Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to your questions




    How does the service work?

    When an organisation or person orders credits for the first time they will be issued with a  Company Manager Account. This account allows the organisation to add, edit, and delete the account records of delegates and company managers from within their organisation. The service requires the following minimal set of personal data for the training delegate account - first name, surname and email address and their associated organisation. The administration of user's personal data remains under the control of the organisation. It is the responsibility of the organisation to ensure their user data is kept accurate and up to date. 

    Once a delegate is added to the service, and a credit is applied to the account, they will receive an automated welcome email containing their access details. The account maintenance responsibilities remain with the Company Manager who should respond to any delegate requests in relation to the records held. Each organisation must have a mechanism for managing leavers of their organisation within the service.

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    Can I view my training history and results?

    We maintain a history of your account usage so you can access your training history within the my training history area you can:

    • View your results
    • Look up your administrator(s)
    • View the last date you logged on
    • View your course progress
    • View when you last undertook an assessment
    • Request a credit for Tier 1 or Tier 2 training from your Company Manager
    • Access your certificate
    • Access your bookmarked data

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    How do I remind a delegate to take the training?

    Company Manager are able to send reminders to their delegates to undertake the training.
    To do this click on Registered areaManage your delegates. 

    You will be presented with a list of your registered delegates; every delegate yet to complete the training will have a 'Request X attempts' button against their record. Click on this button to trigger an email to the delegate prompting them to complete the training. 

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    How do I prompt a delegate to retake the assessment?

    Company Managers can access the training records of registered delegates within their organisation. They are able to view whether they have accessed the training and attempted the assessment. If the delegate has attempted the assessment and failed the Company Manager can send a prompt to the delegate to request they try again.
      
    To do this click on Registered areaManage your delegates. 

    You will be presented with a list of your registered delegates; every delegate who has taken the training will have a 'View X's results' button against their record. Click on this button to access their results. If they have passed you can resend their certificate from here, if they have failed you can prompt them to retake the assessment. 

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    How do I receive my certificate for the Tier 1 or Tier 2 of the course?

    When you successfully complete the assessment your Company Manager will be notified, a digital copy of your certificate will be emailed to you, allowing you to print a it out.  

    You can also generate a copy of the certificate from within the system under the  'view your assessment results' area. 

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    How do I update my personal details?

    We appreciate there are some circumstances where names and email addresses associated with your account may change – for example due to a typographical error or change of family name. This is why registered users of the service can amend their personal details within the view / edit profile area of the portal, Company Managers are also able to do this on your behalf. Once amended and saved the changes will update on the user account. 

    We monitor changes to the first name, family name and email address fields to ensure accounts are not renamed to allocate to another user; doing so would be a breach of the terms and conditions of use. Any such identified behaviour will result in the permanent closure of the user account in question and the loss of the user credit.

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    Who do I contact for help?

    The FAQs are a good source of information for both users and company managers and can often answer your question.

    If you can’t find a solution in the FAQs then you should contact your Company Manager in the first instance for support. To do this select the green 'View your organisation's Company Managers' button and submit a request for the Company Manager to contact you. They will receive an email asking them to contact you.

    The majority of support issues can be resolved internally either by a Company Manager or IT support. If a technical fault is identified beyond their control they can report it to us and we will investigate.

    If your Company Manager has left the organisation please raise this with us and we will work with you to resolve the issue. 

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    Do I need to complete the courses in a particular order?

    Depending on your knowledge of Export Controls you do not necessarily need to complete the courses in sequential order. All of our courses have been developed with a particular audience in mind and are designed to be independent of each other.

    Depending on your expertise for example, you can choose to enrol on the Tier 2 course without first completing Tier 1. However, we do recommend that prior to attending Tier 3 the Strategic Trade Controls Compliance or undertaking the? PgCert in Defence and Security Export you familiarize yourself with the material from the preceding courses before attending.

    The Tier 3 course provides access to the Tier 2 course for one month, to ensure all delegates start with the same background understanding. Full details can be found on the Cranfield University website.

