Certificate for course - not activity - completion

Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Dale Musselman -
Number of replies: 8

We are using the certificate plugin with courses containing SCORM content, where the course is configured to complete when the SCORM activity is complete. Right now, the certificate activity is also configured to allow access to the certificate when the SCORM activity is complete.

This sounds good in theory, but in practice it would be much preferable if we could make certificate access directly dependent on course completion. With several thousand learners, there are too many situations where an issue with the SCORM completion prevents access to the certificate. If the SCORM fails to complete, there is no way for an admin to manually complete it - they only have access to complete the course itself, which then does not give access to the certificate.

So far I'm not seeing a way around this. Any ideas?


Thank you -

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dale Musselman

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Gary Lyon -

Hi Dale. We have a very similar situation. One approach that has worked for us is to create a quiz outside of the SCORM package, then use it as the 'trigger' for allowing users to access the Certificate. Hope this helps.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Gary Lyon

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Hal MacLean -

I'd agree with that - the quiz could be a single question asking for feedback on the course, or something like that. I wonder if you could also use a URL which has completion settings on it to trigger the course completion?

One thing to consider also is that (I *think*) completion is not actually recorded by Moodle until a Cron job runs (usually overnight), so you may want to experiment a little first. Whether this would prevent the certificate access or not I don't know, but it may have a bearing.

Another alternative would be to set up a second course with just the certificate in it, and restrict access to the course dependent on successfully completing the prior learning - i.e the course with your SCORM object, perhaps?

Having said that, it sounds a little contrived!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Hal MacLean

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Dale Musselman -

Thanks - yes we do that as well - where the main content is a non-SCORM webinar recording - we set up an external one question quiz where the learner attests to having watched the recording. That works pretty well, to just get them essentially a certificate of attendance, though we then run into the issue of poor user experience with too many clicks, too many different parts. I think 2 activities - content and certificate are OK, adding in the third - or something like a separate course for the certificate - gets to be more than I really want to have. 

But in cases where there is real learning assessment built into the SCORM course, I also don't want to just circumvent that by giving the learner a way to bypass going through the course. 

Hal - good point about course completion and the chron job. I believe ours is more like every 10 minutes, but that still would be poor user experience to make them wait some period of time after completing for that to register. At least now when they complete the activity, the certificate is immediately available.

We will keep looking for the best workaround for us, I was just hoping there was something I was missing about the certificate module. 

Thanks for your responses.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dale Musselman

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Hal MacLean -

One other thing -I know it isn't necessarily going to help, but there is an alternative certificate plug in you can try out, too. I use it on another site I run and it has a good interface, works well and doesn't mean you are editing code to get the text elements lined up.

https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_simplecertificate

It may provide an alternative which works better for you..

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Dale Musselman

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Elena Ivanova -

What if you release the certificate not based on SCORM activity completion, but on Grade Condition: Course Total?

That was admin can also override the SCORM/Course grade in the gradebook, if it is not reported properly, and this will trigger certificate release.


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Elena Ivanova

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by Dale Musselman -

Well that is really interesting. I have completely avoided the gradebook because we don't use grades, everything is complete or not complete. But looking at it, I see that completed learners have a score of 100 - so that makes sense that I could just use that setting in the certificate activity.

Thank you - this very promising. I'll have to set up a test course and try it out!

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Elena Ivanova

Re: Certificate for course - not activity - completion

by John Sims -

Elena,

I have found that updating grades in the gradebook does NOT affect the requirements of subsequent items, including certificates. Have you tested this and found it to work? If so, what version of Moodle?


- John

Average of ratings: -