LearnDash Archives

LearnDash v2.4.1 : Course Creators, this Update is for You

March 30, 2017 by WisdmLabs Leave a Comment

It’s raining updates!After the release of version 2.3, which brought about major changes in the plugin, LearnDash is back yet again with another major update.While v2.3.0 focused on performance and reporting improvements, this latest version focuses on dynamic learning paths, course categories and more.This power-packed update enables Course Creators to create learning content and training programs for the betterment of students and to have more control on the overall training process.So let’s dig into the details and explore what v2.4.0 has in store for you!

LearnDash v2.4.0 & v2.4.1 : The Highlights

Option to add multiple Course prerequisites
Course Points feature
Course Enrollment linked to Group
Course Categories and Tags
Option to filter Courses based on ‘Tag’
LearnDash Shortcodes in Post Editor
Course Options and General Settings pages

Course Points and Course Prerequisites

With an intent to provide Course Creators the option to create dynamic or adaptive learning paths, LearnDash version 2.4.0 has added some game-changing functionality.

Course Points

Introduced in v2.4.0, Course Points allow Course Creators the flexibility to assign a certain weight to each course using a points system.

Students can be awarded a set of points on completion of a course
Alternatively, a certain number of points can be set as a prerequisite to sign up for a course

This points system can be particularly useful when dealing with advanced level courses, wherein students will be required to complete and earn a minimum number of points before signing up for a course.With v2.4.1 of LearnDash, partial values such as 2.5 can also be set as Course Points.

Course Prerequisites

Up until now, LearnDash provided the option to add a single course as a prerequisite for another course. Not any more. With the latest version, you can now add multiple courses as prerequisites for another course.And not just that, you can now specify if ‘ALL’ prerequisite courses need to be completed or if ‘ANY’ one of the prerequisite courses needs to be completed in order to sign up for a course.

This particular option providers learners the flexibility to choose a path they are most comfortable with or based on their learning preference.

Creating Dynamic Learning Paths

While the features that have been added are flexible Course Prerequisites and Course Points, the outcome of these two features combined, is the option for Course Creators to set up dynamic learning paths.Using these two features, Course Authors can create multiple learning paths, that students can opt for as they progress. Points associated with each course can be used to state the course’s complexity, while prerequisites can set a “must-complete” criteria for students to pace their learning.

Course Categories and Tags

So far, LearnDash courses were categorized using WordPress’ default post categories. (Not for Pathshala users though, as Pathshala added its own “Category” taxonomy for LearnDash courses). But now, LearnDash has introduced Categories and Tags taxonomy for LearnDash courses. Due to this change, courses won’t be combined with blog posts when you filter by Category or Tag.However, for current users, they can still continue using WordPress Categories and Tags, as LearnDash will continue supporting those too.

Student Added to Group on Course Enrollment

Here’s a welcome change for all LearnDash administrators. When a course is associated with a group (or multiple groups), students that enroll to the course are automatically added to the group (or groups).

This makes it easy for you and Group Admins to manage students.

LearnDash Shortcodes in WordPress Editor

LearnDash provides multiple shortcodes that Course Creators can use when creating course content, in email templates, in certificates and more. Now, it wasn’t easy for all of us to memorize these shortcodes when using them. We had to constantly refer to the documentation or the shortcodes list in the admin panel when adding them.Well, the good news is, with v2.4.0 of LearnDash, you have a button in the WordPress editor to quickly add a LearnDash shortcode along with parameter values.With this shortcode option, you will find it real simple to add these shortcodes without having to worry about syntax issues.

Some Goodies for the Developers out there

LearnDash v2.4.0 has some improvements for developers too.With support for an alternate template directory and CSS rule changes, developers will now find it easier to customize or override LearnDash templates and styling.

How to Upgrade

Coming to the most important part.If the ‘update available’ notification fills you with worry, don’t fret. Updating LearnDash can be an easy process. But since this is a major update, it’s best to err on the side of caution.The mantra is – Backup, Update, Test!Backup your database; update LearnDash plugin; and test the changes.(For those of you, who want to rid yourselves of this update hassle altogether – we’ve got the perfect LearnDash maintenance service to cover all your needs – and might we say this option is certainly worth a look 🙂 )For more details about the update, and the technical fine-print, be sure to checkout LearnDash’s changelog. And as for your thoughts and comments on these new changes, the comment section is open for discussion!

How to Setup LearnDash Multisite for Multiple Instructors

March 17, 2017 by Namrata Leave a Comment

The advantage WordPress multisite offers, is often overlooked. I used to be a person who was wary of going the multisite route. But having worked with it several times now, I understand it’s potential and even recommend it at times, because of the sheer convenience.Now, similar to WordPress.com – that’s a multi-author blog hosting website, educational institutions or universities can host courses by multiple instructors or for different departments using a WordPress multisite setup.In a very crude way, this is how the setup would be:

A sub-domain (a website in a network) would be created for an instructor or a specific department or discipline. For example, Geology courses would be on one website, Computer Science courses would be on another
Each sub-domain admin would get a site ready with LearnDash and WooCommerce setup
They would be able to create their own courses
Students could enroll for these courses, and would be managed by sub-domain admins

To monetize this setup, you – as the super-admin (network admin) – could claim a percentage commission from sub-domain admins on course sales, or could charge them a recurring fee for using the setup.The main site could be set up as a marketplace for all courses on sub-domains.So, how do we go about providing such a setup?

#1 Creation of Main Network and Sub-domains

When you set up WordPress as a multisite you have control on the plugins and themes that can be activated on the sub-sites.

As the super-admin, you can activate LearnDash and WooCommerce on all sub-sites
You can then install certain themes for LearnDash, which sub-domain admins can choose from to activate on their site
Based on your requirement, payment gateway extensions could be added as well for course purchases
LearnDash add-ons such as Content Cloner, ProPanel, Group Registration could be optionally added
Contact Form 7, Yoast SEO plugins are recommended to be added to make each e-learning website complete

Once the network is setup, you can create a registration option on it, to allow interested instructors to signup. Alternatively, this process could be completely handled offline if you would want to do so.Now, a registration option could be setup in two ways – one, using a form plugin or two, using a product created in WooCommerce. The option I recommend is to use WooCommerce because with the extensions available you could set up a one payment fee for the registration or set up recurring payments.Once an interested instructor registers, you can manually create a sub-site with the instructor as the admin, or can automate this process. Some customization would be required here to automate the process. To take things further, creation of important pages, or plugin setup could also be automated.

#2 Instructor Privileges

Each instructor would be the admin on the sub-site. They would be able to set the theme of their choice (from the list of themes available).They would also be able to create pages on their site, add their own logo, create a contact form and more.

Course Creation

Instructors would have complete privileges to create their own courses and add course content. They would also have control on making the courses paid and adding them as products in WooCommerce.Instructors would be able to manage students that enroll for their courses and track their progress.

#3 Creating a Marketplace

A marketplace would be an ideal model that you could set up on your main network to market courses from all sub-sites. With a marketplace model, your main site would archive and display courses. Interested students could then be able to browse, search or filter the courses.Upon choosing a course which they would be interested in, they would be redirected to the individual sub-site to make a purchase or to enroll.

#4 Handling Commissions

Now, to monetize your LearnDash multisite setup, you have two options-

you could set up paid registration with a monthly recurring fee
you could take a percentage commission of every course sale made

It’s up to you to pick the option (or both options) as you deem appropriate.You can easily set up paid registration (with or without a recurring fee) using WooCommerce and the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin. You would have to suspend admin access or the website altogether once the subscription expires.For a percentage commission a bit more tweaking is needed. Every time a sale is made, a percentage of the sale would have to be credited to the super-admin. This could be just a record that is maintained, and payments could be taken offline.Without WordPress multisite, it would take a lot of effort to put this entire operation in place. This simple, yet powerful setup would allow you to easily monitor all sub-sites and manage them. 🙂Well, that’s about the features I think are most needed; if you think there are any more features that would be useful, let me know, and we could find a way to include them in the setup!

How to Boost Course Sales in LearnDash with Limited Time Offers

March 13, 2017 by Rechal Cutinha Leave a Comment

Time bound offers are a surefire way to convince potential buyers to make a sale. When buyers sense a possible deadline on offers, a sense of urgency creeps in, and convinces them to make a purchase.No wonder you’ve got companies offering limited-time discounts all around. “Hurry up… sale ends soon”…. these words tend to have an I-need-to-buy-this or an I-need-to-check-this-out-effect on buyers.Well, this is not just by chance, in fact our need to act on limited-time offers is driven by a psychology.

