Manage lessons and courses

The Learning Academy is an extension of the HowToo platform that enables businesses to share and track learning all in one platform.

Who can use this feature?
👀 Creators, primary admins, and admins
🏳️ Available on Growth, Teams and Pro plans
❌ Not available if you don’t have Learning Academy

Contents of this article:

• Lessons
• Courses 
• FAQS

Lessons

In order to include learning materials in a course, they must be first saved as lessons, also known as lessons. There are five different statuses to help you effectively manage your learning content.

Tip: To preserve learner data, it is recommended to duplicate your published lessons and hide the old lesson.

Draft:

If a learning object is in the draft status, it indicates that it hasn't been saved as a lesson yet, and you won't have the ability to add it to a course.

• Save as lesson: This will save and compile the learning object as a lesson in its current state, ready to be added to your courses.

Saved lesson:

The lesson has been saved and can be added to your courses.

Unsaved lesson:

The lesson has been saved but has been updated since then. If you add this lesson to a course without saving the updates, an older version will be published.

• Update lesson: This will save your changes and overwrite the previous state of the lesson. The updated version can then be added to your courses.

Published to Academy:

This lesson has been published and is available in your Learning Academy. Any changes made to this lesson will replace the previous version for learners and update their progress.

Unpublished changes:

 This means the lesson has been published and has been updated since then. The changes won't be visible to learners until you select “publish updates”.

• Publish updates: Publishing updates will ensure that these changes are applied to all learners, and they will be required to complete the new version of the lesson. 

❗️ Note: Publishing a new version of a lesson will result in loss of completion data. We recommend instead using the archive, duplicate and hide features to manage updates.

Courses

Draft

If a course is in the draft status, it indicates that it hasn't been published to your Learning Academy yet; you can still make changes, add lessons etc, without impacting the allocated Learners.

Published / Unpublished changes

If a course is in the published status, it indicates that the course is available to the selected Learners in your Academy. Making changes to a published course will set the status to unpublished changes.

You can change the following in courses without affecting Learner’s data:

• Title
• Description
• Trailer
• Thumbnail
• Lesson order
• Course duration
• Resources: Add or remove

Making changes to the following will impact completion and tracking data. The data is only affected upon publishing:

• Adding interactive or video lessons: When a lesson is added, it will affect the progress and completion status of the course. To exclude this lesson from the course completion requirements, you have the option to modify the list of lessons required for completing the course. This ensures that the learners' completion status remains unaffected by the inclusion of the new lesson.
• Hide lesson: If a lesson is hidden, the individual lesson data will still be accessible in reports, and it can be unhidden or added to a different course in the future. However, the course progress and completion status will be updated accordingly. This means that the learners' progress against the course will no longer include this lesson, and they may be required to complete a different lesson in order to achieve a completed status for the course.
• Update course completion requirements: When the number of lessons needed to achieve a completion status is modified, this adjustment will have an impact on the course completion of learners. Once the changes are published, all learners' course completion will be recalculated based on the updated requirements.
• Add learners: Typically, when a learner is assigned a course, their completion status and progress are initially zero. However, since lessons can be added across various courses if a learner has already completed a lesson, the data from that lesson will be automatically linked to their course progress.
• Remove learners: When learners are removed, their course progress will be erased. However, their lesson progress will be retained, allowing us to connect that lesson data to any future course if it is added. It's important to note that the lesson data won't be visible in reports or to learners since there is no associated course with it.

Revert to Draft

When a course is reverted to draft, all the course completion and progress data associated with learners will be removed, and the course will no longer be accessible to them. However, the lesson data will be preserved. In the event of accidentally reverting a course to draft, you can easily restore it by re-publishing, which will bring back the course data as it was before.

Archive

When a course is archived, all the completion and progress data related to the course and its lessons is preserved for learners. However, learners will no longer have access to the course. If a course is accidentally archived, it can be easily restored by republishing it. This process will make the course available again to learners, along with all the associated data.

FAQs

How will learners' data be affected if we update a published lesson?

Yes, learners previous data will be removed when they launch the updated lesson and they will be required to complete the new updated lesson from scratch.

Can I update a lesson without impacting learner's data?

Yes, there is a workaround. You can push the update live, and only notify new learners. The old learner data will remain, unless learners want to complete the update.

Or if you are concerned about learners launching the lesson again and loosing their previous data. You can follow these steps:

1. Duplicate the course and remove all learners.
2. Duplicate the learning object you have updated or want to update.
3. Add the updated lesson to the duplicate of the course.
4. Then distribute course only to new learners.

This method will ensure you have an old version of a course, and those learners can still access the old version and all completion data will be retained. And it also provides new learners with all updates to your training. 

Will learners have access to hidden lessons?

No, learners will not be able to view hidden lessons. However, their data will still be captured and available in reports. If a hidden lesson is later made visible again, learners will regain access to the lesson and will be able to see their previous progress and completion status.

Can I still distribute single lessons?

You can still distribute single lessons, however they must first be added to a course. Only the courses can be published to your Learning Academy.

Overview

• Lessons:
  • Statuses:
    • Draft: Indicates a learning object hasn't been saved as a lesson and cannot be added to a course.
    • Saved Lesson: The lesson is saved and ready for inclusion in courses.
    • Unsaved Lesson: The lesson has been updated since the last save; adding it to a course without saving will publish an older version.
    • Published to Academy: The lesson is live in the Learning Academy; any changes will update the version for learners and affect their progress.
    • Unpublished Changes: The lesson has unpublished updates; changes become visible to learners upon publishing.
  • Recommendations:
    • To preserve learner data, it's advised to duplicate published lessons and hide the old version before making updates.
    • Publishing a new lesson version may result in loss of completion data; consider using archive, duplicate, and hide features to manage updates.
• Courses:
  • Statuses:
    • Draft: The course isn't published to the Learning Academy; modifications can be made without affecting assigned learners.
    • Published/Unpublished Changes: The course is available to learners; any modifications set the status to unpublished changes.
  • Modifications Without Affecting Learner Data:
    • Title, description, trailer, thumbnail, lesson order, course duration, and adding/removing resources can be changed without impacting learner data.
  • Modifications Impacting Learner Data:
    • Adding Interactive or Video Lessons: Affects course progress and completion status; adjust completion requirements to prevent impact.
    • Hiding Lessons: Updates course progress and completion status; hidden lessons can be unhidden or added to other courses later.
    • Updating Course Completion Requirements: Altering the number of lessons required for completion impacts learner progress; upon publishing, completion statuses are recalculated.
    • Adding Learners: Assigning a course to new learners sets their initial completion status and progress to zero; since lessons can be added across multiple courses, existing progress may be retained.

This guide ensures that users can efficiently manage lessons and courses within the HowToo platform, maintaining the integrity of learner data while updating and organizing educational content.