Frequently Asked Questions
We’ve compiled a list of some of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to our courseware. Browse the list of questions and answers below.
Once a year, BAI compiles a list of courses in our catalog to submit for CE pre-approval. This list consists of all the courses that were approved the previous year, as well as new courses released in the past year that meet the abovementioned criteria. This list is then provided to the ABA, along with certain course information, such as the description and intended audience of each course; we also pay an assessment fee for each course submitted. The ABA reviews the submitted material and makes a decision on which courses are approved, for which kinds of CE credit, and for how many credit-hours. This pre-approval is valid for the year following submission.
To claim CE credit for completing a BAI course, users must go to the ABA’s website and follow their process for claiming credit. The approved BAI courses will be available for selection from a drop-down menu of courses on the ABA’s site.
When submitting courses to the ABA, we select courses that are for a general audience (that is, not part of our role-specific curricula) and that are at least 15 minutes long (that is, not our mini-courses). These courses are most likely to be approved by the ABA for CE credit. The ABA does not provide us with comments on why certain courses are rejected. Once a course has been rejected by the ABA, we do not re-submit it.
BAI submits a selection of our course catalog to the American Bankers Association (ABA) for pre-approval for CE credit. We do not submit our courses to any other accrediting body at this time. Clients are free to submit their course completion transcripts to other accrediting bodies (such as the NCUA) for possible CE credit. However, we cannot guarantee that the courses will be accepted.
Our standard sexual harassment course generally covers the definition of harassment, the different kinds of harassment, and the legal responsibilities of employers from a federal level. The IL harassment course covers additional requirements that are specific to Illinois law (e.g. state-specific resources, which state agency to report harassment to, etc.). The Chicago course is identical to IL, except it is locked to ensure that learners spend the required amount of time within the course. (Chicago has minimum time requirements for harassment training, while IL does not.) Chicago also requires additional bystander intervention training, and we will be releasing a separate course on that topic. This means that Chicago employees will need to take both the Chicago harassment course and the bystander intervention course. We made the bystander intervention training a separate course instead of rolling it into the Chicago course because we anticipate that other clients outside of Chicago will also find the training useful, and we wanted to make the content available to them as well.
When BAI retires a course, any course left over on students’ “My Dashboard” will launch to an error message. Please ensure all training is complete, and remove or replace these courses in your rules before retirement dates occur. A full list of retirements and recommended replacements from 2023 can be found HERE. Learn more by accessing our Retirements FAQ.
Attributes in the BAI catalog include a thoroughly vetted list of fields, hand-picked for each course and document to help students and training administrators alike filter and identify content to take or assign. These fields include: Roles, Skills, Topics, Expected Duration, Interactivity, Product Type, CE, and Notes. To filter by these fields, start by accessing our online catalog, or log into the BAI Learning Manager and click on the “course catalog” button at the top of the My Dashboard page. Then, click on the “View all results” link below the library that fits your organization. Attributes reside on the left-hand side of the page. A more thorough description of each field can be found below:
- Roles – this field is available in BAI’s compliance courseware libraries only, for all full-length courseware except game show courses, mini-courses, and BAI’s legacy courses (course codes beginning with “2”). Selecting a role will update the results to include all compliance courseware that could be relevant to individuals in that role.
- Skills – this field is available in every library, but is most useful in BAI’s Professional Skills Library. The courses in this library are designed to sharpen users’ professional development skills, so filtering by this field makes it easy to spot direct correlations in content. Training administrators may also find this field valuable when building career paths to find all courses with similar skills.
- Topics – this field is available in every library. Topics are perhaps the most valuable field in terms of finding the right compliance content to take or assign. Selecting a topic will display all content adequately covering that subject, even if under the umbrella of another topic.
- Expected Duration – this field is available in every library, and is most useful in the compliance and professional development courseware libraries. It can help spot BAI’s Mini-Courses (all of which are < 15 minutes), or narrow the list to show our more in-depth content.
- Interactivity – this field is available in every library. It is most useful in the compliance and professional development courseware libraries, but can assist in spotting podcasts and video for example in the Documents & Resources library. Tip: select the “accessible” label to find courses that have been updated to our newest design template, which incorporates the accessibility features seen below:
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- Keyboard accessible including access to a list of keyboard shortcuts
- Custom Focus Order/Tab order is used so a screen reader and keyboard will follow content in a logical order.
- Closed captions available for videos and audio
- Users have ability to control video and audio (does not auto-play)
- Color of text follows WCAG 2.1 AA contrast standards (4.5:1)
- Zoom settings for the slide (not just the player)
- Accessible text which uses HTML and allows users to use custom stylesheets or browser extensions to change how the text displays.
- Use of alternate text for images that are not decorative.
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- Product Type / Content Type – these fields are available in every library. “Product Type” can be found in all courseware libraries and distinguishes our full-length courses from our mini-courses, while “Content Type” can be found in all document libraries and distinguishes documents and resources by file type (Excel, MP3, MP4, Other, PDF, URL, Word).
- CE – this field is available in BAI’s compliance courseware libraries only. Use this filter to search BAI courseware approved for continuing education credit.
- Notes – this field is used in BAI’s compliance libraries to highlight “popular” and “new” content.
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- New: identifies courses that have been released < 12 months (updated bi-annually).