The FoMO Principle

Fear of missing out or FoMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent”.– Wikipedia

The Fear of Missing Out (or FoMO) is quite real and existent among millennials. In commerce, this psychological effect motivates buyers to take an action. It’s the fear that others are enjoying benefits of something, you’re not.Now marketers – the opportunists that they are – take advantage of this very fear to increase demand for products.One technical approach to utilizing FoMO as a marketing technique is – the scarcity principle – whereby you increase demand, by limiting availability.And here’s how you make it work with regards to increasing course sales in LearnDash!(Now, you have to be aware, that LearnDash by itself might not provide the needed options to employ this technique; you would need an e-commerce plugin along with LearnDash – either WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads)

Limited Time Offers

When it comes to course purchases, students often procrastinate. It’s true.The course is available for purchase whenever needed, there’s always a later time to make a buy. But what if we change this? What is we add a sense of urgency to the mix.There are two ways to go about this:

Limited time discounts
Limited time sales

Limited Time Discounts

Discounts, Sale Prices work well in several scenarios to boost sales. You could run sales on occasions, introductory offers on courses, limited time discounts on bundled purchases and so on.Proof of concept: We notice an average increase of 35% in purchases during our Black Friday SaleTo employ this technique, here’s what you need to do:

If Using WooCommerce: If you’re using WooCommerce, you’re in luck. Scheduling sale prices is inherently available in WooCommerce. 😀
If Using Easy Digital Downloads: To schedule sale prices in EDD, you need the Discounts Pro extension.

Limited Time Purchases

With limited time discounts, the sale price is available for a certain time. But here’s a twist. What if you limit purchases altogether. Say you prevent students from making a purchase after a certain deadline!*Fear of Missing Out Mode Engaged* Try it out and watch purchases roll in!Here’s how you go about it:

If Using WooCommerce: To limit course purchases, you need the WooCommerce Scheduler plugin.
If Using Easy Digital Downloads: The plugin that works to this end is, Purchase Limit.

A time limit on course purchases is great when you have to sync with external instructors too; or when you have live virtual classes as part of your course content (think Blended Learning!), and cannot add students on an ad hoc basis.Either of these strategies can be used to drive course sign-ups and increase your profits!

So, What Are You Waiting For?

You’ve got biggies in the industry already using this marketing strategy to boost sales. Think of Amazon, Flipkart, and other e-commerce stores. This is one strategy that works!Anything that is denied to someone, becomes exclusive to someone else. And, anything that becomes exclusive, has a higher demand value.Employing this very prevalent Fear Of Missing Out when marketing your courses, can increase enrollments and bring you bigger profit margins!So get the plugin you need, and watch your sales go through the roof!! 🙂

Setting Up a K-12 Course System with LearnDash

December 12, 2016 by Pranoti Panchwagh Leave a Comment

E-learning has long surpassed the fledgling stage and has acquired a firm foothold across the world today. There is an impressive number of online educators dotting the internet worldwide. From open universities to paid courses, students are taking lessons on myriad subjects, based on their interests, from the comfort of their homes.

The overall convenience offered by the at-home method of learning has led to the emergence of the K-12 system of e-learning, which provides online classes as per the school curriculum for students from Kindergarten through Class 12.

Although their niche areas are different, both open online courses and K-12 education systems are built on the same principle – a learning management system. Various LMS platforms like Moodle, LearnDash, Sensei, Edmodo, Canvas, Blackboard, Google Classroom, Schoology, and more, have helped universities, institutions, organizations, and schools across the world build their own course websites.

Of these, LearnDash is one such LMS which has efficiently managed to provide course creation and management options for e-educators on WordPress. And after this successful foray, LearnDash is now prepped to provide solutions for K-12 systems too!

LearnDash: An Overview

Built as a plugin for WordPress.org, LearnDash is a robust LMS that works to create and sell dynamic courses from within the WordPress dashboard. The software is feature-rich and comes equipped with efficient tools for easy creation of educational content. In addition to its core features, LearnDash has several integrations and add-ons that extend the functionalities of the learning program even further.

One of the best traits of LearnDash is that it is user-friendly. Even availing of all the multiple course creation, enhancement, management, and selling options, setting up the course takes mere minutes, especially if you have all you content on hand.

Here are some of the major advantages of using LearnDash:

Ease of Course Creation

LearnDash segregates course content into Lessons, Topics, Assignments, and Quizzes. Each of these can be developed similar to creating posts on WordPress, which ensures a user-friendly, quick, and easy process. The course maintains a hierarchical structure, with each lesson necessitating the completion of the previous one. This ensures that students cannot simply skip through the chapters, marking them as complete.

LearnDash supports multiple kinds of media that can be included as a part of the curriculum. This extends to PDF’s, Word/Excel, audio/video files, YouTube links, images, Adobe Captive files, AutoCAD files, zipped material and more; all of these can be inserted at the click of a button, thereby making course creation quick and straightforward.

Drip-Content Support

LearnDash has drip-content enabled, i.e. you can schedule your chapters according to your timeline. For instance, if in a course, you need to limit the material to two chapters for a given week, you can do so. The next lessons will still be visible to the students, but they will not be able to access them until the date and time of activation.

This is especially useful if the lesson needs to be an interactive one, and you do not want your students to access the course material beforehand. This content can be scheduled to go live at different times across different time-zones, which is beneficial if you have students studying from over the globe.

Multiple Question Types

Quizzes are an important part of the school curriculum. To efficiently judge the students’ grasp of the concepts being taught, you can incorporate quizzes in various formats in your course. LearnDash has eight question types, including single/multiple choice, text/numerical answer type, matching pairs, and essay questions, that present you with a wide range of tools to gauge your students’ understanding.

An innovative feature that LearnDash includes is questions based on audio or video files, which students need to mandatorily watch before they can answer the given questions. You can also limit the number of times a student can attempt a quiz, thereby encouraging the students to pay attention during lectures.

From the teachers’ point of view, questions can be compiled into question banks, to be inserted later into quizzes, and categorized by their difficulty level so that the teacher can create a well-rounded quiz.

Gamification Enabled

LearnDash incorporates comprehensive gamification options to make e-learning fun. This includes achievement badges after lesson and course completion, awarding of certificates, course credits, and bonus points, based on the student’s activities, and leaderboard and level displays that highlight the names of the students with the highest grades, to encourage a healthy competition in the class.

Social Network Integration

A major part of regular school education is the interaction with one’s peers and classmates, which leads to overall personality development. It also stimulates discussions among like-minded people, leading to the creation of well-informed citizens with sensible opinions.

To facilitate this free flow of thought online, LearnDash integrates with social networking solutions like BuddyPress and bbPress that allow you to create chat rooms and discussion forums for your students, where they can interact with their teachers and course-mates and share ideas. These can be generated for co-curricular as well as extra-curricular activities.

Flexible Course Requirements

The pace of learning differs from student to student, which is why, there is no one-for-all solution in the K-12 system of online education. Depending on the capabilities of your students, you need to use different approaches with respect to their education. Often, there are two separate programs, one Regular and the other Advanced Placement.

LearnDash helps you create these two different streams by enabling flexible course requirements. For example, in an Advanced Placement Program, some lessons can be made optional, which would be otherwise mandatory for your Regular students.

In-Course Stipulations

As the student progresses through the course, LearnDash automatically keeps track of the lesson and topic the student is working on. As the author, you can necessitate certain requirements that need to be fulfilled by the student before he can move on to the next topic. For instance, you can make it mandatory to watch a video for a certain amount of time, or compulsorily download and read a reference PDF, or even fix the amount of time to be spent on that particular lesson, until which course progression will be blocked.

With this option, a Teacher can work in tandem with the Learning Coach to make sure that the student does not skip through important chapters.

Student Progress Tracking and Analytics

Tracking and analyzing the students’ progress through the respective subject’s courses, including assignment submission, quiz attempts, etc. is necessary to ensure that the student is working diligently. LearnDash has a solid Dashboard for tracking all the requisites, where you can get updated at a glance. At the front-end, the student himself can see his progress through the course as well, keeping track of the lesson/topic he is on, so as to avoid confusion or repetition.

