Feature Overview and Requirements

The Course Group Delivery Method provides a way to bundle multiple LMS courses together for a single training completion requirement. Instead of containing learning material, the content of the Course Group is a set of Component Courses, which already exist in your LMS.

The Course Group Delivery Method provides a way to bundle multiple LMS courses together for a single training completion requirement. Instead of containing learning material, the content of the Course Group is a set of Component Courses, which already exist in your LMS.

Before you decide to use Course Groups, it is important to remember that coursework completed before enrollment in the Course Group does not count toward group credit.

Students may see a completed course transcript in training history and question why the same course remains on the Course Group list as “Approved”.

An analysis of the Course Group enrollment date versus the enrollment/completion dates of the course in question will normally explain the discrepancy. To have more control over how prior completions are managed for credit toward a broader effort, consider using Course Goals or Accreditations with Goals.

With Course Goals, you can select an “Earliest Score Date” so that credit after that date counts toward the goal. In that case, there is no real benefit to using a Course Group within the Course Goal. The component course list of a Course Group would be the courses associated with the goal.

When a student enrolls in a Course Group, a corresponding training widget section appears on their classic LMS Home page or on the Course Slide-in found in our new User Interface. It will display component courses until the entire set is complete. Students can then navigate to their History tab to print a certification of completion  for the entire Course Group (and the individual component courses, if desired.)

This document assumes prerequisite knowledge of course creation basics and will only reference points relevant to setting up a Course Group. 

Step by Step Procedure and Field Description

Step One: Create a Course Group

1. From the Administration menu, click Courses > Add Course.
2. Complete the basic requirements for adding a new course and for the Delivery Method, select Course Group.
3. Click Submit to save the course and open up additional tabs for developing the course group.

Step Two: Add Required Training Component Courses

Once a Course Group has been added to the catalog, Portal Administrators must navigate to the Components tab to define required coursework. While you cannot nest Course Groups into each other as component courses, all other delivery methods are available: Assessment, Classroom, eLearning, Self-Study, and Virtual Classroom (with Add-On).

NOTE: Component courses retain their own enrollment attributes (e.g. Tuition, Prerequisites, Series, Approval requirements, enrollment restrictions) within the group, so configure them accordingly.

Build a component course list in the order (A – Z) you want them displayed on students’ Home page training widget.

1. On the Components tab, click Add Courses to find and select components from the LMS Course Picker.
2. Use the Type field to define how credit should be provided for each component course:
   • Course – Any completed transcript meets the rule, whether achieved by the student or granted by administrative override.
   • Course by Exact Match – Course completion was achieved by student.
   • Course by Equivalency – Student received equivalent credit for the required course.
3. Click Remove to delete a course from the list.
4. Click Submit to save changes, or Cancel to discard.

The Course Group is then ready for student enrollment. Its Component Course list can be edited at any time, but should be finalized before students are able to enroll in the group so that completion requirements remain standard for all, if that is an important consideration.
 

The Portal Administrator Experience

In order for someone to get credit for completing the Course Group, you must enroll them in the Course Group FIRST, before they enroll in any of the components.
Students with prior credit for the courses listed in the Group’s components will not be retroactively awarded credit for the completion of the Course Group itself. When you enroll a student in a Course Group, the completion logic only looks for future completion of the components, not those attained in the past. If awarding the Group completion is important, consider establishing an Equivalency rule so that students who have completed ALL the component courses in the past get equivalent credit for the Group in their history. 

The Course Group is forward-looking and until users get credit for the entire group, they are subject to any midstream adjustments in the components list, even if you remove a course they’ve already completed. If you change the list of components, the behavior is as follows:

• If someone already has credit for the group, they retain it (even though it may have been for a slightly different list of components). There is no revocation.
• If users are already enrolled in the group and are in various stages of working through the component list, any changes made to the component courses prior to completion of the overall course group will change the enrolled users’ working list of courses to complete. Whatever shows on the Components tab is the users’ current requirement for completion.

The Student Experience

Students will find Course Groups listed in their course catalog when conducting a course search. Managers and administrators may enroll users in Course Groups using the standard Enroll Others and Interest List features.

Every user with an active enrollment in a Course Group will see them available from Courses to Complete and other pages depending on the portal setup. In the responsive user interface, like Courses to Complete, accessing the Group and its components happens by drilling down into the course slide-in page that appears when selecting the Course Group.

After clicking the View Components button, the list of components appears.

The component course slide-in appears with available Action buttons depending on the student’s status in the course.

For customers still using the Classic User Interface, the Course Groups appear in a separate section on the user’s Home page with components nested under the group.