2 Easy Ways to Track Course Completion without an LMSIf you’re developing an e-learning course, chances are that you are going to want some kind of metrics to show whether learners completed your course. Most e-learning developers turn to an LMS to obtain this kind of information because it usually provides insight on the completion status as well as more detailed information about learner activity and quiz scores.

What if your budget doesn’t include an LMS, yet you still need to track course completion? Check out these quick and easy alternatives to using an LMS.

1. Insert a Form as a Web Object

For small companies with a limited number of learners, this is probably the cheapest and easiest option. All you have to do is create a simple form using a web application such as Google Docs or JotForm and include it at the end of your course as a web object.

Web Object Button

You can choose to include as many or few fields in your form as you’d like. At a minimum, I suggest asking learners to fill out their name and e-mail address.

Google Form

If you have a quiz at the end of your course, make sure that the web object is only available to those learners who passed the quiz by branching to the slide via the “Passed” layer.

The advantage of this option is that the results are populated automatically. Click here to view a short video tutorial by community member Christina Stephenson that explains how to do this using JotForm and Articulate Storyline. Here are the published output and source file from her demonstration.

2. E-mail Results

Another way to track course completion is by generating a results printout and asking learners to send it to you via email. You would then need to manually keep track of the people who completed the course. With Articulate products, it’s a snap to generate a printout of the quiz results. Simply check the appropriate box in Result Slide Properties to add a Print Results button. You can even require learners to enter their name so that it will appear automatically on the results printout.

Result Slide Properties

Once the results are generated, learners can simply take a screenshot or save as a PDF and e-mail it to you. Make sure to provide learners with the e-mail address where they should send the results.

As with the web object solution, if you have a quiz at the end of your course, make sure the print results button is only available to learners who passed the quiz by placing it on the “Passed” layer.

And if you don’t have a quiz at the end of your module, no problem! Just add a True/False question asking learners if they understood the content of the module followed by a results slide with the Print Results button on it.

Keep in mind that these alternatives do not provide the level of detail you’d get from an LMS.  You’ll have to trust your learners to enter the correct information, but at the very least you will know whether or not learners completed your course.

Have other ideas for tracking course completion without an LMS? Please leave a comment below! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and visit E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on all things e-learning.