With respect to Quiz tracking, you can let the students review their answers, in comparison to a model answer sheet, so that they know exactly where they made a mistake. Additionally, LearnDash lets you add reference material right after the review, which the student can use to read and rectify their shortcomings. You can set up automatic e-mails to send all of these results to the student’s Learning Coach, which ensures that the Coaches are aware of their progeny’s achievements.

E-Commerce Support

LearnDash has inbuilt e-commerce options, and supports WooCommerce as well as Easy Digital Downloads, both of which are excellent ecommerce platforms from wherein you can sell your courses.

These features bode well for regular course building, as well as for the K-12 education system. However, the K-12 system of online education has requirements above and beyond those of a regular course creation and management platform. To see how LearnDash satisfies these requirements, read on!

Setting Up LearnDash as an LMS for K-12

LearnDash has several add-ons and integrations that leverage the functionalities of the respective plugins within the LearnDash site. Here, let us consider the most important requirements of a K-12 system, that cannot be satisfied by a regular course creation software.

Live Interaction Sessions

An important part of school life is being able to interact live with your teachers, whether to ask a doubt, answer a question, or to simply understand the concept being explained, in a better way. A physical explanation goes a long way in introducing complex concepts to students, as opposed to just reading them from books. LearnDash provides the Live Lecture functionality working with WizIQ to include live sessions in the course.

To incorporate this extension, the LearnDash-WizIQ Virtual Classroom add-on has to be installed on your LearnDash website. The add-on integrates the two platforms and enables you to set up WizIQ lectures from your LearnDash Dashboard. It additionally records the Entry and Exit timings of the students for the lecture, and the duration for which the lecture was attended.

Multiple Instructor Support

The K-12 system covers all the subject for classes from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Creating courses for all the classes is next to impossible for a single person. For example, take the curriculum for a Fifth Grader. There have to be separate courses for the mandatory subjects like English, History, Mathematics, Science, and Geography, each of which has 10 chapters at the very least. Apart from these, other activities like P.E., Drama/Poetry, field trips and the like, also need to be accounted for.

As the administrator, you cannot get bogged down by creating all of these courses yourself. However, neither can you make all of your teachers ‘Administrators’; it would completely break down the hierarchy of the website. LearnDash sidesteps the imminent chaos by incorporating the ‘Instructor Role’ add-on which lets you add your teachers as ‘Instructors’ instead of ‘Administrators’. The way this works, they are free to design and conduct their courses, according to their respective subjects, without interfering in the administrative section of your website.

Multiple Student Registration

It often occurs that several students from the same neighborhood opt for K-12 education, or even intend to study in small groups. Now, instead of creating and tracking individual accounts for each of these, you can encourage them to register as a Group, with a Group Leader amongst them, for your course.

Nothing is different from the student’s point of view; each of them still gets the same course material individually, is able to attempt all the tests and submit all assignments. For the Teacher, however, there is just one central point of contact, to keep an eye on this group, as opposed to having to check the accounts of each of the students separately.

LearnDash incorporates this functionality with the help of the Group Registration add-on, which lets students register in Groups for your course.

Events Integration

Being cooped in the house for long hours can become boring after a while. It is important to take the education outdoors, where students can observe and learn from their surroundings. Think field trips? Or maybe, even a picnic, once in a while! However, organizing these events can be a bit of a problem logistically, as your students are spread out over a wide area. This is where the LearnDash-Event Espresso integration comes in handy.

Event Espresso is one of the best event creation and management platforms for WordPress. This extension allows you to plan events from within your LearnDash Dashboard.

This can also be used alternatively to create in-course events that can be attended by your students when they register for the course.

Result Management

Maintaining gradebooks for your class becomes easier with the LearnDash Gradebook extension. This add-on provides a centralized location from where you can access all your students’ grades. The grade scale can be regular or weighted, as per your choice. Additionally, you can also manually add grade for written assignments and projects.

Student Feedback

Determining how a student interacts with your course is important as it helps you improve the course for your next classes. The GrassBlade Tin-Can API integration for LearnDash lets you track the experience your students have while taking the course. You can also check which pages have the maximum and minimum page views, so that you can focus on developing the right ones.

This student feedback can be invaluable in terms of future course development, since you come to know what exactly do your students like and do not like, about your course.

These are some significant advantages of using LearnDash as an LMS system for K-12 education. A successful blend of features and extensions, LearnDash provides you with all the tools necessary to build, conduct, and manage classes in your online school!

How to Easily Sell your LearnDash Courses for a Limited Period

November 26, 2016 by Shehnaz Jabbar Leave a Comment

“Online learning is not the NEXT big thing, but the NOW big thing”

I like taking lessons online. The ball is in my court. I can learn absolutely anything I want in my own time and space.

You probably have heard about someone who’s taking an online course or selling one. In fact, the past few years have seen a meteoric rise in e-learning; and e-learning businesses are continuously looking for ways to have that special touch off the customary.

The latest trend in e-learning these days is to sell courses for predefined days, after which learners can just view the courses but cannot enrol to or purchase them. Many e-learning businesses are using this strategy to make their courses appear exclusive and unique.

The Power of Selling Limited Time Enrolment for Courses

The fear of missing out can have a powerful effect on learners.

When you have a closing deadline for enrolment for your courses, you trigger a fire under people and get them moving. This eliminates the potential for visitors on your website to procrastinate and delay their decision to buy.

Besides, when you sell online courses during specific enrolment periods, you often generate a larger group of students going through your course at the same time.

This is great for your students. When you sell something on evergreen, you might get 1 or 2 people going through your class at any given time. But when you create a larger enrolment group, you give your students the opportunity to form connections amongst their peer group, and that’s GREAT for the user learning experience.

So, yes, it makes your sales hit the roof. And it’s also good for your students. A win-win ain’t it?

That’s when I started to wonder, if we could do something similar in LearnDash– one of the most popular WordPress LMS plugins that transforms your site into an LMS. It provides a plethora of features to help you create & sell training courses, award certificates, design quizzes, get user reports and a lot more.

But unfortunately, LearnDash doesn’t offer this particular functionality. But hey, no worries. There’s a simple way out. And no, it doesn’t require coding at all!

One of the things I absolutely love about LearnDash, is that it pretty much integrates perfectly with a number of pre-existing, constantly evolving open source shopping cart platforms– the most popular perhaps being the WooCommerce.

Best of Both Worlds – LearnDash + WooCommerce

WooCommerce can have your web store up and running in mere moments. It even allows you to customise the selling process quite a bit, with different pricing structures for your course, for example, regional & customer based pricing , bulk purchase discounts and even selling courses for a limited time.

Sell your learndash courses for a limited time and here’s how..

Peeps! Allow me to introduce you to..(doldrums) WooCommerce Scheduler Plugin.

WooCommerce Scheduler

As the name suggests, WooCommerce Scheduler allows you to manage your courses’ availability. After you install the plugin, all you gotta do is, assign a start and end date to your courses. (Yes, it can’t get any simpler than that. )

Not only that, it can also be used to schedule third party courses (if any) Moreover, it reduces the amount of work on your end and automates the process.

Now you’re all set to sell your LearnDash courses the WooCommerce way!

Over to You

Anything that is denied to someone else, becomes exclusive to someone else. And, anything that becomes exclusive, usually has a higher demand value.

In case, some of your courses are not getting sold, before you scrap them or your idea, try promoting it with a “limited time only” approach. Creating a time restriction is one of the easiest and most effective ways of creating urgency and scarcity in your store. And with Scheduler, setting a time frame is a cake walk !

Don’t take my word for it. Use it and see for yourself. 🙂

Got any ideas or are you already selling courses for a limited time on Learndash? Let us know in the comments below.

LearnDash v2.3: A Breakdown

October 10, 2016 by WisdmLabs Leave a Comment

On September 27th, LearnDash came up with a major update to the core plugin, with improved functionality and much awaited features.

With performance and reporting improvements, this update benefits developers as well as plugin users.

But let’s face it, upgrades are scary, especially major ones. Is there something you need to worry about before upgrading to LearnDash version 2.3?

Let’s find out.

LearnDash version 2.3: The Jist

Quiz Review Option and Improved Reporting
Selective Display of Course Content
Optimized Data Storage

Quiz Review Option and Improved Reporting

With this update, students can now review answers, for quizzes attempted in the past.

When a student attempts a quiz in LearnDash, there is an option to review quiz answers, once the quiz is completed. But that’s all. Once the student closes the window or navigates to the next lesson or course, there isn’t an option to review quiz answers.