- Popular: identifies the top 20 courses in each library based on completion data (updated bi-annually). Tip: type “Popular” in the catalog search bar in the Learning Manager to pull up the entire list of BAI’s popular courses, or click here to access the list in our online catalog and filter by Library on the left-hand side.
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When viewing the “What’s New, What’s Updated” section on L&D Connect’s Professional Development > Courseware page, some courses are listed with a “LIL” or “PS” abbreviation. Those denoted with an abbreviation signify:
- LIL = Leadership Innovation Library (exclusive to clients who subscribe to the Leadership Innovation Library)
- PS = Professional Skills Library (exclusive to clients who subscribe to the Professional Skills Library)
Contact your relationship manager to learn more about these valuable courses, including pricing information and any other questions you may have.
BAI’s course codes are structured as:
- 30000 series – BAI’s compliance courseware
- 4000 series – Microlearning
- 50000 series – Professional Skills
- 70000 series – Board of Directors
- 80000 series – Leadership Innovation Library
Contact your relationship manager to learn more about the professional skills, board of directors, or leadership innovation library.
Mini-courses serve as refreshers for seasoned employees, or supplemental targeted training for regulatory changes or hot topics. They are approximately 5 minutes in length, and include video, printable takeaways, and some interactivity. They can be assigned to employees who already have advanced knowledge of a regulation, as refreshers throughout the year, or when a regulatory change occurs and you don’t want everyone to have retake an entire course. With a few exceptions, mini-courses always contain a course code beginning with “4.”
Read more about microlearning here.
BAI uses BCMN to distinguish which library courses reside in:
- B = Banking Series
- C = Credit Union Series
- M = Mortgage Series
- N = Nonbank Series
Note: in the “What’s New, What’s Updated” section on L&D Connect, if a letter is not added to the end of a course code, the update described applies to all versions (BCM and N).
BAI offers a widely popular “Fast Track” option for experienced learners in all of its newer courseware (course codes beginning with “3”) that are longer than 30 minutes. The option to choose the “Full Course” or “Fast Track” is located at the beginning of courses for users.
Tip: Run the Fast Track Report in the BAI Learning Manager to see which of your users have chosen the the fast track option vs. the full course.
BAI distinguishes its Essential and Comprehensive courseware as:
- “Essentials” – an “overview” of a regulation. Appropriate for new hires, yearly refreshers, or “all staff” assignments. These courses are generally 30 minutes or less.
- “Comprehensive” – an “in-depth” deep-dive of a regulation. Intended for compliance officers, managers, and individuals who need a deep knowledge of a regulation. These courses are generally 30 minutes or longer.
Example: “BSA and AML: Essentials” (30502) and “BSA and AML: Comprehensive” (30501)
Audio information in online courses serves learners best when it complements—rather than reiterates verbatim—ideas from the printed text. This conclusion is strongly supported by work conducted by multimedia education researchers Richard Mayer and Patricia Clark, as well as others.
For this reason, BAI’s courses use audio selectively to emphasize key concepts and learning goals of a course. Short, focused audio segments are interspersed throughout courses in locations where they reinforce critical information from the main text.
BAI has a very thorough update and review process. Our content development team monitors different regulatory agencies, including the CFPB, Fed, FDIC, NCUA, the IRS, and FinCEN, and meets to do a weekly review of updates and clarifications that affect our courseware. Each new update that comes out – Proposed Rule, Final Rule, Guidance, Announcement, etc. – is individually reviewed. During this process, we review the Federal Register (or agency website, CFR, etc.) and determine which of our courses, if any, will be affected by these changes. Based on these findings, we make additions to our project plans based on the comments due, effective, and mandatory dates of the affected regulations.
With these changes, we make the necessary updates to our existing courseware, or develop new courseware when the situation demands it. We work closely with our experts to ensure that our courses accurately reflect changes to the regulations. Based on their input, our content team breaks this information down into digestible language, and creates real-life scenarios for different job categories based on updated information. We then update Course Content, Fast Tracks, Pretests, Job Aids and Comprehension Tests to ensure that the content of the update is truly absorbed by the user – not just a chunk of information shoe-horned into the course.
Once regulatory updates have undergone our extensive quality assurance process, they are released to our clients at least 90 days before mandatory compliance dates (when possible).
BAI calculates course expected duration times as 1 min per page, with additional time added for test taking, and estimates rounded to the nearest 5 min. Please note that these are just estimates, and that your experience may vary.
BAI does not allow customers to copy or print out our courseware due to copyright concerns. However, there are certain alternatives we provide depending on the circumstance, including:
- Job Aids – In each of our courses we provide a job aids section with detailed summaries of the content of the course. This option is the recommended alternative for students who just want to review the material, or management looking for a detailed summary of what’s covered in the course. In our 20000 series courses this material can be found under a Job Aids tab at the top of the course. In our 30000 series courses this material is accessed by clicking the file folder icon on the left-hand side in the course.
- Course Script Request form – We understand in some instances the job aids will not suffice. Examiners for example will often request access to the full course script to review the material. In this type of situation we accommodate the request. To officially request the course script, please fill out our course script request form. Follow the instructions at the top of the document and send the completed form to your relationship manager.
Yes. BAI can accommodate many customization requests to our 30000 series courses. Please contact your relationship manager to discuss customization options available to you. Note: certain customizations may incur a small fee.