We will provide an example to illustrate how Social Planet reports ACFE hours. This was a question posed by a Learn Local Provider.
If we run an ACFE course that has 10 sessions over 10 weeks, and each session lasts for 1 hour.
How many contact hours SP would report in the following three situations:
- Assigned every session, attends every one
- If someone is assigned every session (full term), but only attends 2 out of 10
- If someone signs up later, is only assigned two sessions, attends those two
In all 3 cases the same 10 hours would be reported for Scheduled Hours in the enrolment.
- The enrolment Scheduled Hours will almost always match the Nominal Hours of the subject unit.
- The attendance (none, some, or all) does not impact Scheduled Hours.
- The outcome (pass, fail, withdrawn) does not impact Schedule Hours.
For ACFE classes, contact hours are set in the Subject Unit as Nominal Scheduled Hours. The Subject Unit Hours are separate to the hours recorded in Social Planet attendances. Best practice is to ensure the class sessions / duration reflect the subject unit hours.
But, it might not always be the case.
Example One
If there is a lot of preparation time you'd make the subject unit hours more than the class delivery time to cover trainer costs.
Example Two
There can be situations where a provider can run more hours then they claim.
A provider runs extra classes for some students with learning difficulties. The activity has additional sessions and they track their attendance across the additional sessions but the reported hours stay the same as all the other students.
In situations where the attendance rate would trigger an outcome of Withdrawn:
- For accredited subjects where the outcome is set to 40 - Withdrawn, then their actual attendance would be entered into the Hours Attended field. Scheduled Hours would remain the same as Nominal Hours.
- For non-accredited where the outcome is set to 82 - Withdrawn, the Hours Attended field is ignored (and should be 0). Scheduled Hours would remain the same as Nominal Hours.