Now, with v2.3, students have an option to review answers as needed. Under each student’s profile, there is an additional ‘Statistics’ column added.

Upon clicking statistics for a particular quiz, the student will be able to review quiz details.

Of course the admin has the option to allow (or hide) the display of statistics on students’ profiles.

Apart from this, admin has the capability to view quiz statistics for all users per quiz or per user as well.

Under Quizzes >> (Quiz) >> Statistics, the admin can view quiz results of all users who’ve attempted the quiz. And the performance of a particular user, by clicking on the username.

Under a student’s profile, the admin can view all quizzes attempted by the student and the stats for the quiz.

Certificate Updates

Until now only students who had received a certificate, had the option to print it from their profile. Now, an admin user can print certificates of students too.

Under each user profile, LearnDash adds a summary of courses and quizzes attempted. Along with these details, there is an option to download the associated certificate as well.

Admin Profile Updates

The admin user can now see the ‘Group Administration’ menu
Admin users are not included in reports by default. This can be changed via a filter

Selective Display of Course Content

LearnDash shortcodes- which were available to selectively display content on courses- can now be used anywhere on your e-learning website.

The shortcodes under Courses >> Course Shortcodes, can be added on any page to display user or group specific content.

For example:

[course_content course_id="123"]
This shortcode will show course content table for course ID 123.
[/course_content course_id="123"]

Shortcodes can also be nested to further refine content display.

There are additional shortcodes added as well:

ld_group: to display content specific to a group.
ld_course_expire_status: to display course expiry date
student (modified): to include the course_id parameter, to display content specific to students belonging to a particular course
ld_profile (modified): to include sorting and ordering attributes when displaying student profiles (course progress, quiz stats and certificates list)

Optimized Data Storage

This update is quite possibly the most major improvement in terms of how LearnDash stores user data. But as an LMS administrator, this shouldn’t affect you or your students.

New database tables have been added to store user course and quiz tracking data. This change has been brought about to support the ProPanel update.

Now, when you update to the latest version, you’ll have to make sure your data is safely ported to the updated tables. For this reason you’ll have to go to the Settings >> Upgrade Data tab and click on ‘Upgrade User Course Data‘ and ‘Upgrade User Quiz Data‘.

Do note, these changes have to be made once you update to version 2.3.

Endnote

LearnDash version 2.3 is certainly a welcome change. The reporting features have been greatly improved, and the database updates will make for optimized plugin performance.

Make sure you update your plugin at the earliest.

Facing problems or need assistance? Handover your LearnDash LMS maintenance worries to us!

How to Create an Online Course Marketplace with LearnDash

July 20, 2016 by Pranoti Panchwagh Leave a Comment

LearnDash is a powerful online course creation and management tool today, on WordPress.

Offering several options for user enrolment and engagement, LearnDash makes online learning fun for end users and helps convert an instructor’s passive hobbies to active interests.

But not all instructors are interested in creating an independent e-learning site. Why bother with the hassle of building, marketing and maintaining an-learning website, when all you want to do is sell a handful of courses?!

The solution?

Banking on a course marketplace.

Course marketplaces like Udemy, Open Sesame, Coursera and Lynda.com cut short a not-so-tech-savvy instructor’s task.

Now, looking at the success of these course marketplaces, your business mind might want to create a marketplace of your own.

Considering LearnDash is user-friendly, setting up and maintaining a marketplace with this LMS plugin is a pretty sweet idea! 🙂

And here, we’ll be focusing on how exactly this can be done!

What Exactly is a Course Marketplace?

First, let us understand how exactly a course marketplace works, which will give us a fair idea how to build one.

Simply put, course marketplaces are like online libraries that display courses by multiple authors.

Courses categories have filters like subject, language, author, organisation, most popular, trending, free, premium and more, which let end-users find the exact course they’re looking for and enrol for it.

Admin recommendations can also be set up for first-timers, who are new to the platform and have no idea where to begin. A student can then choose to enrol to a course, complete it and receive his “Certificate of Completion”.

Meanwhile, the marketplace host takes a fixed cut of an instructor’s income per enrolment.

Thus we see that, broadly speaking, there are three important factors in creating a successful course marketplace, namely:

Allowing instructors to create a course,
Proving students and instructors communication forums,
Managing revenue

LearnDash has a robust course creation system, with several add-ons and integrations besides its inherent features. All of these interact skillfully with one another to help you create and run your course marketplace efficiently.How? Let’s see.

Creating a Course Marketplace with LearnDash

LearnDash takes care of course creation.

LearnDash is BUILT for creating courses, so this part though not a cakewalk, is relatively easy. LearnDash supports everything from regular, lesson-based courses, to multi-tier, course bundles that can be drip-fed to your students.

It has plenty of assignments addition and quizzing options that can be used to create examinations of progressively increasing difficulty levels.

Depending on what your subject is, you can design a course with flexible prerequisites and add links to external resources like articles, videos and PDF documents. You can even upload them in your course which can be then downloaded by your students for perusal.

Creating courses in LearnDash is very simple and there is plenty of documentation available on their website which can guide you through any issues that might arise.

However, only the administrator can create courses in LearnDash.

Allowing Instructors to Create Courses

In the course marketplace, you need to allow external instructors to sign up and create and conduct their own courses.

For this, LearnDash has the Instructor Role plugin that lets you add multiple instructors to your site and define their user roles.

As an instructor, these members can add their courses to your website. They can create, administer, conduct and sell their courses on your course marketplace. They have the liberty to manage all student communications, set and examine quizzes, working, for all intents and purposes as a junior course creator on your website.

Building Student Communication Forums

This part is somewhat trickier.

For any course to be successful, you, as an instructor, need to be in regular contact with your students, addressing their queries, creating discussion forums and groups where their doubts can be cleared. This generates the feeling of a community within your class, which spurs the students to take a greater interest in the course activities.

That is why course marketplaces have subject specific forums where students and teachers can discuss the course, communicate their thoughts about the various assignments and be a part of a collective learning entity.

LearnDash uses its BuddyPress and bbPress integration to this end, which allows for creation of user profiles and adding them to forums.

BuddyPress is a WordPress plugin that lets users create online profiles like those on Facebook or any other social networking site.

The LearnDash-BuddyPress integration lets the course admins add these profiles and create course-specific groups when students enrol for a specific course.

bbPress is a forum creation software for WordPress that lets you add forums and discussion threads to your site.

As in the real world, not everyone might be able to clear the quizzes, or understand the content you have set up in your virtual course. In such a case, it is a great help if you get in touch with the student personally, immediately after the quiz and help them work through the problems they might have.

The LearnDash-bbPress integration adds a discussion forum functionality, helping you create an active student community.

Students get more involved in a course when there are goals to be reached and accolades to be won. LearnDash incorporates gamification options using WPAchievements or BadgeOS. These integrations allow the admin to add awards and badges for each quiz, lesson or level completed in the duration of the course and commemorate these events.

Managing Revenue

As mentioned, in a course marketplace instructors can add and sell their own courses.

What you need to manage is the remuneration per enrolment that is shared between the two of you according to a previously fixed percentage.

These commissions are awarded to the instructor every time a student enrols for their course.

The Instructor Role add-on (that adds the ‘Instructor Role’) takes care of this functionality. The percentage commission for each instructor can be varied as per your discretion.

Conclusion

These three steps can help you easily set up a course marketplace using LearnDash. To display multiple courses simultaneously, you can look up the Grid Layout add-on for LearnDash which lets you set up courses with their names and a short description in a flexible layout format. Filters can be added for users to search courses from set categories.

Ordinarily, marketplaces like Udemy do not let you control the visitor traffic and the revenue instructors earn from each students enrolment, this excluding the refunds you might have to pay if a student withdraws from the course.

LearnDash on the other hand, gives you complete control over all these factors, making it possible for you to manage marketing strategies and host courses as per your choice. This does not only make managing marketplaces more profitable, but also helps you create your own brand of courses.

You can either create a niche course marketplace or an all-encompassing one, either way, the choice remains yours here. To sum up in a sentence, when you think long term, creating a course marketplace with LearnDash is your best bet.

LearnDash Protips: Front End Group Creation

July 2, 2016 by Suraj M Leave a Comment

The ability to sort users into Groups is undoubtedly one of the most useful features of LearnDash. It’s neatly done, complete with Group email notifications and special access to the reporting for the Group Leader.

