INTRODUCTION
You can configure your event so that registrants can earn credits for attending certain sessions/courses. Our Education Credit mechanism gives you the ability to:
- Utilize the Dashboard Credit Library for labeling credit types
- Assign Education Credit labels and values to certain registration options
- Determine the criteria by which those hours are awarded to attendees
- Award and distribute a record of those hours to attendees
- Pull reports on education credit stats for one or multiple events
Read below on how to configure your event to accommodate education credits.
HOW DO ATTENDEES EARN CREDITS? WHAT ARE YOU OFFERING?
The first step is to determine what the offering is. It sounds simple, but starting with a strong understanding of what the educational offering is and how attendees earn credits is a very important step. With a clear end goal, your setup process will go more smoothly.
Here are some key variables to think about:
- Are these "classes", "courses" or "sessions" and what is the extent of these?
- Which courses/sessions will offer attendees educational credits?
- When do the sessions take place and are any of them concurrent?
- Do different sessions award different types of education credits?
- What value of credits is each course worth?
- Are different reg types awarded credits different for the same course?
- What criteria is used to determine the attendees that properly earned their credits?
Continuing reading below to see how these questions come into play as you walk through the process of configuring your event for education credits.
CREATE REGISTRATION ITEMS
Enter the Event Builder and select the REGISTRATION section at the top. Then click the Registration Items tool on the left.
Click the NEW ITEM button. For more information on the types of items, click HERE for a short video tutorial.
In this example, we will use the Enhanced Registration Item type. Create an item for a course that you will or might offer (this can be an example if you're just following along).
Next, scroll down to the registration item you just created and click on it to open the item settings panel. Select the LOCATION & TIME tab on the left. Here, you can set a date/time/location for the course. Go ahead and set the start/end date and time for now. You can always return to location later on.
At this point, feel free to create a few more course items and segment them into groups, depending on your event setup. You can get creative with the way you group items, just make sure that the presentation is logical to registrants.
You can see an example of what we've done with an example course sampling in the screenshot below:
WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE MY COURSES SET YET?
Oftentimes, we get asked what to do if courses have not yet been decided upon. In other words, your agenda and speaker roster might be in flux. We understand, things change often in the events industry.
That's why Eventsquid is made to be flexible and accommodate the dynamic demands of planners. Items can be generated before or during the registration process. Attendees have the ability to modify their initial registration selections at a later date.
Furthermore, items themselves can be modified by you, even after people start registering. If the credit hour value of an item changes, you can return to the Builder at a later date and make the change, which will be reflected in the attendee record of anyone that picked that course.
If the timing and/or description of an item changes after you've launched registration, you can modify that at a later date as well, just return to the Event Builder and modify the item.
Even speaker assignments can be made and modified on your agenda after registration launches.
Of course, if you have any questions about this, feel free to shoot us a note at support@eventsquid.com and we can help guide you through the process.
CONFIGURE CREDIT ASSIGNMENTS & AWARD CRITERIA
After you create your registration items and assign dates and times, you can setup each course with assigned credit values, labels.
Furthermore, you can determine the criteria that is used to determine who, at the conclusion of the event, has successfully earned credit hours.
EDUCATION CREDITS GRID
In the REGISTRATION section of the Event Builder, navigate to the SPECIALTY REGISTRATION section of the main menu on the left. Click the Education Credits option.
The Education Credits grid will display all of your registration items with an assigned time.
The Education Credits utility has two main sections:
BASIC SETUP - the top section contains event-level preferences for the
- Award Criteria: set the conditions that [any given registrant] must meet in order to be awarded with credits they signed up for
- Credit Acronym: customize the notation used to define your credits (i.e. these CEU's or Continuing Education Units)
- Value Label: set the type of measurement used (i.e. credits versus hours)
- Display Credit On Registration Form: when the box is checked, any registration item that hasan assigned credit value & label will show said value & label on the registration form, to the registrant
- Auto Generate Check-In/Out Codes: Randomly generate check-in and check-out codes for each registration item. These codes would be for the self check-in mechanism if you decide to use it
- Award Credits: when ready (usually after the event), this button will prompt the system to determine who has properly earned credits (based on the Award Criteria set in Step 1) and assign them appropriately.
