Question

How to attach a level of difficulty to a course?

  • 14 December 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 116 views

Userlevel 3
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Hi

We run a continuing professional development program for accountants and laywers. Some users access the content by making ad-hoc purchases of vILTs and/or e-Learnings but the majority have subscription access which allows them to self-enrol without making payment.

We run about 170 new topics each year and have approx 450 e-Learnings in the library and we’ve received several requests from customers for us to indicate what ‘level’ the content is pitched at so that users can determine whether it is suitable for them.

In particular, where we have customers with power users they want to be able to identify content for their ‘junior’ accountants, managers etc so they know what they should recommend.

We can add a course additional field for ‘Level’ and include ‘Foundation’, ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Advanced’ but as far as I understand these would be mutually exclusive categories. Some content is suitable for ‘Foundation’ AND ‘Intermediate’ and this approach wouldn’t allow for that.

Does anyone have a way to achieve this so that users can easily search/filter/find all content pitched at a certain level so they can see their options for enrolment?

We do not use channels or Coach & Share.

Many thanks.


6 replies

Userlevel 7
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Would the course naming convention be helpful in any way?
Similar to college where 100 levels are freshman and 400 senior level and 500 moves into grad school level, etc...

Example:

Chemistry

vs

CH-101: Chemistry

-------------------------------------

Organic Chemistry

vs

CH-401: Organic Chemistry

 

Seems like a code you devise could help address that.

Would just need to train your learners about the convention.

Userlevel 3

Hello @david.stock I like @gstager idea of leveraging simple naming conventions based on a numerical level, perhaps in combination with catalogs that are organized by level of complexity/target audience - like a “Junior Accounting” catalog, “100_Foundational Concepts” catalog or “Intermediate” catalog?

Also, you could consider using the CLOR to repurpose that content you mentioned is a fit between multiple level/category courses - point to both places from the same CLOR asset and manage the content in a single place with multiple publish points at once.

Looking forward to hearing other suggestions!

Jason

Userlevel 6
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@david.stock this sounds like a good use for Course Additional Fields. With these, you can create extra attributes to be assigned to each course beyond what Docebo offers out of the box. Once an additional field is assigned, users would be able to see it on the course enrollment splash page and it would also become a filterable option on a catalog widget.

 

 

 

Userlevel 3
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Hi @nick.tosto 

That is what I had hoped to do but as per above:

“We can add a course additional field for ‘Level’ and include ‘Foundation’, ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Advanced’ but as far as I understand these would be mutually exclusive categories. Some content is suitable for ‘Foundation’ AND ‘Intermediate’ and this approach wouldn’t allow for that.”

Keep in mind, all of our content is ‘continuing professional development’ and does not build towards a certification or qualification. Professionals (or their managers) simply select courses which address subject matter which they believe will advance their professional knowledge.

This means some content is relevant/suitable at all levels eg. regular updates on legislative developments or soft skills topics.

So for example we might have a session called ‘Year End Tax Planning 2021’ which would be appropriate material for the L&D Manager to assign to their junior team members. But if we ‘label’ it as ‘Foundation’ then it won’t be visible to a more senior member of staff who uses the filter to view ‘Intermediate’ content.

Am I missing a trick? Could we configure the ‘Course Additional Field’ to allow for multi-selection?

Similarly @gstager , the naming convention would work where courses are either junion OR advanced, where they are progressive in nature and/or some courses are pre-requisites for other but that’s not the case with our subject matter. In part, that is why this is an important question for us … users need to be able to browse through 500+ topics and identify the content which may be suitable to them. It would assist them in narrowing their search if we could find a way to provide them with an indication of the level of experience the content is pitched at.

Userlevel 6
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@david.stock I’m sorry I totally missed that part of your original post. Yes that does make it a bit trickier. Maybe you can still use Course Additional Fields but slightly change the approach - Instead of one “Difficulty” field make several additional fields like “Recommended for Junior members: Yes/No”, “Recommended for Senior members: Yes/No”. It’s unfortunate docebo doesn’t currently have a multi-select option for additional fields but this would be a way around it.

Userlevel 3
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Thanks @nick.tosto 

I was toying with whether there might be a way to do it using ‘Skills’ but I don’t have any experience with that feature and I’m not sure it would be possible.

I gather we could limit the Skills available on our platform to restrict it only to relevant categories. I noted that when adding Skills to a course there are many options eg International Tax but I don’t see those in the Skills Management section so I’m not sure how they correlate.

We could create Groups and let users (or their managers) assign them to the Junior Accountants group if we could then somehow align that group with particular Skills.

I mentioned we don’t currently use ‘Channels’ but if this was a viable option then we could look at activating the My Skills channel as way to highlight or recommend content ‘suited to’ their assigned group.

Do you know if this is even remotely possible or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

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