so we can see if the new training is not started/in progress/ completed/ completed by equivalent
it would allow putting a training with specific enrollment rules as an equivalent to a lesson inside of curriculum - sometimes equivalent option should be available only to specific people and putting it inside of curriculum group opens it to everyone enrolled
new version of the course that changed format - we have upgraded a curriculum to a content created with Absorb Create. As it's different format we can't set it up as a new version of the existing one and reporting demands cross-checking 2 separate reports
It would be great to see this improvement.
I have run across another use case for this. We have a lot of course content that is being replaced but many have completed and need the credit to transition to the new course to satisfy the regulatory and compliance requirement. It would save a lot of time and work around to just assign the new courses as equivalencies to the older content.
Hi Paul,
That's a good idea, but it's not always the best solution.
I'd be happy to provide some examples if needed!
Other Learning Management Systems have this feature. It's a very common one.
For example -
https://help.sap.com/viewer/5fae31b1299d4033b665edabea7b9087/2011/en-US/95391c5dbddc43488289d65e376bb33d.html
Thanks,
Ziv
I'm not claiming it wouldn't be a bit complicated to set up, but has this been attempted using Curriculum Group completion requirements? I can imagine a configuration where the different language versions of a course all appear in the same Curriculum Group, but the completion requirement is equivalent to only finishing one of them. The same could be done for one of the equivalency scenarios Roger puts forth, and if the ILC and the WBT appeared in the same Curriculum Group the completion requirements could be set so only one of the alternatives is required?
This is not a true substitute for this idea, and leaves one of the scenarios unaccounted for but perhaps it will help until this idea has generated enough interest that it is entered into development?
We have another use case that has come up for this. If a course is available in English and another language, then the learner would receive credit for all equivalencies.
And of course no solution is complete without the option of selecting uni-directional or bi-directional course equivalency: That is, A equals B, but not B equals A for the former, and A equals B, and B equals A for the latter!