The one BIG problem (and concern) that people have with online training is to know whether the user has actually followed the content or not. (The same can of course be said for in person training. Hand’s up who has ever been at a course or talk and noticed a few people struggling to maintain focus).
To solve this, there are a number of ways which technology can assist. One of the main ones is to hold a test at the end with a minimum passing grade etc. However, this approach is one which we don’t feel fits well with the aim of this site. We want people to go and find what they need, when they need it.
The approach we are taking with selected* courses is timed viewing. This means, that the FIRST TIME YOU DO A COURSE, the video must be open and playing for a set period of time (usually corresponding to the length of the video) before the system will show ‘Complete’, and you can click on the button, and then proceed to the next course, or print your certificate.
If you later want to go and view a portion of the course to refresh your memory, this time limit doesn’t exist. You can go back to the portion which you wanted to review whenever you wish.
(We provide a Participant Notepad Sheet for you to download before you do each course if you wish, which will let you quickly make note of what course and time slots have content that is of interest to you).
The Notepad Sheet can be downloaded from HERE.
*Selected courses.
The courses and briefings where we set this time limit are usually ones which assume little prior knowledge or are general overviews of a topic, (e.g. Autism 101, Down Syndrome 101, etc), as we feel it is important that someone gets the whole training, in the order as envisaged by the course author.
For short ‘To-the-point’ topics, such as “How to use the Modelling technique with a child” there are not time restrictions.