The ACE-Compliant Course System: Posttests, Pilot Tests, Evaluations, and Records

Here is what an audit actually looks like.

A notice arrives naming specific courses. ACE wants your records — participant attendance, instructor qualifications, evaluations and evaluation summaries, pilot tests, posttests, certificates, learning objectives, course materials, grievances.

You have 30 days. If ACE deems the request urgent, you have 24 to 48 hours.

Notice what is not on that list: your teaching. Nobody watches your videos. Nobody assesses whether you are good at this. ACE reserves the right to audit and monitor at any time, and what it audits is your documentation.

This is the build specification. If you have not yet chosen between the two approval routes, start with how to become an ASWB ACE provider and come back here when you are building.

The completion chain

Every compliant distance-learning course is the same chain. Break a link and the credit does not count.

Enroll → deliver the full course → posttest → evaluation → certificate → retain for seven years

ACE is unusually explicit about the middle of that chain. To receive credit for a distance learning course, the participant must complete the entire course, complete a posttest, and complete a course evaluation. All three. And the certificate cannot be issued until all three are done.

The two links that only exist in software are the last two, and they are the ones that fail.

Posttesting: the most prescriptive requirement in either profession

ACE does not leave your assessment to judgment the way NBCC does. It specifies the shape.

Required question counts:

And the rules around them:

• Posttests are required for all distance learning formats, and encouraged for everything else.
• True/false questions may not comprise more than half the questions.
• An essay posttest with an objective scoring rubric may substitute for asynchronous self-paced and non-interactive live courses.
• Discussion questions embedded in the content may substitute only for interactive live distance courses where the technology monitors participation.
• The posttest must be assessed during pilot testing and administered to every participant seeking credit.
• You must publish your passing score and retest policy in your promotional materials. ACE does not set the number — it requires that you state it and honor it.

What this means for your platform: a 3-credit course needs a bank of at least 20 questions, no more than 10 of them true/false, with a configurable pass threshold and a retake policy applied consistently. Every attempt has to be retained — posttests appear explicitly in ACE's seven-year records list, and "she passed eventually" is a different record from "she passed on the fourth attempt."

Pilot testing: the requirement with no NBCC equivalent

This is the standard that surprises people migrating from other approval bodies, and it belongs in your project timeline rather than your launch checklist.

Before delivering a course by distance learning, you must pilot test it to determine credit hours and verify quality.

The procedure ACE specifies:

• Create a pilot test questionnaire using the questions in the ACE Handbook appendix, allowing yes/no responses, written comments, or Likert-scale answers.
• Identify at least five pilot testers from the social work and behavioral health professions.
• Give them the instructions and questionnaire before they begin.
• Present the course in its entirety — including any pretest and posttest — exactly as real participants will experience it.
• Summarize and analyze the results. This analysis must be done by your social work consultant, social work planner, or CE director.
• Adjust the course content, structure, materials, and the amount of credit offered based on what you learn.

That last point is the real function of pilot testing: it is how ACE determines credit for anything that is not reading-based. Your five testers tell you how long the course actually takes, and that timing sets your credit. If you offer credit for the time spent completing the posttest, the course must be pilot tested — there is no allowance route around it.

The exception: for reading-based courses, you may use the word-count allowance instead of a pilot test. 6,000 words equals 1 credit, each additional 1,500 words equals .25, and rounding up is permitted. This is a genuine argument for launching with a written course: it is the one format that skips a multi-week pilot cycle.

The evaluation: a gate, not a follow-up

ACE states the sequencing plainly. Providers must develop evaluations for every course and "distribute and collect the evaluations from each participant before awarding CE credit."

That single clause settles a design question. The evaluation is not an email you send afterward. It sits between finishing the course and receiving the certificate.

ACE goes further: because completing an evaluation is required to earn credit, you must use a collection method that ensures every participant who wants credit completes one. If your form does not capture the participant's name, you need another way to verify who submitted.

What the evaluation must contain

Identification

• Course title
• Course date
• Participant name, or other verification of identity
• Learning objectives, worded exactly as they appear in your promotional material

Rated items — participants must be able to assess:

• Whether the course met their expectations as outlined in the promotional material
• Usefulness of the content to their needs or interests
• Currency of the content
• Effectiveness of supporting materials — handouts, teaching aids, visual aids
• Clarity and effectiveness of the instructor's or author's delivery
• Responsiveness of the instructor (in-person and interactive live courses)
• The course registration process
• Responsiveness of administrative staff to questions or concerns
• Adequacy of accessibility accommodations
• Adequacy of the location or meeting space (in-person only)
• Course technology (all distance learning)

Required written response

• The exact length of time, in writing, that it took to complete the course (all distance learning courses)
• A comment box for additional feedback

Two things worth flagging. First, that time question is how ACE cross-checks your credit math against reality — it is the reason self-reported completion time matters more here than tracked seat time. Second, the learning objectives must appear word-for-word as they appear in your marketing. Rewrite the objectives on your sales page, and your evaluation form is out of compliance until you update it too.

