Each of the four status settings imposes different restrictions on what can be done with a competency and how it behaves.
| Draft | In Review | Approved | Archived | No Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Will it be visible to course participants? | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Can it be completed? | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Can the definition be changed? | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Can activities be added, removed, or edited? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Will changes trigger a re-evaluation? | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
Two options determine whether a competency can be seen by a user:
Tip You can hide an Approved competency from course participants with the “Make competency and its children visible to users who can be evaluated” property on the Edit Competency page.
Users can only complete Approved competencies.
You might be able to assess activities attached to a competency whose status is not Approved (depending on your permissions), the user’s completion of learning objectives or the competency itself will not be evaluated. Only when the competency’s status is changed to Approved are results calculated, taking these activities into account.
The competency definition includes the competency and all of its learning objectives; it does not include activities.
When a competency’s status is Approved or Archived, its definition cannot be changed. This is part of the IMS RDCEO specification that Desire2Learn's competency model is based on; once a competency is Approved (or “published”), it is not supposed to change.
This means that for Approved and Archived competencies, you cannot edit the competency element or any of its learning objectives, and you cannot add or remove learning objectives or sub-competencies. (You can still add and remove activities because they are not considered part of the definition.)
Note Some competency and learning objective settings can still be changed even when the competency’s status is Approved or Archived. On the Edit Competency page, “Make competency and its children visible to users who can be evaluated” and “Status” can be changed, while on the Edit Learning Objective page the “Ready for Evaluation” setting can be changed.
Because activities are not part of the competency definition, you can add, remove, and edit activities even when the associated competency’s status is Approved.
Making changes to a competency often impacts the requirements users must meet to complete the competency. If users have already been assessed for some activities, then changes you make might require them to be re-evaluated to update which learning objectives have been completed by each user. This re-evaluation might or might not apply to the competency itself, depending on its settings.
Only Approved competencies are re-evaluated. However, if a competency’s status is changed from Approved to one of the other settings, changes are made, and the status is switched back to Approved again, a re-evaluation is triggered at that point.