Understanding Expiration and Due Dates for "Expiration by Date"
Problem
The course is set to expire (by date) every year, but the progress report suggests that learners do not have to do the course for almost two years.
Solution
There are two ways to configure expiration on courses:
Expiration by lapse time
Expiration by date
The two options are mutually exclusive and are configured in the course settings.
The "Expire the learning record on" option was added at the request of healthcare customers because they wanted to track compliance based on a calendar (either fiscal or non-fiscal calendar). When you select "Expire the learning record on", you are specifying when the learning record for a learner who completes the course will expire. In other words, if you select "31 December", it means that regardless of when a user completes the course, their learning record will expire on December 31.
While the "Expire the learning record on" is used by many healthcare organizations, it's not without any downsides.
Let's assume that "Expiration by date" is set to "31 December of every year".
If a user completes the course December 30th, their learning record will expire on the very next day. This may frustrate some learners as they will not understand why their learning record is only valid for one (1) day.
There is no "grace" period when using "Expire the learning record on". If a user does not complete the course in 2019 and instead does it on January 1st 2020, the user will be marked as non-compliant for 2019.
Finally, the expiration date doesn't really indicate when the user should take the course. When used by healthcare organizations for compliance purposes, these organizations are usually ok if the person does the course sometime during the year - even if it's December 30th. Technically, they will be marked as compliant for the year even if the only do the course at the last minute. This is why the "Due date" in the progress report shows the latest time people have to complete the course to remain compliant.
This means that technically, if a user completes the course on January 1st 2019, then their learning record will only expire on December 31st, 2019, and their progress report will state that technically, they do not have to complete the course again until December 31st, 2020. In other words, as long as the do it sometime in 2020, then they will be deemed compliant.