After collection

You must analyze, summarize, and interpret evaluations and make modifications based on them. Under individual course approval, you need ACE's permission before making those modifications.

Evaluations and evaluation summaries are both on the seven-year records list.

Certificates of credit

The certificate is what your participant carries to their board. ACE sets both the contents and the timing.

When it may be issued:

• Only after the participant meets completion requirements. For distance learning: the entire course, the posttest, and the evaluation. For in-person: full attendance plus an evaluation.
• Within 30 days of course completion.
• Partial credit is never allowed. Attending part of a session earns nothing.

What it must contain:

• Indication of attendance and the credit awarded to that participant
• The signature of a recognized authority — your CE director or a designated person
• The ACE approval statement issued to you at approval, in its entirety
• Your ACE provider number, or the ACE course number for individually approved courses
• If you are claiming a jurisdiction-specific credit type, it must appear in a separate location from the ACE statement, clearly distinguishing a state topic requirement from an ACE credit type

And one rule people miss: certificates of credit cannot be issued to your own instructors. If an instructor wants documentation of their role, provide a letter instead.

The ACE approval statement — use it exactly

ACE issues your statement at approval. It must appear in its entirety on all print and online promotional material and on every certificate of credit. The provider version reads:

[Provider name], [provider number], is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: [dates]. Social workers completing this course receive [number] [type] continuing education credits.

Rules on it:

• Do not alter it in any way, except the conference adjustments ACE specifies.
• On a page listing all your accreditations, use it in full except the last sentence — that sentence is course-specific.
• Use it only for courses genuinely applicable to social work CE. Never on exam prep or self-help courses.
• Never transfer it to another entity.
• The ACE logo may appear on promotional material and certificates. The ASWB logo may not be used at all.

Attendance documentation for live events

If you run in-person or live synchronous courses, ACE wants precision.

You must document each participant's first and last name and exact times of arrival and departure, using one of:

• A sign in/out log with names, time in with signature, and time out with signature or initials
• Badge scanning
• A room monitor who checks attendees in and out
• A signed self-attestation

If you use attestations, they must include the attendee's full name, the course or session title, and the date — and must be turned in no later than the end of the day the session was offered. For multi-day courses, each day.

Seven years of records

ACE requires you to collect and maintain the following for at least seven years:

• Organizational changes, including structure and addresses
• Personnel records for CE directors and social work consultants, whether paid or volunteer
• CE director and social work consultant contact information, resume, and licensure information
• Course, cosponsorship, personnel, instructor, and participant information
• A cosponsor agreement for each cosponsored event
• Instructor information for each course — resume, qualifications, licensure, professional affiliations
• Participant attendance, including name and profession
• Social worker attendance numbers
• Verification of attendance documents such as sign in/out logs
• Participant evaluations and evaluation summaries
• Certificates of credit, or the ability to generate them
• Course title, date, location, and credits awarded for each course or session
• Course outline or syllabus, learning objectives, and course materials including slides and handouts
• Grievances and resolutions
• Requests for and documentation of accessibility accommodations
• Pilot tests
• Posttests

You must produce a summary report or full access on request, meet audit requests within 30 days, and allow participants to access information about their own course participation on request.

That phrase — "certificates of credit, or the ability to generate them" — is worth pausing on. ACE will accept that you can reproduce a certificate rather than storing every file. That only holds if your platform still has the underlying completion record. So the question to ask any vendor: what happens to a participant's records when they unenroll, when their account is deleted, or when you retire the course? If the answer is "purged," you have a seven-year problem you will discover at the worst moment.

Online security — Standard 7.1

ACE's security standard reads like a platform requirements document:

• Restrict access to a participant's account and related information to authorized individuals only
• Maintain participant course and performance information securely and confidentially
• Restrict access to online courses and materials for which certificates are provided to authenticated and authorized users
• Handle credit card information consistent with current PCI security standards
• If you share data with third parties, inform participants and allow them to opt out
• Maintain a written data breach monitoring and response plan and make it available to participants

If you are running a self-hosted stack, every one of those is your responsibility — including the breach plan and the PCI posture of whatever payment plugin you installed.

The grievance policy

You need a written, published grievance policy covering refund requests, complaints about course content, speakers, facilities, non-receipt of certificates, and miscellaneous issues.

Your social work consultant must be involved in every grievance resolution — ACE requires this to remove any perception of bias and to strengthen the decision. The individuals involved must be named in the written policy.

You must document every grievance and every action taken, keep a record of each complaint and its resolution, include contact information on promotional material so people can submit one, and share resolutions internally to improve future courses.