A LearnDash Group essentially functions as a ‘class’, where an assigned ‘Group Leader’ can have a group of users learning one or more than one Courses. Of course you can combine this feature with a plugin that lets you bulk register users to groups, which is especially handy when you’re dealing with a scenarios involving a large number of users, say a corporate training website. Or if you like to manage things behind the scenes and let other Instructors do the teach, Front End Course Creator is just the right LearnDash extension to do the job.

Front End Course Creator assigns a user the role of a Course Author, with special privileges to set up entire courses without ever having to touch backend! Perfect for when you don’t want others to be meddling with your site’s back end. But that’s never enough.

In this DIY guide, we cover the steps to yet another LearnDash hack, creating and managing LearnDash Groups right from the front end. More power to Course Authors!

Step 1. To Create/Edit Group

Allowing Course Authors to create Groups on front end involves displaying a form on the page that can take in relevant inputs for the following fields:

Title – Title of the Group.
Description – Description of the Group.
Enrolled Courses – Courses associated with the Group.
Enroll Course – A drop-down of all available Courses to associate with the Group.
Unenroll Course – A drop-down of all associated Courses to disassociate with the Group.
Group Leader – A drop-down of all users to assign a Group Leader of the Group.
Group Users – To enroll members into the Group.
Submit – Button to submit the entered data.

Here is one such sample form:

Once the data has been entered, we need to specify to the system how to process the data and thereby effectively create/edit Groups. Use the following code:

A] To Create a Group

$wdm_post_name=sanitize_title($wdm_group_title);

$group = array(

‘post_title’ => $wdm_group_title,

‘post_status’ => ‘publish’,

‘post_type’ => ‘groups’,

‘post_content’ => $wdm_group_content,

‘post_author’ => get_current_user_id(),

‘post_name’ => $wdm_post_name

);

$group_id = wp_insert_post($group);

B] To Update a Group

$group_post = array(

‘ID’ => $wdm_group_id,

‘post_title’ => $wdm_group_title,

‘post_content’ => $wdm_group_content,

‘post_status’ => ‘publish’,

‘post_author’ => get_current_user_id(),

);

wp_update_post( $group_post );

C] To Associate Courses With Group

$wdm_course_id=$_POST[‘learndash_group_enroll_course’];

update_post_meta( $wdm_course_id, ‘learndash_group_enrolled_’ . $group_id, time() );

D] To Assign a Group Leader

$wdm_assign_group_leader=$_POST[‘wdm_group_leaders’];

learndash_set_groups_administrators($group_id, $wdm_assign_group_leader);

E] To Add Members to Group

$wdm_assign_group_user=$_POST[‘wdm_group_user’];

learndash_set_groups_users($group_id, $wdm_assign_group_user);

Step 2: Display List Of Groups

Once you’ve created Groups, you would also need to display an exhaustive list on the front end.

To achieve this, we use the database library to retrieve the list of Groups created by the Course Author on the front-end. Use the following database query.

$sql = “SELECT ID,post_modified FROM $wpdb->prefix.‘post’ WHERE post_author = “.get_current_user_id().” AND post_type like ‘groups’ AND post_status IN (‘draft’,’publish’)”;

Make sure you check the following condition before running the query:

get_current_user_id() must be ‘course_author’

Once you’re done, you should be able to easily display the list on any desired page with the help of shortcodes.

Need assistance with LearnDash? Contact us now or take a look at our LearnDash Services. Happy to help!

How to Setup a Learning Management System with LearnDash

May 26, 2016 by Namrata 5 Comments

In the WordPress e-learning space there are a few plugins which dominate. And whether you agree with me or not, LearnDash is among the top three (WP Courseware and Sensei being the other two).

LearnDash has ample functionality packed into the core, and several extensions to add more features (we’ve built quite a few too!)

For anyone who’s serious about building an LMS with WordPress, wouldn’t go wrong with LearnDash.

But a plugin does not an LMS make.

Unlike Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, LearnDash is not a standalone LMS. It’s an extension to WordPress. Sure, it has all learning management system capabilities, but the plugin itself can’t provide students and teachers an e-learning interface.

You would need WordPress to setup your e-learning website.

Now, I understand that as an Instructor, Course Creator, Tutor, this might seem like an uphill task. But you need not fret.

I’ve designed this guide to handhold you through the entire LMS setup process.

Pssst… Here’s a get out of jail card, if things get too tough anytime. 🙂

Let’s continue.

Step #0 Setting Up WordPress

If you don’t have your WordPress site set up, you’ll need to install WordPress. WordPress installation is pretty simple.

You’ll need to login into your web host’s cPanel.

Under ‘Databases‘ you should notice the ‘MySQL Database Wizard‘. Use this wizard to create a MySQL database and a database user. These steps are pretty straightforward. Remember to note down the database name, username and password. You’ll need these details when you install WordPress.

If you have purchased a WordPress hosting service, you’ll notice a WordPress installation wizard present in the cPanel. This wizard will guide you through WordPress installation.

If not, you’ll need to install WordPress manually.

You need to start by downloading the latest version of WordPress, and extracting the contents of the zip file.
Now, all these files have to be uploaded on your web host. To upload these files, you have to create an FTP account. Once again, in your cPanel, under ‘Files‘ you should notice ‘FTP Accounts‘. Use this option to create an FTP account.

Using an FTP client of your choice (I use Filezilla), upload your WordPress files.
Connect to your web host using the FTP account you have created; and under ‘public_html‘ copy all the files under the ‘wordpress‘ folder. (Do not upload the folder entirely, select and upload all the contents)

Once you’ve done all of the above, visit your website and you should be greeted with the WordPress installation wizard. 😀

Follow the wizard, set the language WordPress needs to be installed in, the database name, username and password, set the table prefix to a short value of your choice, enter site details, and create a user.

Image courtesy: make.wordpress.org

SECURITY TIP: The table prefix ‘wp_’ and the WordPress username ‘admin’ are the most commonly used values, and present open invitations to hackers. Try setting a unique prefix and username.

Step #1 Installing a Theme

Once you’ve got your website up and running, you can proceed with installing a theme. A theme is the ‘skin’ of your website. It dictates the look and feel of your website- not just the colors, but also the layout of your pages.

Now, LearnDash should “behave” well with any theme you choose.

(Some plugins do NOT, trust me! WooCommerce is a classic example)

You could choose any theme because you shouldn’t face any problems with LearnDash. Your course, lesson layouts should be laid out as expected.

But the blue ‘Take This Course’ button LearnDash adds, might stick out on your otherwise red or yellow website.

Instead, a safer option would be to choose a LearnDash theme. There are quite a few LearnDash centric themes available, with Pathshala being the latest addition to the list.

Once you decide on a theme you like installation is quite easy, just follow the below steps:

Log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Go to Appearance -> Themes, and click on Add New.
Use the Upload option to upload a zipped copy of the theme.
Activate it!

Do refer to the theme’s installation guide for additional setup details.

Now, installing the theme won’t suffice. You’ll need to create the menu, the homepage, contact page and so on.

But that’s step 4. 😀

We first need to setup LearnDash.

Step #2 Setting up LearnDash

LearnDash can be installed like any other plugin that you would install on WordPress.

Once again, if you’re not logged in, log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Go to Plugins -> Add New
Upload the zipped copy of the LearnDash plugin, and activate it.

You’ll notice a LearnDash LMS menu created.

Using the options under this menu, you’ll be able to create your courses, lessons, topics and quizzes.

LearnDash Settings

Under LearnDash LMS -> Settings -> LMS License, be sure to enter your LearnDash support license.
Under PayPal Settings set your PayPal id in case you want to handle payments through LearnDash.

Now, creating a course/lesson/topic is the same as creating a post or a page.

Creating a Course

To create a course, head over to LearnDash LMS -> Courses -> Add New.

Add the course name, and description.
If you want to categorize the course, create a new course category.
Under your LearnDash course settings, the important options you need to focus on are:

Course Price Type– Set the course to
- Open: if you want all your students to automatically be enrolled for the course.
- Closed: if the course is closed (and cannot be accessed). Selecting this option will reveal a Custom Button URL option, which has to be used to enter a purchase link for course access.
- Free: if the course is free, but only those students who opt for it, will be enrolled to it.
- Buy Now: to set a price for the course, which can be purchased. This purchase can be made by the default payment option in LearnDash (PayPal).
- Recurring: for courses which can be purchased on a subscription basis.
Course prerequisites– Surely this does not apply for the first course you create. But for subsequent courses, you can set another course as a prerequisite for the course you’re creating. Setting this option prevents a student from taking up a course without completing the prerequisite course.
Disable Lesson Progression– In case you do not need your students to take up lessons in an order, you can set this option.
Expire Access– As the title suggests, this option expires a student’s access for a course after a set duration.

