Continuing Professional Education… Easy as 1, 2, 3.
When you’re developing continuing education for professionals in a regulated industry like Finance, Healthcare, Insurance, or Accounting, you’re likely required to follow a strict set of requirements in order to offer continuing professional education (CPE) credits. CPE is an important and necessary way to ensure a professional continually improves their skills and expertise, and it’s an ongoing requirement to maintain their professional license.
For example, in the case of the Accounting industry, content developers must first become an approved CPE Sponsor by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA), and the resulting self study sessions must comply with a series of detailed standards developed by NASBA and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) - to qualify for CPE credit.
Luckily, Lectora Online makes it easy to leverage templates and built-in objects and tools to help eLearning developers be successful with this otherwise daunting effort.
LCvista, the leading Learning Management System and CPE Compliance Management Platform for Accounting professionals, partnered with eLearning Brothers to create custom Lectora Online templates that really makes it easy as… 1, 2, 3.
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Utilize Video
If you’re converting a previously recorded webcast or live training to a self study session, you can take advantage of Lectora’s built-in Video Editor to trim, add callouts, and compress the video file. You may also wish to use the Screen Recorder to record a PowerPoint presentation.
Display the Video Controller to allow your professionals to pause and replay portions of the video, especially for a long presentation.
Consider whether to use Video Events to display review questions at defined intervals throughout the presentation, or alternatively, you may decide to break a long presentation into segments and present review questions at the end of each shorter video.
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Add Necessary Assessment Questions & Feedback
According to NASBA requirements, a 1 hour course will need to present three review questions with evaluative feedback. In Lectora, you can achieve this by using individual feedback by choice for multiple choice questions. Lectora allows you to use questions anywhere, so you can create these as standalone review questions that do not have to be graded.
However, to issue CPE credit for the course, you’ll also need to include a graded assessment with a minimum passing grade of at least 70%. You can easily set this up in the Test Properties Ribbon on the Results Tab.
For a one hour course, the final exam will need to have at least five questions. You may choose to use a test bank and randomly pull 5 questions from a bank of 10. Lectora allows you to set up randomization selecting the number of pages to select on the Test Properties Ribbon’s Behavior Tab. Remember to ensure that the assessment questions are written to test the achievement of the course’s learning objectives.
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Include Instructional Materials
In addition to a recorded presentation, an assessment, and review questions, you’ll need to provide important instructional materials, including:
- An overview of topics, learning objectives and subject matter
- The ability for users to quickly and easily find information through a menu or table of contents
- A definition of key terms, such as through a glossary
- Helpful instructions regarding course navigation, structure, and requirements for completion
Bonus Tip! Publish to SCORM.
When you’re ready to deliver the program to your users, it’s simply a matter of publishing to SCORM. Lectora will prompt you to download a zip file. In your LMS, upload the file - this contains the SCORM package that end users will launch and complete.
Publishing to SCORM allows LMS admins to track and report on a user’s score and status. Ultimately, A passing grade and course completion will trigger your LMS to issue the appropriate CPE credit.
You can find additional NASBA resources here:
Best Practices: QAS Self Study: Development
NASBA Standards for Continuing Education Professional Education (CPE)
Create your own course templates with a free trial of Lectora Online.
