For NASBA-registered CPE sponsors
You already know what your course is worth. We won’t argue with you about it.
The Standards allow two ways to determine credit for self-study: a pilot test, or the prescribed word count formula. Which one you use is your decision as sponsor, and it is settled long before a file reaches us.
So we do not calculate anything unless you ask. A converted course carries whatever credit figure you tell us it carries — or none at all.
What we do either way
Two things in the Standards do not care which method produced your number, so we check them whichever you used:
- At least five questions and scored responses per CPE credit on the qualified assessment — three for a half credit. If you are claiming five credits and the package asks eighteen questions, you want to know that here rather than at review.
- No true/false questions on the qualified assessment. Moodle will hold one quite happily. We flag every one.
And whatever else happens, the count of questions a participant is actually asked comes across intact — which, as below, is less automatic than it sounds.
If you use the word count formula
Ask for it and we will compute it from the package as built, and generate the documentation NASBA expects you to retain. You choose which activities count — we do not guess from your headings, because one publisher’s “Additional Resources” is another’s “Supplementary” and another’s nothing at all.
180 is the assumed adult reading speed in words per minute; 1.85 minutes is the estimated average completion time per question; 50 minutes is one credit hour. Where the total is not equally divisible by 50, credits are rounded down. — Statement on Standards for CPE Programs, S17-06.
Every term in that formula is something a conversion can alter. Drop a page and the word count falls. Lose a video and its duration goes with it. And the question count — the term most people assume is fixed — is the one most likely to be wrong.
Questions asked, not questions carried
Legacy Moodle quizzes usually fill their slots by random draw from a bank category. A twelve-slot quiz sitting over a forty-question bank asks twelve. The other twenty-eight exist so that a retake differs — they are never all put to one participant.
Count the bank instead of the slots and the formula produces a number you cannot support:
| Counting | Questions | Minutes (×1.85) | Contributes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slots the participant is asked | 12 | 22.2 | 0.44 credit |
| Whole bank behind the quiz | 40 | 74.0 | 1.48 credit |
A one-credit overstatement on a single quiz, from a difference nobody looking at the package would notice. It is not a rounding argument — it is the difference between a credit claim you can evidence at review and one you cannot.
We present exactly the slot count Moodle defines, and report that figure twice from independent sources — once from the builder, once read back out of the finished package by a validator written against the specification rather than against our own builder. If the two ever disagree, the package does not ship.
The whole bank still travels with the package, so a retake draws different questions. The count is what stays fixed.
Two things that quietly fail a review, whichever method you used
True or false questions on the graded exam
The Standards are blunt about this: “True or false” questions are not permissible on the qualified assessment. They are allowed as review questions, but even there they do not count toward the required number per credit, and they must carry evaluative and reinforcement feedback.
Moodle is perfectly happy to hold a true/false question in a quiz you have marked as the exam, and a generic converter will carry it across without comment. We flag every one, in the exam and in the review questions, before you pay.
Not enough questions for the credit you advertise
At least five questions and scored responses per CPE credit must appear on the qualified assessment — three if the course is marketed for one-half credit. A five-credit course needs twenty-five. Duplicate review and assessment questions are not allowed, except where recall is the learning strategy.
The conversion report gives you the count against the credit you intend to claim, so the shortfall shows up here rather than at review.
Only the exam moves the score
For CPE, review questions have to be present and are worth taking, but passing them is not what earns the credit. Letting them move the reported score would be wrong.
So you mark which assessment earns the credit, and only that one sets
cmi.core.score.raw and the passed/failed status your LMS
records. Review questions are scored locally, shown to the learner,
and reported to nobody. The attempt stays incomplete until every
graded assessment has been submitted, so a participant who stops
halfway is never recorded as having failed.
Learners see which is which: the graded exam is labelled as counting toward credit, review questions as practice.
What you get back
- A SCORM 1.2 package that reports a 70% cumulative pass the way your LMS expects.
- Per-option feedback shown for every answer choice on review questions, not only the one selected — self-study review is expected to explain why each response is right or wrong. Partial coverage is flagged, because it is almost always an authoring oversight.
- The full question bank, so retakes differ, with the slot count unchanged.
- An activity-by-activity report of what converted, what degraded and what could not come across, with the reason for each.
- The finished course, playable in full before you pay for it.
We build packages; we are not your registry adviser. Nothing here is a compliance opinion. Which method you use, and what you ultimately claim, are your determinations as sponsor. What we can do is make sure the numbers underneath survive the conversion, and tell you plainly when they have not.