Once you add the needed details, remember to publish the course.

You can then proceed to add Lessons and Topics, or other Courses.

Creating a Lesson

Creating a Lesson is quite similar to creating a course. But unlike a Course, the settings for a lesson are a bit different.

Associated Course– Set the course of which the lesson is a part.
Forced Lesson Timer– Is the minimum amount of time a student has to spend on a lesson before it can be marked as complete.
Upload Assignment– Check this option if a student has to upload an assignment after the completion of a lesson. Uploaded assignments are made available under LearnDash LMS -> Assignments
Sample Lesson– If this option is checked, then this lesson will be available to students even if the course is paid.
The ‘Make lesson visible X days after sign-up’ and ‘Make lesson visible on specific date’ can be used to drip feed course content.

Lessons can be ordered using the ‘Order’ attribute.

Creating a Topic

As you know in LearnDash, lessons contain topics. The options for a topic are same as that for a lesson. Similar to a lesson, you can make assignment upload mandatory, force a topic timer, or order topics using the ‘Order’ attribute.

LEARNDASH PRO TIP: For quick course creation, you can use the Content Cloner plugin, that duplicates entire the course hierarchy.

Creating a Quiz

Ahh! Quizzing in LearnDash.

Sigh! 😉

I’ve always been of the opinion that LearnDash needs to improve its quiz module. Apart from adding more functionality, the interface could use a fix up as well.

Now, I hope you found creating courses, lessons and topics fairly simple… because creating quizzes is not as straight-forward! The primary problem is the overwhelming amount of options.

But if things were that easy, you wouldn’t need this guide to begin with! :-p

Since the quiz section is quite extensive, I thought it would be a better idea to separate it out into a different section. So, I’ve created a helpful 29 page whitepaper, that you can download using the form below 😀

Once again, here’s a bypass in case you need professional help!

Creating a Certificate

If you want to award students certificates on successful completion of courses, you can do so by creating a certificate in LearnDash and associating it with course or quiz.

Certificate creation in LearnDash requires a bit of HTML knowledge, and quite a bit of trial and error. :-p LearnDash does provide sample certificates to help you out though.

To create and add a new certificate here’s what you need to do:

Create a certificate image 21.5 x 28cm in size
Go to your WordPress admin panel, LearnDash LMS -> Certificates -> Add New
Add a title, and set the featured image as the certificate image you have created
For the description, switch to the plain text editor and appropriate spacing and then display the student’s name using the [usermeta field=”display_name”] shortcode
To display quiz details such as course title, percentage or score, use the [quizinfo] shortcode, for example:
- [quizinfo show=”course_title”] to show the course title
- [quizinfo show=”quiz_title”] to show the quiz title
- [quizinfo show=”percentage”]% to show percentage achieved
- [quizinfo show=”score”] to show the student’s score
Preview the changes and publish the certificate.

Associating a Certificate with a Quiz

In LearnDash, certificates can be associated only with a quiz. To associate a certificate with a quiz,

head over to LearnDash LMS -> Quizzes, and edit an available quiz
In the settings set the Associate Certificate option to the certificate you have created
Update the quiz

Step #3 Setting up Paid Course Access

If you’re looking to monetize your e-learning website right away, you’ll need to either take the e-commerce plugin route or the membership plugin route. There are certain differences between selling courses and selling memberships. The option you choose will mostly depend on the number of courses you have.

Using an E-commerce Plugin

Now, LearnDash does provide an option to sell courses using PayPal, but for additional e-commerce capabilities such as sale pricing, the option to bundle courses, discount coupons, you’ll be better off with an e-commerce plugin.

LearnDash provides integrations with popular e-commerce plugins on WordPress – WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Now the advantage both plugins bring to the table are different. Easy Digital Downloads can be used to sell purely digital products, while WooCommerce can be used to sell physical goods along with virtual products.

However, the path to integrating either of the plugins with LearnDash is pretty similar.

You need to start by installing either of the plugins and setting them up (WooCommerce provides a setup wizard, so this could be an advantage for the not-so-tech-savvy audience)
Based on the plugin you choose, you need to install the integration plugin with LearnDash- this would be either the WooCommerce Integration plugin or the EDD Integration plugin
You may want to setup an additional payment gateway specific to your location or currency. Now’s the time to do so. You’ll need to hunt for the payment gateway plugin (or contact a payment gateway developer if the payment gateway is a can’t-do-without and a ready plugin is not available)

Linking a Course to a Product

The process of creating a paid course, begins with creating a paid product. You have to then link a LearnDash course to the product.
For example in WooCommerce, you need to create a ‘Course‘ product and then link one or more LearnDash courses to this product.

As for the course, you need to set the ‘Price Type‘ as ‘Closed‘, and enter the product URL as the ‘Custom Button URL’

Looking for professional assistance? Take a look at our LearnDash LMS Setup Service!

Using a Membership Plugin

As opposed to selling courses, if you were looking to sell memberships and control student access, you’ll need a membership plugin. And out of the many membership plugins available, the one I’d recommend is Paid Membership Pro.

The steps to integrate LearnDash with a membership plugin are the same as integrating it with an e-commerce plugin.

You have to install the membership plugin- Paid Membership Pro,
and then the integration plugin with LearnDash.

Linking Courses to Membership Levels

Within Paid Membership Pro, you can associate one or more courses with a membership level. For courses associated with a membership level, set the ‘Price Type’ as ‘Closed’, and enter the membership registration page URL as the ‘Custom Button URL’. Now, to access a course, the student would have to register as a member.

One more step to go….

Step #4 Creating Pages

So far, we hadn’t really focused on the front-end of your e-learning website. There’s a lot that can be done to make your site presentable. However, a few things are bare minimum, such as important pages and the menu.

Now, the theme you pick might provide demo content. And installing the demo content might create the needed pages. For example, since Pathshala is a LearnDash theme, it creates generic pages, such as the homepage, contact page and pages specific to an e-learning website such as the course archive page and shop page.

But if you’re like me, and are looking to take the manual setup route, here’s how you can go about it.

Creating the Homepage

The homepage is where most of your site visitors will land.

It should display a clear, concise message of what your site is about, and ideally display the courses available or a student registration and login form.

Technically, creating a homepage is as simple as creating any other page in WordPress.

You head over to Pages -> Add New
Set the title… (usually it’s set to ‘Home’), add the needed elements, and ‘Publish‘ the page.
Now, under Settings -> Reading -> Front Page Displays, select ‘A static page‘ and set the ‘Front Page‘ to the page you’ve just created.

Remember to ‘Save Changes‘ made.

Similarly, you can create another page- Blog– and set it as the ‘Posts Page‘.

Setting Up Registration & Login

By default, WordPress redirects users to the admin area once they login.

Not good.

You wouldn’t want users to be messing around in your admin area, especially when everything that’s relevant to them is on the frontend.

For this very purpose, it’s best not to redirect them to the backend, and the plugin that handles this task is Theme My Login.

Frontend Login with Theme My Login

The plugin adds a customizable widget for login anywhere on your site
You can redirect users on log in and log out based on their user role
The best part is, the widgets and pages blend seamlessly with the rest of your website!

Adding a Contact Page

A contact page is the most crucial page on any website. You can very easily create a contact page by adding a new page on your site, and adding a contact form.

A contact form can be created using the ever-so-popular Contact Form 7 plugin or for advanced functionality- the Gravity Forms plugin.

Both these plugins provide shortcodes to add the contact forms on a page.

Creating a Menu

Now, users will land on your website, and register as students. But then, what’s next?

The courses of course! :-p

To make it easy for students to sift through courses available, you’ll need to provide a link to the course archive page (the page which essentially lists all the courses).

So, you need to create a navigation menu.

