Learning Plans with pre-requisites and blended modality


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We have several learning plans that have pre-requisite plans and offer both eLearning and webinars in the same program.  We’ve had to repost training dates on the learning plan description in order for someone to see upcoming dates. Training dates also don’t show up in the calendar when in a learning plan. Learners are confused about our programs and don’t know how to plan for training, what order to do things in and when to pick dates, despite instructions on screen.

Is anyone else using learning plans that require other learning plans as a pre-requisite or have webinars in learning plans? How are you working through that?


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@nzykowski - So I am guessing you are referring to the Learning plan which contains webinars where you need the users to self enroll?

If this is the case a couple of suggestions:

  1. Create a catalog widget (calendar)- and add it to the home page, it could be called- Session that you need to sign up for. You could filter the widget so that it only includes the Learning plans where learners are expected to self enroll in classes.  The screenshot below shows the agenda view (the default view for widget is month). Unfortunately you can’t default the calendar but this would at provide the ability for you to quickly present in a month all courses within the LP that need to be self enrolled into. In your comment you mentioned that training dates don’t show on the calendar when they are in a learning plan. If my thinking is correct, this is because the learner has yet to be enrolled into a specific session in the webinar course. The above approach utilizes the catalog as a calendar where the user can see courses with session they have not been sign up for
    2. Also For the Course and Learning Plans (page or widget) once a user has been enrolled into a Learning Plan, learners are put on the “course waiting list” . You could build a specific page that only has Courses (use the Course/LP widget only) and then filter the Page for only webinar. Instead of “waiting List” you could also localize the text to say Click here to enroll into session. On this page if you have enabled the share this view option (on the manage page properties tab) you will be able to “view a link” for a the way you have filtered the page. You could then use this link to create a “custom content box” widget on your home page that said something similar to “Please click here to view Courses that you need to enroll into. By using the link in the screen shot below the learner would be driven to a a page which now only contains courses within the learning plan that need to be enrolled into (the filtered view). 

If the above filter of webinar were not specific enough because you have other webinar course that many not be self-enroll, you could also build a Course Additional field that you could specifically add in the Advanced properties of the webinar Courses you know that learners need to self-enroll into and then use the course additional field a more specific filter in the screen shot shown below. 

I know the above is a lot setup-wise but if the idea make sense and you need some specific help or more clarity, I would be happy to provide assistance, just let me know. 


 

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We have several learning plans that have pre-requisite plans and offer both eLearning and webinars in the same program.  We’ve had to repost training dates on the learning plan description in order for someone to see upcoming dates. Training dates also don’t show up in the calendar when in a learning plan. Learners are confused about our programs and don’t know how to plan for training, what order to do things in and when to pick dates, despite instructions on screen.

Is anyone else using learning plans that require other learning plans as a pre-requisite or have webinars in learning plans? How are you working through that?

We have been though this. We are currently managing through customized notifications. I create the courses, add them to Learning Plans.  From there we have a few different options. 

Some LPs send a notification to the staff about being enrolled and they can go ahead and proceed, but they won’t get individual notifications on courses inside that plan. 

The flip side, is the plans where I need them to pick a session. I turn off the LP enrollment plan and turn on the custom notifications from the course. The notification is fairly general, but it provides a course level link that allows the user to click and section a section that works best for them. 

Hope that helps. Let me know if you ever want to call and talk through it. I know it can be stressful when you have to jump through hoops in the platform to keep the trust and positivity up regarding the platform we spend so many hours in! 

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hey there @nzykowski, I’m not sure if that helps and if it’s the answer you’re looking for but I believe that with the new group management, it is possible to create groups based on the status of some courses.

If you create a learning plan with a course that can only be completed if other courses in said learning plan have already been completed, you could theorically create an automatic group to which users are enrolled based on the status of that course. That paired with Notifications and Enrollment Rules could bring some nice results and “unlock” learning plans one by one

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@gerrodhudson - interesting thoughts, but there’s a lot of assumption the learner is going to dig in and find what they need, which just won’t be the case. If I can’t spoon feed it and put it right in their face right as they’re enrolling, it’s lost and then on my team to scramble to get them into a session which may or may not be full (since I can’t pick dates before I register for a learning plan.)

