Your point is one that I've also raised re: medical compliance requirements to administer a test and an evaluation tool in order to dispense approved continuing education units/credits/hours that are listed on the certificate of attendance.
This is a standard practice in all health care professions in the U.S. Most continuing education training in the health sciences is done online with only a tiny fraction of live offerings available, and the remainder are pre-recorded trainings or print media for viewing, and the format is straightforward: 1) View the training. 2) Take the test. 3) Complete the evaluation. 4) Receive the certificate of attendance with the approved continuing education hours. "Approved" is a reference to approval by one's credentialing body, which is a rigorous process.
It's a straightforward process that health professionals have come to expect over the past two decades or more, and the process has become so sophisticated that completed continuing education certificates can be sent electronically to one's state board, including state boards of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, etc.
I'm not requesting that kind of labor-intensive sophistication. However, I would very much like to have the features that accompany the live trainings to be replicated in the pre-recorded trainings. Because my training topics are health science topics, over 80% of my registrants opt for the convenience of recorded versus live trainings.
This differs from the corporate world where all employees can be expected to attend a meeting, whereas in inpatient settings, employees cannot vacate a hospital floor and leave patients unattended, although if such insanity were to occur, abandoning patients would be grounds for immediate termination of employment. Inpatient staff obtain their continuing education hours on their days off, and hence the popularity of pre-recording trainings. These continuing education hours also must be obtained according to state regulations for renewal of one's license to practice. For example, here in Florida, registered nurses must renew their nursing license every two years. GoToTraining has had a business relationship with at least one online entity for nurses in regard to some Nurse.com offerings. Medscape, RN.com, and many other online entities offer straightforward online training for medical, nursing, pharmacy, and other staff to meet continuing education requirements for licensure renewal. Hospital managers will not schedule staff to work unless they have a valid and active license to practice, and there are thousands of online courses offered in various health specialties. Hospitals even hire medical compliance officers to ensure that staff is in compliance with state regulations for licensure, in order to meet standards of patient care that staff is legally allowed to practice in a given state, based upon standardized education, training, and board exams in one's specialty. These standards are in support of patient safety.
It would be ideal to have the ability (or option) to send out the certificate of attendance ONLY if the test and evaluation tool have been submitted. If the certificate of attendance is sent out before the attendee has submitted the test and evaluation tool, it would be an enormous task to send email reminders to attendees who already feel they have completed all that is needed, particularly if they are in possession of the certificate.
My credentialing body requires that all training records are maintained for a six-year period in the event of an audit. I manually send out the certificate of attendance, rather than having it automatically sent via GoToTraining/LogMeIn. In that way, attendees do not receive a certificate unless they've submitted the test and evaluation tool, and I don't have to chase attendees down via email and repeatedly request that they complete and submit the test and evaluation tool.