What Is Continuing Education in GrowthZone?
The Continuing Education feature within GrowthZone allows associations to administer, track, and report on the professional certifications of their members. With proper setup, associations can save themselves and their members time in managing courses, exams, and other tasks. The feature handles both complex and simple setups; that said, the majority of GrowthZone's Continuing Education customers use a simplified version that tracks component attendance only.
Tracking certification completion and expiration is easily configured at the certification program level. Setting up prerequisites and objectives is also supported. It is important to note that the Continuing Education feature does not deliver instruction or coursework — rather, it tracks the necessary elements and the completion date of each.
Continuing Education Statuses
The following statuses are used to track a contact's progress in a certification program:
- In Progress: Contacts currently working towards a program/certification. Set automatically when a contact applies and the program does not require approval, or manually when staff adds a contact from the back office.
- Applied: Contacts who have applied but have not yet been approved. Applies only to programs configured to Require Approval. If approval is not required, the status is automatically set to In Progress.
- Declined: Contacts whose application was denied. Set manually by staff.
- Active: Contacts with active (completed) certifications. Set automatically when all components of a program have been completed, or manually by staff if the program requires admin approval for completion.
- Inactive: Set manually by staff — for example, when someone enrolled in a program has not been working towards completion.
- Expired: Contacts whose certifications have expired. Expiration dates are configured at the certification program level.
- Not Completed: Contacts who did not complete the required certification work in the time allotted. Set manually by staff — no automated logic.
- Admin Review: Contacts who have completed the necessary work but whose certification must be approved by an administrator before becoming Active.
- Expiring: Contacts whose certification is nearing expiration. Contacts receive this status based on the Send 'Certification Expiring' Emails n Days Before Expiration value configured under Continuing Education General Settings (go to Events & Learning, Continuing Education section, click Settings and select Certification General Settings).
- Cancelled: Contacts whose certification has been cancelled. Set manually by staff — no automated logic.
Common Pitfalls
- Status not updating automatically: Only In Progress, Applied, Active, and Expiring statuses are set automatically. All other statuses (Declined, Inactive, Not Completed, Cancelled) must be set manually by staff.
- Expiring status not appearing: Verify the Send 'Certification Expiring' Emails n Days Before Expiration value is set to a number greater than 0 in General Settings.