If an exam's attempt date looks earlier than the Course Completion Date for a course made up of just that exam, this article explains why the two dates can be different.
What You Might Notice
- A learner's exam attempt shows one date, but the Course Completion Date recorded for that same course is several days later.
- The course's activity history shows no steps or exams were added, removed, or edited, and no one manually changed the completion date.
Why the Dates Can Differ
This is expected behavior, not an error. When you review an exam's attempts, the date shown for an attempt (for example, in a Best attempt column) reflects when the learner started that attempt — not when they finished and submitted it.
Course completion, on the other hand, is recorded at the moment the learner actually submits the exam. If a learner starts an exam attempt on one day but doesn't submit it until a later day, the attempt's displayed date and the Course Completion Date will differ — even though nothing else about the course changed.
Interpreting the Two Dates
When comparing the two: the exam attempt date tells you when the learner began that attempt, and the Course Completion Date tells you when the learner actually finished and submitted the work that completed the course. The same applies to a Learning Path whose steps include an exam — the Learning Path's Completion Date reflects the submission time of the exam that completed it, not the attempt's start date.
If you need to confirm exactly when a learner submitted a specific attempt, use the Course Completion Date (or the Learning Path Completion Date) as the source of truth for completion timing, rather than the date shown on the exam attempt itself.