EDUCATION CREDIT ASSIGNMENTS - the bottom section is for credit assignments
- Credit Name: classify the type of credits this course awards (i.e. "BIO for "Foundational Biology")
- Credit Value: give the course an amount of hours that can be earned by an attendee
- Check-In/out Code: these can be manually typed in or generated automatically with the randomizer in the Basic Setup area above (see Step 5 under Basic Setup list above)
- Value Applies To: for any given course that is offered for more than 1 custom profile, you can vary the credit value awarded based on the profile of the registrant
Take a look at our example layout of courses in the Education Credits grid, in the screenshot below:
Each row represents an item. The grid will separate your items based on the Registration Item Groups you have assigned them to (i.e. "Introductory Sessions" and "Foundational Learning Sessions"). Here are a few additional features to take note of, in the Grid:
1) Each course can be labeled with a Credit Name. The Credit Name is a symbol for the type of educational units that it awards.
- Click the yellow MANAGE link to enter the Education Credit library
- The Credit Name Library is hosted on your Dashboard and can be access from the Manage Organization tab
- It holds a library of all Credit Names that have been used before
- The library makes it easy to assign an existing Credit Name to a course - simply start typing and the system will auto-suggest
2) Use the Applies To column on the far right side of the Education Credits grid to vary the value of credit that is awarded to the registrant, based on their Registration Profile:
- Click the ALL PROFILES button on the right side of a course
- A small window will appear, showing you each profile that the course (item) is offered to
- Here, you can vary the value awarded to the registrant, for a given course, based on that registrant's profile
REGISTERING FOR & EARNING CREDITS
Above, we showed you the way to setup your event for recording credits. We also demonstrated how you can use the Education Credits tool in the Event Builder to determine awarding criteria.
Let's walk through an example registration that ends up earning credits based on the criteria.
CRITERIA & CREDIT DISPLAY
In the Education Credits tool (in the Event Builder), we set the Award Criteria to require that attendees both register for a course and check into and out of that course, in order to earn the associated credits.
There are four different levels of award criteria; each successive level enforces incrementally stricter guidelines for obtaining/earning credits. The award criteria will depend on your event's business rules, on-site staff and any guidelines from an accrediting body.
We named the units SEU for "School Education Units" and set the measurement to Hours. You can see we also setup the credit denominations to display on the registration form. This can be particularly helpful to the registrant as they shop for courses during registration.
Here, you can click the AUTO GENERATE buttons to automatically produce randomized check-in and check-out codes for each session. This will give registrants the ability to time stamp their course when they enter and when they leave. Keep reading to see this process in action.
TIP: You can also set check-in and check-out codes for each item in the Registration Items tool. Navigate to the Registration Items tool within the Event Builder and click open your session item. Next, click the ACCESS sub-tab on the left side:
ATTENDEE REGISTRATION
During registration, when selecting items, the registrant will be able to see what each offered course is worth (again, this is an optional setting shown above, in the Education Credits Setup tool within the Builder).
After registering for the Foundational Software Development course, I have fulfilled the first basic requirement in earning credit hours: registering for the course.
TIP: Remember that if you setup different credit values for one particular course, depending on the Custom Profile of the registrant, then the correct credit value will display on the registration form (according to the registrant's profile).
However, based on the Award Criteria in the Education Credits tool (setting shown in the screenshot above), the registrant must also check-in and check-out of the session. This particular criteria is particularly effective because it ensures that the registrant sits through the entire course.
CHECK-IN & CHECK-OUT
For a full walkthrough of attendee check-in options, see THIS article. In this example, we are going to utilize the self check-in mechanism.
