How attempts and passing work

An attempt is one go at a course. How many somebody gets is yours to decide, and who decides whether they passed depends on whether you built the course or uploaded it.

Limiting attempts

Maximum attempts sits under Attempt limits in Course settings. Leave it blank and there is no limit.

Every start counts, whether or not the person finished, which is what the setting’s own hint says. Somebody who opens a course, leaves it and comes back has used a go. The only exception is an attempt a qualified signatory did not sign off, which never counts: a decline cannot use up someone’s last attempt.

You can also limit attempts to a rolling period rather than for all time, so somebody gets three goes a year rather than three goes ever.

Once the limit is reached the button is disabled and reads Max attempts reached.

Somebody already part-way through an attempt can always finish it. The limit stops new attempts, never the one in progress.

Starting again

On a SCORM course, a learner part-way through can choose Start again rather than carrying on. It is offered only while an attempt is open, and not while the course is awaiting sign-off after the content — that attempt is finished, and only its post-course step is outstanding.

Starting again closes the attempt they were in and opens a fresh one. The closed attempt is kept, it can never be reopened, and it has no result.

Where a course limits attempts, the abandoned attempt counts towards the limit, and the confirmation says so before they commit. That is deliberate: a limit exists partly to stop somebody restarting out of a bad result.

An abandoned attempt counts towards neither your compliance nor your completion figures. See How compliance and completion are counted.

Who decides whether they passed

For a course you built in Learnient, Learnient decides. It adds up the points somebody earned, works them out as a percentage of what was available, and compares that with your Pass mark.

For a SCORM course, the package decides. The content reports its own result, and Learnient records what it was told.

This is the part that surprises people. A Pass mark set in Course settings does not govern a SCORM course: the pass mark that counts is the one inside the package, set by whoever built it.

A SCORM attempt is complete only when every part of the package that counts has reported itself finished, and it is a pass only when the content actually says so. Content that reports itself finished without saying whether it was a pass is recorded as completed.

When a SCORM course reports nothing

Some packages report a status and no score, and some report nothing until the learner closes them properly. A result is only taken from a package when the content ends its session: a session left open or suspended is not an outcome.

So a learner who closes the browser tab rather than finishing the content may show as still in progress when they believe they are done. Asking them to reopen it and exit the content properly is usually all it takes.