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    Are there any other further development opportunities in Export Controls?

    When developing the PgCert we knew that flexibility would be an essential for our busy practitioner students. It has been integral to the design the course which is delivered using a combination of virtual and classroom based learning. For those wishing to focus on their areas of interest, or to assess whether they wish to undertake the full PgCert, we offer each module as a credit or non-credit bearing stand-alone course. You will find the associated short course programme and PgCert listed below.

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    Can I get the course material in paper format?

    No. We update our courses regularly and to ensure you are always viewing the latest version we only offer our courses in electronic format.

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    Can I pay by purchase order?

    The new pricing structure for the training has been adjusted for online payments removing the costs associated with paying by purchase order. Making payments simpler and easier for our customers.

    We will still consider payment by purchase order for large orders (in excess of 500 credits / or £10000 ex VAT whichever is greater) if you would like to discuss this further please contact us. For all other orders please pay online using a debit or credit card.

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    Could we purchase a bespoke version of the service tailored for our specific internal requirements?

    We can arrange to overview specific options that might be of interest including

    1. Integration with your Learning Platform
    2. Single sign-on
    3. Development of tailored versions of the core course content to meet your specific requirements
    4. Tailored assessment
    5. Management information and dash board reports
    6. Batch account creation.

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    What are 'training credits'?

    Your organisation can bulk purchase a batch of training credits to allow individuals to take the Tier 1 or Tier 2 courses. 

    At the time a training credit is allocated to a user (i.e. the user enrolled on a course) they have 12 months in which to access it. Once your subscription has expired (after 12 months) your Company Manager can renew your subscription by allocating another training credit to you.

    Credits have a lifetime of 18 months if left unallocated to a user, thereby allowing organisations the flexibility to manage the accounts as they wish. 

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    What is the account retention policy?

    The service has a built in account retention cycle. User records will be retained on the service while they remain ‘live’.

    Live means the user has an active credit or that the account has been accessed or created within the last 12 months.  Accounts which have never been logged into, and which exceed the 12 month period, will be automatically purged from the live system. Users will receive email notifications of pending account closure for non-use. Bounce responses indicating an email address is no longer in use will result in immediate account closure. If no action is taken by the user to log into the account or renew their subscription the account will enter the automatic account closure cycle. A record of achievement for those users who have completed either tier 1 or tier 2 will be emailed to the associated email account prior to the account closure. A record of such accounts will be retained in archive for a 1 year period post account closure; after the 1 year period the record will be purged.

    The account retention cycle does not omit the organisation's responsibilities towards the maintenance of the user data they hold within the service. User records are owned by the organisation and maintenance of these records remain the responsibility of the owner organisation. 

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    Highlighted text

    Glossary terms and externally referenced sites are highlighted within the training text. To expand the glossary terms (highlighted in blue) hover the mouse over the text; the definition will then display.

    Coral coloured text denotes hyperlinked additional information hosted on external sites; to access this information click on the hyperlinked text. This should open the referenced page in a new window, if it does not, turn off any popup blockers or hold down the control key when clicking the text.

    While we endeavor to ensure all of the hyperlinked pages remain functional we are not responsible for the availability of this external content. Issues with hyperlinked text can be reported via the feedback option, found under the Actions tab. 

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    Course navigation

    Within the training you will find a navigation pane to the right of the course containing two tabs; Course Topics and Actions.

    Course Topics allows for quick navigation to sections of the course without the need to scroll through each page in order.

    The ‘Actions’ tab gives you access to several useful features to support your learning:

    • Glossary – A list of all the highlighted text glossary terms contained within the training.
    • Notes – On each section of the training you can make electronic private notes in support of your learning; these are linked to your account and will remain available to you while your registration is live.
    • Rate this page – Allows you rate the page using a five-star rating system.
    • Feedback – Allows feedback direct to us, linked to the course content, as your training provider.  
    • Return home – returns you to the training portal home page.