 

These are paid programs where the live course may be in the middle of a list of 10 courses.  They are planning around the training dates.

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@Stephanie Dreiling  - I might have to go your direction with that. When someone signs up for an LP, we do send a customized message that shows screenshots of the LP and how to go pick their dates, etc. It’s not very scalable considering I’d have to update the messages every time we update the program and we have three versions of the same program with slight variations using the same live course (employees, customers, partners). We might need to chat further...

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@abartunek - I was thinking that might be a great feature, but haven’t figured it out yet.  I like the idea of notifying “unlock” in a way...many programs beyond the initial one are optional/as-needed. For employees, free, but for partners and customers...paid.

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@abartunek - I was thinking that might be a great feature, but haven’t figured it out yet.  I like the idea of notifying “unlock” in a way...many programs beyond the initial one are optional/as-needed. For employees, free, but for partners and customers...paid.

Unfortunately, when Webinars are included, I’m not sure if my solution will really work with your userbase. Nevertheless, I can try my best to write a short guide on how to set prerequisited for Learning Plans (maybe some other members of the community will want to use it in the future). See below:

Set Up Your Learning Plans

  1. Create two Learning Plans, for the sake of explanation let’s call them Soft Skills I: Communication and Soft Skills II: Time Management
  2. Add Courses to both learning plans
  3. Last course in Soft Skills I: Communication should have all other courses in the learning plan set as prerequisites

Create an Automatic Group

  1. Create a New Group (Automatic Creation type); let’s call it Soft Skills I Completion
  2. Create a New Set of Conditions based on Enrollment Status of the last course from Soft Skills I: Communication

Set up Enrollment Rules

  1. ​​​​​​​Go to Enrollment Rules
  2. Set up a New Rule
  3. In the field From, select Groups
  4. In the field To, select Learning Plan
  5. Assign the previously created Automatic Group (Soft Skills I Completion) to the Rule
  6. Assign the second learning plan Soft Skills II: Time Management to the Rule

Rest of the Steps

  1. Create an Enrollment Notification (User has been enrolled in a Learning Plan) for the second learning plan Soft Skills II: Time Management
  2. Enroll users to the first learning plan Soft Skills I: Communication

Short Explanation

After your users complete all courses in the first learning plan Soft Skill I: Communication, they will be automatically added to the group Soft Skills I Completion. In turn, that will enroll them to the second learning plan Soft Skills II: Time Management, which will then trigger the enrollment notification.

 

If anything is unclear or if I explained something badly, let me know. Again, I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for but I still find it to be a pretty good workaround solution for setting up prerequisites for Learning Plans. The only alternative I can think of is creating course equivalencies inside of different learning plans but we tried that and didn’t really like it.

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@nzykowski  @abartunek - sorry my 1st suggestion didn’t work out. If you like Adam’s idea another idea with fewer steps would be:
For the 1st LP,  the last Learning object could be an HTML training material in which you could use a deep link enrollment link within the HTML that instructs the user to click the link to automatically enroll themselves in the 2nd LP. It would be a lot less work than having to build multiple groups and enrollment rules. 

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@gerrodhudson  - neither works for us since they are paid LPs for 2/3 of the population. It’s not required, but optional training. It’s branching too, depending on the product you need next.  Right now, when someone enrolls in a LP that requires another LP before it, our team gets emailed and we have to manually check to see if they have the pre-requisites.  It gets even messier when they sign up for multiple programs to complete over time...we can only assume they’ll do what they need to do and sometimes, they don’t.

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Hello community! 

Can a learning plan be locked?  

Can you unlock a learning plan based on the completion of another learning plan?

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GOAL:

I wanted to create a calalog where all the required learning plans are visible to a learner but only one learning plan is open initially and the rest are locked. The other learning plans gets unlocked based on the completion of their prerequisites.

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STATUS:

I have only been able to create a widget configured for learning plans (only) where the learning plans appear one-by-one as the prerequisite of each learning plan is completed. I used groups and enrollment rules for this.

 

I hope someone can help me achieve my goal. Thanks so much for the attention!

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