Explained: Attempts and attempt history

What are attempts? 

Attempts are the mechanism used by the system to track the completion status for items on the system, where the learner can complete, pass or fail the items multiple times. Each time a learner completes, passes or fails the item, their status for each is tracked as a new 'attempt'.

Courses and Tasks can be explicitly configured to support attempts, with the number of attempts defined by the administrator. Other items, such as events or simple documents (PDFs, Word files, etc.) support implicit attempts, where each attempt is associated with the renewal of a certification.

By configuring a course or task to support attempts, you enable learners to restart the item that they have previously completed (successfully or otherwise) without any involvement from an administrator. While empowering the user, this also ensures that repeated completions of a course by a given learner are independently tracked and recorded.

When a learner starts a new attempt, they are forced to start again from the beginning of the item and are required to complete any mandatory parts of a course again. You can define a maximum number of attempts, and a full history of all attempts is maintained. Tracking data from all attempts is included in reports and learners can see the results from previous attempts in their learning history.

Starting a new attempt is different to resuming a course that a learner has left mid way through. In this latter scenario, the course will resume from the point they left off and they will continue as part of the same attempt.

Administrator attempt configuration

Administrators can configure courses and tasks to use attempts by using the settings in the ATTEMPTS section on the items properties page within the catalogue.

The Allow review when complete setting is only available for courses, and enables learners to revisit completed courses for review purposes without triggering a new attempt.

When viewing the content attempt history for a learner, the administrator can view the attempts for an item.

Administrators are able to Add new attempts for courses, task and curricula using the New attempt option. For courses with attempts configured, it is not possible to reset a user to the not started state, although this can still be done for items not configured for attempts.

Administrators can also delete the attempt history for items using the Clear attempts option.

For courses and tasks, administrators can override an attempt limit that has been defined on a content item, on a per learner basis to give the learner additional attempts. The default values from the content item are displayed, and the administrator can revert to the default by clearing the fields shown. This keeps tracking data from previous attempts and includes the details of the extra attempts in the reports.

Note: If you need to totally reset a learner's state, you can use the Clear attempts option to delete all attempt data. It is important to understand that by using this option you permanently delete the tracking data from all attempts for that learner. This feature is most commonly used during course testing.

Learner options

For a course configured for attempts, after completing the course, if the learner launches the course again, they are presented with a dialog box prompting them to choose to review the content or start a new attempt. Note that the Review only option is only displayed if the Allow review when complete configuration has been selected by the administrator.

If the learner has reached their attempt limit, then a message is displayed to inform them.