Earlier, we auto-generated randomized check-in and check-out codes for each course. Now that each course has a unique check-in and check-out code, registrants that sign into the mobile interface will see the SELF CHECK-IN button when they access the main menu:
When an attendee accesses the Self Check-In portal, they will see a tile for each course they signed up for that has check-in and check-out codes assigned to it.
Tap the CHECK-IN button and enter the code to mark themself as present. Upon leaving, tap CHECK-OUT and enter the code to mark themself as complete.
TIP: Prior to the event, you might consider giving each course leader/proctor the unique check-in and check-out codes that you generated for each event. This way, they can tell the class how to use Self Check-In when the time is right.
Now that this student's coursework is complete and they have successfully signed up for, checked into and checked out of each course, the day of learning is complete. Now, we can award credits.
AWARDING, VIEWING & DISTRIBUTING EARNED CREDITS
Once the event concludes, it's time to award credit hours. Based on the Award Criteria you set above, the system will automatically determine who has successfully earned credits.
AWARDING CREDITS TO ATTENDEES
Enter the REGISTRATION section of the Event Builder and access the Education Credits utility. Then click the AWARD CREDITS button:
Once you click the AWARD CREDITS button, the awards modal will show. Click the AWARD CREDITS button to confirm. When confirmed, the system will instantly determine who has earned credits and will assign them to each attendee's record:
When the award assignment has completed, you'll see a quick summary including:
- The date that the awards assignment was run
- The name of the admin that awarded the credits
- Total number of different courses awarded (Credits Awarded)
- Total number of each type of credit name awarded (Credit Breakdown)
You can always come back and RE-AWARD CREDITS. Clicking this option will wipe all existing credits, so that the system can run a fresh calculation on who is currently eligible to receive credits, then assign accordingly. It's like wiping the slate clean and re-assigning credits according to the most up-to-date information.
Admins can also access the REVIEW AWARD LOG feature, which shows a record of each time an admin came in and awarded credits to this event's registrant list. The name of the admin is listed.
CREDIT RECORDS & REPORTING
As an admin, you can access and report on credits that have been awarded to registrants. Furthermore, you can use credit reporting to show credit hours that have been signed up for versus the credits that have actually been earned (based on your Award Criteria).
REGISTRANT DETAILS PANEL (DASHBOARD LIST VIEW)
Access the Event Dashboard and click the name of your event. Then, click the green Registered Attendees button. Click the name of a registrant. If they have signed up for any items with assigned credit hours, then you will see an EDUCATION CREDITS tab on the left
In this area, you will see the number of credit hours that each class is worth (if you customized the worth of a course based on the Custom Profile of the registrant, this will reflect here) versus the amount of those hours that the registrant has been awarded (if any):
CEU REPORT
Access the Event Dashboard and click the reporting icon on the left side of your event. Then, click the CEU/Volunteer Tracking report option.
You will see a fly-out panel with options for generating a credit hour report based on a date range across events, based on the event you are currently viewing and based on a specific registration (over a given date range).
In this report, each course will show a list of attendees that registered for that course. For each registrant, the following data is presented:
- When the course was scheduled to start and end
- The total time that course was scheduled to take
- The name of the type of credit that class awarded
- The value of credits that the course was worth (also reflects profile-dependent values)
- The value of credits the attendee earned for that course
- The check-in and check-out times for that attendee
- The elapsed time that the attendee sat in the course for
DISTRIBUTION & COMMUNICATION
You can use our Communication Center to email registrants a breakdown of the credits they earned at your event.
Head to your Event Dashboard and click the COMMUNICATION CENTER tab at the top. Select your event from the SOURCE dropdown, then make sure you have the Registered Attendees LIST TYPE.
Next, craft your message to the right. In Section 2 entitled CONTENT BLOCKS, check the box next to INCLUDE CEU HOURS.
With this tool, you're able to send all registered attendees a record of the number of hours they accumulated at your event. For events that need to distribute certificates of hours afterwards, this is a great way to accomplish that task within our system.