Courses and Lessons

[Charles]

We are currently in the beginning stages of developing a Courses and Lessons application within Invision Community. This will only be available on our cloud services as a value addition.

We receive regular requests for Learning Management System (LMS) capabilities in Invision Community and the Courses app will start us down that path. 

The Courses app is not going to try to be a full LMS. Not trying to run a university here 🙂

But we do think there is value in offering basic LMS capabilities within a community context. Some features we are already doing:

• Ability to create Courses with multiple Modules
• Modules can have multiple content items that a member can read/engage (articles, videos, discussions)
• Courses can be made optional or required.
• Required courses can be defined as "do this first" or literally required as in you must take course within X days of joining community.
• Badges/points awarded on various completion events.
• Reports for those who enroll and/or complete a Course. Reports can be exported to CSV.

As this is early development we are open to ideas and suggestions.

How might you use Courses?

What capabilities would you want to see?

[David N.]

Thanks @Charles

This is huge for me!! Courses and lessons will be immensely helpful. I am an author, I write books on how to use software, and I created a community so people could ask their questions. I will now be able to offer an accompanying online course to my community. 

I intend to create different modules for different topics. 

For me, the most important capabilities would be:

1. A clear course outline in the sidebar where the students knows where they are in the course and checkmarks for lessons that were already completed (for example currently viewing Lesson 3/10, checkmarks for Lesson 1 and Lesson 2). 
2. Progress tracking so students know how much of the course they've completed (for example course 28% completed). 
3. The possibility to ask questions about a course item, that automatically flags the specific course lesson in the notification sent to the teacher. 
4. Integration with Commerce.

Once the foundation is built, some enhancements could be:

1. Learning path (a series of courses to take to complete a specific career path). 
2. Integration with Live Topics.
3. Gamification.
4. Automated notifications (i.e. "Looks like you haven't completed your course, you took the last lesson a week ago...").

Basically the main idea would be to make it easy enough for the student to keep track of their progress to engage them to want to learn more and complete their course or their full learning path. 

[Brian Garcia]

The ability to integrate with Events would be something I would like. I would have physical classes that would have online material to go with it.

[Charles]

Can confirm this will have Commerce integration for paid courses. 

Also for sure will do integration with Live Topics in a future release but we want to wait for Live Topics standalone to mature a bit first.

[Charles]

[All Astronauts]

You're not going to make us... are you?

Edited March 9, 2023 by All Astronauts

[Charles]

2 minutes ago, All Astronauts said:

You're not going to make us... are you?

Just teasing new Courses feature in production but I mean it DOES support "required" Courses so maybe I could make you 😉 

[All Astronauts]

[Charles]

On 3/6/2023 at 6:03 PM, Brian Garcia said:

The ability to integrate with Events would be something I would like. I would have physical classes that would have online material to go with it.

When you say integrate with Events how would you see that working?

[Brian Garcia]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:01 PM, Charles said:

When you say integrate with Events how would you see that working?

Perhaps this is more of an Events function. Paid courses would just have an event associated with it. I could also go into the Calendar find a beginner course and purchase it. That would add me to the RSVP list and also give me access to the online material. It's almost a full-circle.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Brian Garcia

[David N.]

I would love a way to integrate Live Topic events in a course.

For example so that someone enrolled in a course knows they'll have a weekly Q&A live event with the teacher. 

[Charles]

Live Topics can create Events so sounds like we just need to integrate Events with Courses. 

[Brian Garcia]

It's probably asking for too much. But, a way to generate a certificate of some sorts could be cool. Think LinkedIn Learning, a way to share it too across social channels.

[David N.]

Just now, Brian Garcia said:

But, a way to generate a certificate of some sorts could be cool.

That's a great idea! I love it. People love certification, it gives them some validation, and I can imagine more people would be willing to enroll in a training if it led to some kind of certification. 

[Brian Garcia]

@Charles Does this integrate with Clubs? A lot of online courses will have a special Facebook group for after taking the course. That could either be a private forum or a private club.

[Charles]

2 hours ago, Brian Garcia said:

@Charles Does this integrate with Clubs? A lot of online courses will have a special Facebook group for after taking the course. That could either be a private forum or a private club.

It will not for the first version but we do plan on Clubs integration.

[4WDMech]

Greetings...I am creating Teachable.com courses and would like my students to have access to a discussion area or "forum".  I have a well established IPS forum(s) site with Members, Administrator, Moderators, etc.  The current Groups, content and structure need to remain undisturbed.  The forum(s) structure can be seen at https://forums.4wdmechanix.com.  

My Teachable student exchanges would be visible as Public ("read only" enabled if a Club).  Posting/exchanges at this group discussion area would be limited to my enrolled Teachable students.  The Teachable students could be distinguished by their email addresses.  I would grant permission/access for these email addresses (i.e. students) to use the group discussion area.  (If a "Club", I would be the "Leader" by IPS definition.)  As a side note, the students could also participate at the other forum sections.  This might require their joining that site area as a "Member".

How can I set up this unique discussion group, club or forum?  Is it a "Club" or "Forum" in structure?  Something else?  How would this look at the existing site?  

IPS is considering "integration".  When might that go into effect?  Would that enable importing email addresses?

Thanks!

Moses Ludel

[Fernando Mercês]

Great news! Here's what I suggest:

• It'd be nice to have tests. We should be able to create questions using a WYSIWYG editor and set the correct answer(s) in advance. Students could retake the tests up to X times if they fail (score < Y).
• +1 for certificates.
• Ability to limit how long the student has access to the course (6 months, 1 year, lifetime, etc).
• Bulk mail to all course participants.
• Set one or more users as instructors.
• Set one or more users as teaching assistants / moderators (like in Clubs).
• Students should be able to "follow" the course to receive notifications when things get updated (content, new classes, etc).
• Sysadmins should be able to convert a database entry to a Course (to keep pageviews, ranking, comments, etc).

Thank you!

 

[nigeld27]

Mostly commenting so that I get updates on the thread.

 

We currently use one of our Invision sites as a place to host 'How To' guides for training. We also just tried to configure our store to sell places to instructor-led workshops that we deliver via Zoom.

 

As we working within the HR and training spheres, we have very detailed knowledge of LMS systems, and I do not really understand what Invision are offering and how far down the LMS rabbit hole you intend on going. However I am very interested to find out more and follow these updates. Perhaps your product evolution can support us to evolve our services to our customers. 

[Charles]

We hope to provide a preview pretty soon. For our first release we are going to keep this pretty simple and then get feedback from clients on how you want it to evolve.