In your admin panel, go to Appearance -> Menus
Create a new menu, let’s call it ‘main menu’
Add pages you’ve created, for example, home, contact, blog, from the pages list
And for the course archive page, add a ‘Custom Link‘ to ‘/courses/‘
Set this menu as the ‘Primary Navigation Menu‘ and save it

And with this step, your shell LMS setup should be ready! 😀

Winding Up

With LearnDash, a theme and needed plugins setup, your LMS should be ready for business!

But this is a fairly basic LMS setup. There’s a lot more you can add, for example

the ProPanel for additional reporting,
BuddyPress for a social network with bbPress for discussion forums,
a gamification module with BadgeOS
a teacher/instructor role with Instructor Role extension,
LRS integration… and so on.

But whether you need these or not, would depend on your specific requirements.

TIP: Here’s a tip before I sign off. Using a page builder plugin such as Visual Composer or Page Builder by SiteOrigin can help you setup page layouts with ease! 🙂

In case you have your doubts or need further assistance, you can always rely on our LMS setup assistance. We handle LearnDash setup for you and guide you through LearnDash settings, making it simple for you to add course content and make changes if needed. With our WordPress and LearnDash experience, we’ll resolve any glitches you face along the away!

That’s all from my end for now….

Happy teaching! 😀

LearnDash ProTips: Adding A Custom Course Level

May 23, 2016 by Suraj M 6 Comments

LearnDash competes as one of the most powerful LMS plugins for WordPress out there, with a fairly large and an active user base. This is, in part, because of flexibility that it offers to all the three entities associated with any LMS software: the plugin developers, the course content creators and the end users i.e. the learners. The code for the plugin is structured such that it’s but a piece of cake for developers like myself to add in tons of cool features and functionality, as per usage and requirements.

As for course designers, LearnDash let’s you conveniently break down the content flow into three distinct levels: Courses, Lessons and Topics, with the hierarchy falling in that same order. So if Mathematics is your Course, Algebra could be one possible Lesson, with Polynomials as one of the Topics within the lesson.

Adding A Custom Course Level In LearnDash

Consider this: say I have an elearning platform that caters to large demographic; from students still in school to graduates looking to add to their skill set via an advanced online course, how does ‘Mathematics’ fit in there? Or what if you’re looking to further divide Topics in sub topics of some sort? Wouldn’t it be nice to add in your own levels of content for LearnDash?

If you’ve put the two and two together by now, LearnDash does let you play around with the hierarchy of levels for course content and tweak it to your liking. With a bit of custom coding, one can easily write a plugin that adds in this particular functionality to LearnDash. Here’s how:

Step 1. Add A Custom Post Type: Let’s Call It A ‘Section’

LearnDash maintains hierarchy levels as custom post types. This post type will be use to create a new level of hierarchy, called Sections. Sections would be used to group similar Courses together. For eg. a Section called “Higher Secondary” will contain Courses that are Mathematics, Science, English, and Commerce.

Create a plugin with any desired name and the following code to the main php file. (plugin_name.php)

//Add custom post type section.

add_action('admin_menu', 'wdm_add_section_post_type');

function wdm_add_section_post_type()

{

   $labels = array(

       'name'               => _x('Sections', 'post type general name', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),
       'singular_name'      => _x('Section', 'post type singular name', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'menu_name'          => _x('Sections', 'admin menu', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'name_admin_bar'     => _x('Section', 'add new on admin bar', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'add_new'            => _x('Add New', section, 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'add_new_item'       => __('Add New Section', 'your-plugin-textdomain’),

       'new_item'           => __('New Section', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'edit_item'          => __('Edit Section', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'view_item'          => __('View Section', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'all_items'          => __('All Sections', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'search_items'       => __('Search Sections', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'parent_item_colon'  => __('Parent Sections:', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'not_found'          => __('No sections found.', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

       'not_found_in_trash' => __('No sections found in Trash.', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

   );

   $args = array(

       'labels'             => $labels,
       'public'             => true,
       'publicly_queryable' => true,
       'show_ui'            => true,
       'show_in_menu'       => true,
       'query_var'          => true,
       'rewrite'            => array( 'slug' => 'section' ),
       'capability_type'    => 'post',
       'has_archive'        => true,
       'hierarchical'       => false,
       'menu_position'      => null,

       'supports'           => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt', 'comments' ),

   );

   register_post_type('section', $args);

  }

Step 2. Add ‘Section’ As A Submenu In Learndash Admin Panel

Once you’re done defining a custom post type for ‘Sections’, you now have to display it under the LearnDash menu, just like Courses, Lessons and Topics.

To do this, just add the code highlighted in black to the register_post_type function used at the end of Step 1.

);

register_post_type(‘section’, $args);

add_submenu_page(‘learndash-lms’, __(‘Section’, ‘your-plugin-textdomain’), ‘Section’, ‘edit_courses’, ‘edit.php?post_type=section’);

}

Step 3. Placing ‘Section’ Menu Item Under LearnDash

Successfully implementing Step 2 has the downside of adding a menu item called ‘Sections’ in the main Admin menu as shown below:

But hey, the fix is simple. To remove this item from the from admin menu and place it under LearnDash menu item, just use the following code snippet:

add_filter('learndash_submenu', 'wdm_add_submenu_lms', 10, 1);

function wdm_add_submenu_lms($addsubmenu)
{

 remove_menu_page('edit.php?post_type=section');
 return $addsubmenu;

}

Here’s how it should look now:

Clicking on Sections takes you to a window that looks like:

The page is just like the ones you have for creating courses, except that this one allows you to create Sections and views the ones you created and saved.

Step 4. Adding Section Meta Field To Course, Lesson, Topic and Quiz

Here’s where you actually make the associations between Courses, Lessons, Topics and the newly created Sections, establishing the following hierarchy in the process

Section->Course->Lesson->Topic->Quiz

This meta field is used to linking section to course, lesson, topic and quiz. Use the following code:

add_filter('learndash_post_args', 'wdm_add_associate_section_field', 10, 1);

function wdm_add_associate_section_field($post_args)

{

//Adding hierarchy in learndash

   $data =array();

              $args = array(

              'posts_per_page'   => -1,
              'post_type'        => 'section',
              'post_status'      => 'publish'

              );

              $posts_array = get_posts($args);

              $data += ['0' => __('-- Select a Section --', 'your-plugin-textdomain')];

               foreach ($posts_array as $posts_array) {

                   $data += [$posts_array->ID => $posts_array->post_title];

               }

               $vcoursefield = array(

                  'name'=>__('Associated Section', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),

                  'type'=>'select',
                 'initial_options' =>$data,
                  'help_text'=>__('Select section to associate', 'your-plugin-textdomain'),
                  'default' => '0');

               array_unshift($post_args[0]['fields'], $vcoursefield);
               array_unshift($post_args[1]['fields'], $vcoursefield);
               array_unshift($post_args[3]['fields'], $vcoursefield);
               array_unshift($post_args[2]['fields'], $vcoursefield);

               return $post_args;
}

There, you now have successfully created a new course content level in LearnDash, called Sections!

This can also be displayed on the LearnDash profile page. By default, this page displays progress in terms of Courses. But now it would look something like this:

As is evident, the system now recognizes the placement of Sections above Courses in terms of hierarchy and displays progress likewise. In practice, the same can be applied to Quiz reports and User progress.

Happy Learning! 🙂

5 Awesome LearnDash Themes to Watch Out for in 2016!

May 9, 2016 by Rechal Cutinha 2 Comments

One of the most popular Learning Management System (LMS) plugins for WordPress, LearnDash has revolutionized e-learning.

The feature-rich plugin boasts of several functionalities like drip feeding content, varied question types, flexible course requisites and many more.

Additionally, LearnDash has integrations with other WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress, BadgeOS, Gravity Forms and more.

Like any other LMS plugin, LearnDash relies on WordPress themes for deciding the look and feel of the course. What you create on LearnDash is seen through the lens of your theme. In e-learning specially, a well-designed course is as visually appealing as it is literarily excellent.

However, from the tens of thousands of themes out there, selecting a theme that aligns perfectly with all the functions in LearnDash is rather difficult.

To give you a heads-up for such a situation, we present five themes that work flawlessly with LearnDash to give you a beautifully designed course.

#1 University

Developed by Cactus themes especially for colleges, universities and educational organizations, University is the quintessential LMS theme. Cleanly designed, it allows you to leverage all great things in LearnDash while increasing user retention on account of its easy accessibility.

