Creating a learning path

A learning path is an ordered set of courses treated as one thing: assigned together, tracked together, and completed as a whole. It is how an induction or a qualification is expressed, rather than six separate assignments that happen to arrive on the same day.

Creating one

1. In the library, open the menu beside New course.
2. Choose New learning path.
3. Name it, then add courses.

Paths live in the same library as courses and are filtered by the Learning path content type.

Ordering and requiring

Each course in a path has a position, which is the order learners see, and a required switch.

Only required courses count towards completing the path. Optional ones are offered and tracked, and somebody can finish the path without them.

That is the setting that most often surprises people looking at a progress figure: a path of ten courses showing complete at seven is usually three optional ones, not a fault.

Overriding a course inside the path

A course in a path can carry its own days to complete and its own certificate validity, different from the same course taken on its own.

Use this where the path changes the urgency rather than the content — the same fire-safety course might be due in seven days as part of an induction and annually otherwise.

Crediting what people have already done

Credit prior completions is the path setting worth understanding, and it exists only on paths, not on courses.

Switched on with a number of months, somebody who already completed a required course within that window is credited for it rather than being asked to do it again.

Two things about it:

• It applies to required courses only, which follows from those being the ones that count.
• It never takes a credit away. Shortening the window later does not revoke credits already given, so nobody is un-completed by a settings change.

Without it, assigning a path to an established team asks experienced people to retake things they did last month, which is the fastest way to lose their goodwill.

What a path does not have

A path has no Skills tab — skills belong to the courses inside it.

Paths also never go through a publish check, whatever your account’s setting says. The check applies to courses built in Learnient’s builder, and a path is a container rather than content.

Assigning it

A path is assigned exactly like a course, from the Assignment tab — see Assigning a course from the course settings drawer. Assigning the path assigns everything required inside it.