Let’s go back in time. Think hard and name 5 things you would commonly find in a traditional classroom. Here are my guesses:
- Black/White board
- Students
- Desks
- Course material/Assignments
- Instructor
What are yours?
I’m sure an Instructor/Teacher featured on that list. 🙂
In fact a student-teacher relationship is elementary to any learning system. Online learning systems on WordPress aim to maintain such a relationship as well. They tend to provide students and teachers – as user roles with different capabilities.
Let’s explore.
The Student User Role
In an LMS, the student is a user enrolled for a course. The student can view the course content, the lessons, topics, and can take quizzes or complete assignments related to the course. Upon completion of the course, the student receives a certificate.
A student does not have the capability to create course content.
The Instructor/Teacher User Role
An Instructor or Teacher on the other hand, plays a different role in an LMS. As expected, an Instructor can create course content such as lessons, topics, course categories, and quizzes. An instructor can also grade quizzes or assignments completed by a student, and can track student progress for a course.
If you take a look at popular LMS plugins on WordPress, LearnDash will surely feature on that list. But, what’s puzzling is, while LearnDash provides a student user role, it does not provide an Instructor user role.
At WisdmLabs, we work a lot with the LearnDash plugin and we’ve received feedback from LearnDash users, who’ve expressed a need for an Instructor Role to be added to the LearnDash LMS.
This has led us to build the ‘Instructor Role’ for LearnDash plugin which introduces an Instructor or Teacher to the LearnDash LMS.
Introducing the WISDM Instructor Role Extension for LeanDash
Create Course Content
Approve Assignments
Track Student Progress
Email Students
The WISDM Instructor Role for LearnDash is an extension that allows you to add multiple Instructors or Teachers who can create their own courses, teach, grade and manage their students.
It empowers your Instructors with the capability to create course content such as lessons, quizzes, assignments, topics, etc. and communicate with students enrolled in their courses.
This gives you an opportunity to delegate the course and student management responsibilities to Instructors and enables you to focus on other important aspects of your eLearning business.
With this add-on you can fulfill your dreams of running your own online school, college, university or even build your own LearnDash based Course Marketplace!
While we’re at it, allow me to enlighten you with some peculiar features of this plugin.
Features of WISDM Instructor Role plugin:
- Create Unlimited Instructors – You can create unlimited Instructors who will bring in their subject expertise to develop quality courses and manage them through an intuitive dashboard of their own.
- Hassle-free management – The Instructors can only manage students enrolled in their courses and in case, if the course is huge, then you can assign multiple instructors to a single course to ensure smooth and systematic management.
- Limited Instructor Access – Each Instructor gets their own dashboard and will not be able to view or change settings of the courses created by others. As an admin, your website is secured at all times since Instructors cannot access backend settings and you have the ultimate power to approve/reject any changes made by them.
- Easy tracking of commissions – The plugin lets you set commission rates for each Instructor and automatically calculates commissions whenever a student enrolls into a course(s) making it easier for you to keep track of earned commissions.
- Bulk enroll students – The Instructors are empowered with Group Leader capabilities and can access the groups that have students enrolled into their courses. They can bulk enroll students into groups instead of adding them individually.
- Student- teacher communication facilities – This allows Instructors to reach out or notify students enrolled in their courses regarding any updates via email.
- Monitor student performance – The Instructors have access to student reports so that they can monitor their progress and provide quick feedback to students regarding their performance leading to quicker improvements.
Having said that, you can also check out its Demo to explore more functionalities and features of the WISDM Instructor Role plugin.
On that note, you can now create multiple Instructors and offer as many courses as you want to kick-start your own online school or a course marketplace.
Thoughts to ponder upon!
Well , it doesn’t matter whether you’re building your own course marketplace, starting an online school or even selling a few multiple courses on your eLearning website – the ultimate goal will always be to increase course enrollments and provide an enhanced learning experience.
Though the stepping stones to these goals begin with having Instructors on your LMS, however, your LearnDash LMS will need other functionalities which are equally important and can add significantly towards your goal.
To make it easier for you, we have created a bundle of plugins in our LearnDash Essentials Add-on Pack (L.E.A.P) that you must check out. These plugins can enhance your LearnDash based eLearning business to a next level.
Feel free to reach out to us in case of any queries 🙂
FAQs
- Will the Instructors be able to create courses?
Yes. Your Instructors will be able to create, teach, and manage courses and students. - How many Instructors can I create/add to my LearnDash LMS?
You can add an unlimited number of Instructors/Teachers on your LearnDash LMS.
- Can I build a course marketplace using Instructor Role?
Yes. You can onboard as many Instructors as you like to develop and offer different courses in order to build a marketplace like Udemy.
- Can my Instructors communicate with the students?
Yes. Your Instructors can reach out to students enrolled in their courses via email to provide feedback and updates regarding their performance.
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Amir Sciammas :
Hi Tarun, I setup the plugin, all seems to work fine.
But I can’t see that co-authors on the front end of the course itself, I only see the main author.
Meaning, If I have 1 course with 2 instructors I expect to see both of them as instructors in the fron page of the course, but I’m seeing only one.
Any tips for how to set it up?
April Diane :
I installed the plug in, but i can not access the Instructor Dashboard. I have customized it but now I don’t know how to let the instructor access it. When I log in as the instructor it does not take me to the dashboard like it says it does.
Azman Ab Rahman :
I’ve already installed the Instructor plugin in my LearnDash. So what would be the link for the Instructor Login
Ness :
Yes the Instructor can be granted access to the courses an admin has created.
Simply go Course Unit > { your selected course} > scroll all the way the bottom and look for “Author”.
There you can select the author as the instructor instead of the admin who created it. It will reflect on the Instructor’s panel.
Brad Gallagher :
Hi Tarun – I understand the plugin doesn’t allow one ins
tructor to modify another instructor’s lessons. Does the instructor still have access to courses, lessons, and topics created by an admin? I am creating a site where most o
f the component content (lessons and topics) will be uploaded by one or more admin roles, but needs to be assembled into particular groupings by a different role. Thanks!