The main features of the University theme are:

9 different Homepage variations
Unlimited Page Addition as per the requirements of the lesson and course
Includes Revolution Slider and Page Builder
Integration with WooCommerce, BuddyPress, Facebook and Disqus
Addition of Contact Forms possible
Newsletter creation functionality
Events can be created along with courses
Built-in events calendar

The theme is priced at $59 for a yearly license. A complete theme for all your e-learning requirements, University is a smart and sophisticated LearnDash theme.

#2 Pathshala

While other themes may be compatible with LearnDash, Pathshala has been designed exclusively for it, so of course it integrates seamlessly. Additionally, it has several features like the Drag and Drop page builder which helps you create courses in the blink of an eye.

A comprehensive look at some of its other features:

Drag and Drop Visual Page Builder by Unyson
Breadcrumb navigation
Integrated with WooCommerce, BuddyPress and bbPress
Fully Responsive on smartphones, tablets and PC’s
Customizable color palette
Automatic creation of course category archive pages
Search engine optimized
Additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section can be created on your site
Grid layout helps easy navigation

One of the best features of this theme is that it uses breadcrumb navigation which lets the user know where exactly he/she is in the course or the site. This gives easy accessibility to all parts of the site.

Pathshala is developed by WisdmLabs and costs $59 for a one-year license.

#3 Fernando

The responsive theme by Web Savvy Marketing, Fernando, is a handy tool for authors and speakers. Including features for promoting eBooks, speaking engagements, online training programs and selling or buying digital goods, the theme explores a different niche in the e-learning industry.

Additionally, it has several unique functionalities like:

Social media integration
Pre-styling for TubePress to display YouTube videos
Integrations with Soliloquy, iThemes Exchange, TablePress, FooGallery and Gravity Forms
Variable column classes
Call to Action feature
Email list builder
Built on the genesis Framework

Fernando is a Child Theme for Genesis and hence has a robust architecture. Priced at $79.95 per year, it is an excellent option for eBook authors, consultants, writers and speakers.

#4 Invent

Invent is a highly flexible theme, designed to work for multiple platforms like commercial websites, creative agencies and design portfolios in addition to the regular educational applications.

The theme has over 8 customs post types that give your website a unique feel every time. Optimized for LearnDash, Invent has a multitude of features that make designing your course extremely easy. Some of these are:

Over 30 page builder widgets
Customizable color schemes
Extensive font and styling options
Premium Revolution Slider, Flex 2 Slider and Nivo slider integrated
Translation files for French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Page Section configuration that allows you to work on the page, one element at a time
Social Media widgets for Flickr and Instagram

Connecting to the local populace can be a great asset for e-learning courses. Invent is a premium theme priced at $59, is SEO friendly and localization ready, which makes it a great option for e-course design.

#5 Social Learner

The Social Learner theme built by BuddyBoss is one of a kind in terms of integrating LearnDash with BuddyPress. True to its name, it has great social interaction options which give a boost to marketing your courses online.

Also, it bespeaks gamfication options that promote user engagement. Some of its more advanced features include:

Placing learners into groups
Memberships and membership levels customization with restricted access
Integration with WooCommerce and Paid Memberships Pro
Consolidation with over 25 social websites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and more
Admin Panel for customizing and managing site layout and visualization
Fully integrated with all BuddyPress plugins
Right-To-Left language layout functionality

The most marketing friendly theme, Social Learner uses high definition displays to make your site look sleek and stunning. The only drawback is that it is rather steeply priced at $179 per site with support and updates for a year.

Apart from the theme cost, add-ons cost another $49. However, if aggressive market promotion is a priority for your LearnDash course, the Social Learner theme is worth the cost.

Winding Up

A lot of the themes out there have a generalized approach which is why they might not always be compatible with LearnDash.

Each of the themes mentioned above have been tested and optimized particularly for LearnDash. They also have cool features like customizable logos, parallax scrolling and multilingual translations.

Along with LearnDash’s inherent functionalities, each of these adds newer features that make course design a thing of beauty and a joy forever!

E-learning is all about how well the course and course material reaches your students, which is why it is a good idea to decide the theme based on your target audience. So decide the kind of courses you want to build using LearnDash and pick the appropriate theme accordingly!

How to Upgrade your LearnDash LMS to a Corporate Training System

January 27, 2016 by Namrata Leave a Comment

The Corporate Training market is huge!

In 2014, Companies spent $130 billion worldwide on training, and according to the Global Corporate Training Market 2015-2019 report, the corporate training market will see a 8.77% compound annual growth rate over 2014-2019.

If you want a piece of this market pie, your LearnDash LMS has to be Corporate ready.

So, let’s see how this can be done!

Differences Between a Traditional LMS and a Corporate Training System

It’s but obvious to wonder why a traditional LMS can’t be simply marketed as a Corporate LMS.

Well, the difference lies in the way the traditional LMS is structured and the users involved.

The traditional LMS has (one or more) instructors and students. Any e-commerce functionality is purely optional.

Corporate Training builds over your Traditional LMS. Apart from the instructor and student roles, there is a ‘manager’ role. Courses are paid. Unlike a traditional LMS where students enroll for courses themselves, managers can purchase courses on behalf of employees (students), sign them up for a course, and track their progress.

So, a Corporate Training System has an option:

to Create Paid Courses
for users to sign up as Managers
for Managers to sign up employees for a course
for Managers to track employee progress

Building a Corporate Training System with LearnDash

Creating Paid Courses

Although LearnDash provides an option to create paid courses, it still lacks basic e-commerce capability, such as discount prices, an option to bundle and sell courses, additional payment methods, and more.

Instead of going ahead with LearnDash’s default e-commerce functionality, I’d recommend using an e-commerce plugin, specifically WooCommerce and the WooCommerce Integration for LearnDash. WooCommerce allows you to create paid courses, and sell course bundles. It has the option to set sale prices, create discount coupons, and over 114 payment gateway extensions available.

How to Set Up a Paid Course in WooCommerce?

Install and activate WooCommerce – it’s free.
Follow the steps to setup your e-commerce store.
Get the WooCommerce Integration for LearnDash – it’s a free add-on 😀
Create a ‘Course’ Product, set the price, and select the ‘Related Course’ (or courses to create a bundle).
To link the product to your course, go to the course and set the ‘Course Price Type’ as ‘Paid’.
Set the ‘Custom Button URL’ as the product URL.

Corporate Training System with LearnDash features:

~~Paid Courses~~
Users as Managers
Managers can enroll employees to a course
Managers can track employee progress

Adding Users as Managers

Now, WordPress allows you to create user roles. But the advantage you have with LearnDash is that it provides you Group Leaders.

Why am I talking about Group Leaders?

Well, because Group Leaders can act as managers. See the advantage Group Leaders have, is that with the ProPanel extension, Group Leaders can track student progress.

How to Track Student Progress?

Just use the ProPanel extension.

There isn’t a need to create a separate user role.

Corporate Training System with LearnDash features:

~~Paid Courses~~
~~Users as Managers~~
Managers can sign up employees for a course
~~Managers can track employee progress~~

But the capabilities Group Leaders have are limited. Group Leaders can’t add or remove students from Groups; rather Group Leaders can’t enroll students to a course.

So how can managers bulk purchase courses for employees?

Bulk Purchasing Courses

As you know, with LearnDash, students can purchase courses on their own and are automatically enrolled for the courses they purchase.

But in Corporate Training Systems, managers have to purchase courses on behalf of employees/ trainees or students.

LearnDash has an add-on for this very functionality – Group Registration.

With the Group Registration add-on, users can purchase courses on behalf of other users, and can then enroll other users to the courses they’ve purchased.

For example, say John is a manager, and wants to sign up 4 of his employees for a course. With the Group Registration add-on on your site, John can bulk purchase the course on behalf of his employees.

John then automatically becomes a Group Leader, and a group is created for the course purchased. John can then enroll 4 employees to the course, and with have ProPanel, John can track student progress as well.

How to Add Bulk Purchase with Group Registration?

Install and activate the Group Registration extension for LearnDash.

So, with the Group Registration add on, Group Leaders/ Managers can now enroll students to a course, and your Corporate Training system should be set!

And here’s an additional tip for those looking to add multiple instructors. LearnDash by default allows only a single instructor to manage courses. But for multiple instructors you’ll need the Instructor Role extension, this extension allows you to add instructor commissions as well.

And there you have it!

With the above extensions setup, your Corporate Training system on LearnDash is ready!

Questions? Shoot ’em away in the comment section below!