What your platform must do

Everything above reduces to a capability list.

What this looks like in FreshLearn

Requirements are easier to trust when you can see them.

The posttest, sized to your credit hours

A 3-credit course needs 20 questions with no more than half true/false. Build the bank once, set your passing score and retake policy, and both apply consistently to every participant. Every attempt is recorded — which matters, because posttests sit on ACE's seven-year retention list and an auditor may ask about any of them.

Covers: posttest question counts, published pass threshold, retained attempt history.

The evaluation as a completion gate

ACE requires evaluations collected before credit is awarded, from every participant who wants it. Delivered as a step inside the course rather than a follow-up email, with the rating items, the exact-completion-time field, and your learning objectives reproduced word-for-word from your promotional copy.

Covers: the evaluation gate, required rating items, and identity verification.

The certificate, carrying your ACE statement

Participant name, credits awarded, and completion date populate automatically. Your provider number and the full ACE approval statement sit in a fixed block that appears identically on every certificate — which is what "in its entirety, unaltered" requires. Issuance is triggered by completion, so the 30-day deadline takes care of itself, and there is no path to downloading one early.

Covers: certificate contents, the approval statement, timing, and the no-partial-credit rule.

The records you would hand ACE

Attendance by name, progress, posttest outcome, evaluation submitted, certificate issued — per participant, exportable. When an audit names a course and gives you 30 days, this is the view that answers it, and the same export produces the evaluation summaries ACE asks for.

Covers: seven-year participant records, attendance documentation, evaluation summaries, and audit response.

Access control and secure checkout

Credit-bearing content is restricted to authenticated, enrolled users, and payments run through PCI-compliant checkout with no transaction fee taken on top.

Covers: Standard 7.1 online security and payment handling.

Pre-launch checklist

• Course content restricted to enrolled, authenticated users
• Posttest has the right question count for your credit hours
• True/false questions are no more than half the posttest
• Passing score and retake policy configured and published in promotional material
• Every posttest attempt retained
• Pilot test completed with at least five social work or behavioral health testers
• Pilot results analyzed by your social work consultant, planner, or CE director
• Credit amount set by pilot timing, or by the word-count allowance for reading-based courses
• Evaluation contains every required item, including exact completion time
• Learning objectives on the evaluation match promotional copy word-for-word
• Evaluation is a hard gate before certificate issuance
• Certificate carries the ACE approval statement in full, unaltered, with your provider number
• Certificate issues only after completion, and within 30 days
• No mechanism can award partial credit
• Attendance documentation method in place for any live sessions
• Participant records survive unenrollment and course retirement for seven years
• Bulk export produces a per-participant record you could hand an auditor in 30 days
• Written policies: grievances (naming the consultant), refunds, data breach response, accessibility
• Bibliography meets the five-year currency rule

The record is the product

The instinct is to pour everything into content and treat posttests, evaluations, and records as admin work for later. It is backwards. Your content earns the renewal. Your records are what keep you approved to sell it at all.

Get the chain right once — the posttest gates the evaluation, the evaluation gates the certificate, and every step is timestamped and exportable — and compliance becomes a background process rather than a scramble the week an audit notice arrives.

Build your CE course on FreshLearn

New to this? Start with how to become an ASWB ACE provider.

FAQs

How many posttest questions does an ACE course need? 

Ten for the first credit hour and five for each additional hour — so 15 for two hours, 20 for three. True/false questions may not exceed half the total.

Do I have to pilot test my course? 

Yes for distance learning, with at least five testers from the social work and behavioral health professions. The exception is reading-based courses, where you may use the word-count allowance instead — 6,000 words per credit.

Can I email the evaluation after the course? 

No. ACE requires evaluations to be distributed and collected before credit is awarded, using a method that ensures every participant seeking credit completes one.

What must appear on an ACE certificate of credit? 

Attendance and credit awarded, a recognized authority's signature, and the ACE approval statement in its entirety, including your provider or course number. Jurisdiction-specific credit claims go in a separate location.

How long do I keep CE records? 

At least seven years — including attendance, evaluations and summaries, pilot tests, posttests, instructor qualifications, course materials, grievances, and accessibility accommodation requests.

What happens if I cannot produce records at audit? 

Records are due within 30 days of an ACE request, or 24 to 48 hours if ACE determines the request is urgent.

Can I give my instructors a certificate for teaching? 

No. Certificates of credit cannot be issued to instructors. Provide a letter confirming they taught the course instead.

Sources

• ASWB ACE Handbook, December 2023 — Standards 4.9, 4.10, 6.2, 7.1–7.5
• ASWB — ACE provider approval
• ASWB ACE provider approval fees, effective 7/1/2025

Last verified: August 2026. ACE standards change — confirm current requirements with ASWB before applying.