AB 1825 simply mandates "two hours" of training, so my company made sure our software requires attendees to spend at least two hours getting through it (no matter how fast they "clicked"). We do this by tracking their time in the course and, if necessary, submitting additional pages to ensure readers have sufficient material to fill the two hour requirement.
We aren't aware of other
AB 1825 training providers that do this. We know some have clocks to show attendees their time, or some have video or audio tapes that run the time, but we hadn't heard of anyone actually inserting additional pages (we call them "interrupt pages") to provide fast readers with a full two hours of training.
Curiously,
a preview of the official AB 1825 regulations to be issued by the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission (FEHC) says we didn't have to go to the trouble. According to the article:
"the draft regulations clarify that 'e-learning programs are not required to have a built-in timer that causes rapid learners to view additional content until the two hour standard is met.' "We thought this extremely curious, since we don't know of any company (except us) that has "a built-in timer that causes rapid learners to view additional content" as mentioned in the (yet to be released) regulations. It's like they were saying our compliance feature — ensuring two hours of training no matter the attendee's reading speed — was unnecessary.
According to the article, two hours of online training is going to mean
"the amount of time that the same content may be covered in an e-learning program for an average learner."So, the proposal is to have a mythic "average learner" and use him/her/it to measure two hours. (That's like using
smoots to measure distance.) Of course, not everyone is "average," which means that fast readers might only have to spend an hour on
AB 1825 training, while slow readers might have to spend three or four hours to go through the "same content." That seems ridiculous.
It seems to me that giving fast readers more material to ensure two hours of training time is more in keeping with the law's requirement that employers provide two hours of training, than is letting attendees out early if they read (or click) quickly through a program.
Similarly, it seems that requiring everyone to go through the amount of material that an average person could complete in two hours means about 50% of the attendees (the "slower half") will be forced to spend more than the two hours mandated by the statute.
Why doesn't the FEHC simply say "two hours" means "two hours"? Why adopt some strange lawerly definition (i.e.,
"the amount of time...").
We figured out how to provide it. For any employer that wants to comply with the law's requirement to provide two hours of training, that should give us a competitive advantage. I'm curious why the FEHC's advisory committee is saying that's not right.