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    How do the training credits work?

    Training credits can be purchased by individuals or organisations on behalf of their workforce. New customers will need to identify a Company Manager for the service. Their Company Manager role enables the organisation to manage the service on behalf of their users.

    Once the credits have been purchased the named Company Manager has 18 months from the date of purchase to allocate the credits to personnel undertaking the training. Any unspent credits after this period will expire. Once allocated to a user the credit is active for a further 12 months. If the user fails to complete the training in the 12 month period the credit will expire.

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    What is a Company Manager and how do I become one?

    There are two approaches to enrolling on the SEC programme; as an individual (self-sponsored) or as an organisation.

    When you place an order as an organisation you are asked to specify a Company Manager for your organisation's account. The Company Manager is then able to add new users, support existing users, request additional user credits, reissue certificates and access management information. 

    We recommend that large organisations set up more than one Company Manager to support their user community. Existing Company Managers have sufficient rights to add both users and additional Company Managers to their organisation's account. This allows your organisation to manage large or diverse groups of users and facilitates continued support for their delegates should a Company Manager leave the organisation.

    Company Managers are responsible for the accuracy of the personal data held within the system. This includes the management of leavers and starters and any changes to their personal records in order to keep them up to date. We recommend that the Company Manager establishes an internal mechanism for maintaining the user records. 

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    Am I charged a training credit when I become a Company Manager?

    You will only be charged a training credit if you, as a Company Manager, are enrolled on a course.

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    How do I order training credits?

    For new customers, setting up an account, and ordering Strategic Export Controls training credits is quite simple. Just click on the 'Register and pay' button at the right of the screen and fill in the registration form. 

    We will ask for the contact details, address and the name of your organisation. The information given on this page will be used to create your organisation's account. 

    Step two of the registration process allows you to set yourself up as the Company Manager or to name someone else. The Company Manager(s) are responsible for managing your organisation's delegate population; we recommend that you have more than one, especially in large organisations. 

    Once you have completed the registration process your nominated Company Manager will receive their account details by email; giving them access to the site. Company Managers can administer delegate accounts, add additional Company Managers, access the dashboard and order credits. You can set up multiple Company Managers on your registration, training credits are only used once allocate to an account.   

    Once registered, all future training credit orders should be placed from within the registered organisation's account by a Company Manager. This will speed up the order process and ensure all transaction records are linked to your your organisation. 

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    Can Company Managers track their delegate's progress?

    As a Company Manager you can track the progress of your delegates within the system. To view the report, login as a Company Manager, select Resigered area and Company training record.

    This will give you a report containing: 

    • Each delegate's name
    • Their roles
    • The number of times they have attempted the assessment
    • The date of the attempt
    • Their score
    • Whether they passed or failed. 
    The formatting of the report will retain if copied into a spreadsheet should you need to retain the data outside of the system for your records. 

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    How do I add a user?

    Company Managers will have access to management information within the service allowing them to manage the credit allocation of users, monitor the number of credits they have and order more if they need to.
     
    Once you have purchased user credits for the Tier 1 or Tier 2 course your nominated Company Manager(s) can add new users via the 'Manage course enrolments' button. On this screen you can add a delegate, check how long delegates have left to complete the training and the number of credits remaining for each course. Once a new user is added to the system the Company Manager can allocate them a credit by enrolling them on a course. Once enrolled the user will automatically receive their access details and instructions via email.

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    How do I reset my password?

    The site has a built in password reset service where registered users can request a new password. On receipt of such a request from a registered member the service will send a temporary password to the registered email address. If you have requested a reset and have not received this email please check your spam or junk folders. 

    Once received users of the service can reset their password. We recommend using a unique password for the site and not one that you share with any other account or service. 

    Alternatively, if you know your password but want to change it (you might think it's been compromised for example) you can do so within the registered area by selecting the green button to 'View/Edit your profile'. Within your profile area you will see an option to 'Change your password'.  

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