Re-enroll your learners before their certificates expire
Automatically re-enroll learners in required courses to ensure compliance with timely recertification. This feature is an effective tool for learners who must maintain professional qualifications.
Availability: all customers
Recertification through LearnUpon: overview
LearnUpon offers the option to re-enroll learners onto courses at intervals you set. The interval is up to you, and depends on your business needs. Based on this interval, LearnUpon re-enrolls learners automatically to the same course or to the most recent revision of the course, so that learners can maintain their certification.
The following screenshot shows an example of the interface for Courses > your course > Certs & credits, where you set up the end date for the certificate, and the interval for re-enrolling your learner. You can set up this feature, and optionally leave it turned off (disabled) until you're ready to enroll learners.
Learners must pass their course to start the recertification process.
When learners do not pass their course, they do not receive their first certification, and thus don't start "countdown" interval for their re-enrollment.
Due dates, valid periods, and certificate dates, explained
Certificate expiry dates are separate features from course due dates and valid periods (aka expiry dates). The terms are similar but the functions are not linked:
- A due date sets an advisory date for a user to complete a course. After the due date passes, users can still access the course
- A valid period, also called an expiry date, sets a definite date for when a user must complete a course. After the valid period expires, users cannot access the course
- Certificate expiry dates apply to optional certificates which you link to a course: you can use them to trigger re-enrolling learners on a course, and are described in this article
See: Manage course due dates and valid periods.
This screenshot shows the 2 features as they appear on a course Info page.
Recertification on new versions of courses
If recertification is set up on a course and then you create a new version of the course, the application re-enrolls the learner on the latest version of the course. An example:
- recertification is set up on version 1 of a course
- learner completes version 1 of the course
- version 2 of the course is created which automatically archives version 1
- the certificate expires on the learner's enrollment in version 1 of the course and triggers the recertification process
- LearnUpon enrolls the learner on version 2 as version 1 is archived
Recertification on courses containing Live Learning events
You can set up learners for re-enrollment on courses that include Live Learning sessions, using 1 of 2 approaches:
- create future Live Learning sessions to provide capacity, so when the re-enrollment happens, LearnUpon can add learners to sessions available
- turn on Training overbook in the Live Learning event, to enroll learners before you create the sessions for them
If no sessions are available, and your Live Learning event has has Training overbook on, then LearnUpon can enroll the learner in the course. The learner appears on the Unregistered learners list in Live Learning, to wait for new sessions.
See Live Learning: use overbook to plan future sessions
Recertification after you archive a course
You can archive a course completely using the Archive feature, which ends the course's recertification workflow. See Archive a course.
Note: This option - to archive a course and stop enrolling learners on it entirely - is distinct from the archiving step LearnUpon performs automatically when you start a new version of the course:
- if you archive a course through the Archive feature, the recertification workflow ends. Typically you're finished with the course and don't need it, or its certificates, any more
- if you re-version through the Create a new version feature, typically you're continuing to offer the course to learners. LearnUpon archives the current version, and maintains the recertification workflow on the new version of the course
When learners must keep their certifications up to date: make sure you either create a new version of the course, or set up a new course with certificates instead. See Publish a new version of a course.
When you re-version a course but no longer require certificates: turn off the certificates in the newest version.
Recertification best practice tips
Once a learner completes a course that is set up for recertification, let the automated recertification process work. Avoid manually enrolling the user in the same course ahead of the recertification.
Manually enrolling a user, who is also set up with automated recertification, creates 2 separate chains of re-certification. The application then re-enrolls the learner for both completions of the course when the certificate expires.
Remove recertification courses from the catalog where possible, to prevent learners re-enrolling themselves manually in the course, and creating 2 or more chains of re-certification.
See Add courses and learning paths to the catalog.
Prerequisites
To re-certify learners you need to:
- create the courses for training
- create certificates to recognize completion of courses
- associate certificates with courses, and set the recertification interval
See
Set up recertification on a course
- From main navigation go to Courses > your course name.
- From the Info page, select Certs & Credits.
- Assign a certificate to the course in Award Certificate (Pass or Completion) - see Set up course certificates.
- In Certificate Expires enter a number of days that the certificate is valid, after which it expires.
- In Auto re-enroll learner:
- enter a number of days before certificate expiry
- select Enabled to activate the automatic re-enrollment function
- Select Save to finish.
Turn off recertification for a course
- From main navigation go to Courses > your course name.
- From the Info page, select Certs & Credits.
- From Auto re-enroll learner select Disabled.
- Select Save to finish.
The following screenshot shows Certificates, while selecting Disabled to turn off Auto re-enroll learner.
See: