Tracking completion and issuing certificates

Overview

Once learners are enrolled, two jobs remain: watch how they're progressing and reward the ones who finish. StretchLearn's Dashboard and Analytics views turn your catalog into numbers, and its certificates feature turns a completion into verifiable proof.

Read the Dashboard

Open the Dashboard view (the default). Across the top sits a strip of headline stats:

1. Courses — total courses in your catalog.
2. Published — courses currently live for learners.
3. Drafts — courses still in authoring.
4. Lessons — total learning units across your courses.
5. Certificates — completion proofs issued.

Below the strip you'll find a Course status breakdown, mini-cards summarizing your published catalog and draft pipeline, and the Learning path packaging panel.

Tip: A high Drafts number next to a low Published number means content is stuck in authoring. Jump to Records and publish what's ready.

Read the Analytics view

Open the Analytics view for focused completion metrics and charts.

The stat strip

1. Completion risk — learners who are enrolled but have neither completed nor earned a certificate. This is your at-risk count.
2. Runtime — the total estimated time across all your courses.
3. Draft queue — courses still needing a launch review.

The charts

• Lesson depth — a Lessons by course bar chart showing which courses carry the most content.
• Completion proof — a donut splitting learners into Completed, Active, and Certificates.

Tip: Completion risk counts learners without proof, not failing learners. A spike often just means a fresh cohort enrolled — revisit it after learners have had time to work through the lessons.

Watch progress on a course

To see individual progress, open a course's progress list. For each enrolled learner you'll see their enrollment status, progress percent, when they enrolled, their last activity, and how many lessons they've completed. This is where you find the specific learners behind the completion risk number.

Issue a certificate

When a learner completes a course, issue their certificate:

1. Open the course and go to its certificates area.
2. Choose the learner (their account) and, optionally, enter the recipient name to print on the certificate.
3. Issue the certificate. StretchLearn assigns a unique certificate number — a code like SL-9F3A2B1C — and records the course title and issue date.
4. The certificate now appears in the course's certificate list and counts toward your Dashboard Certificates total.

Tip: Each learner gets one certificate per course. Issuing again for the same learner and course updates the existing certificate rather than creating a duplicate.

Share and verify a certificate

Every certificate carries a public verification link built from its number. Anyone with the link — an employer, an auditor, a client — can confirm the certificate is genuine. The verification page returns the recipient name, the course title, and the issue date, so a third party can validate a claim without any access to your workspace.

Example verification response

Certificate: SL-9F3A2B1C
Recipient:   Jordan Ruiz
Course:      Operator Certification
Issued:      2026-07-09

A realistic monitoring routine

1. Open Analytics. Completion risk: 14, Draft queue: 3.
2. Open the busiest course's progress list; find learners stalled at 40%.
3. Nudge those learners (they're likely stuck on one heavy lesson).
4. For learners at 100%, issue certificates from the course's certificates area.
5. Publish or archive the 3 draft-queue courses to clear the queue.

Tips

• Issue certificates promptly — a certificate is the emotional payoff that makes a course feel finished.
• Use the recipient name field to print a learner's preferred name, which may differ from their account name.
• Share verification links rather than PDFs when proof needs to be trusted; a link can be checked live, a PDF can be forged.
• Revisit completion risk weekly, not daily — it naturally rises when a new cohort enrolls and falls as they finish.

Troubleshooting

• The certificate count won't move. Certificates only count once issued. Completing a course doesn't auto-issue proof unless your workflow issues it.
• "Learner user id is required." Issuing a certificate needs the learner's account. Select the enrolled learner before issuing.
• A verification link says not found. Double-check the certificate number for transcription errors; the lookup is exact.
• Certificates can't be issued at all. If the action returns an unavailable message, the certificate feature isn't enabled in your workspace — ask your administrator to enable it.

What to do next

• See the learner's side in Earn and share your course certificate.
• Reduce completion risk by tightening course structure in Structuring courses: modules and lessons.