Any  type of content included in your learning product will be delivered as an activity—whether it is an assessment, a SCORM content package built in an authoring tool, a survey, a live classroom event, etc. Activities are the basic building blocks of a learning product.

• Assessment
• Classroom
• Content HTML
• Content Package
• Discussion
• Drop Box
• Evaluation
• External URL
• LTI Launch
• Pause Point
• Self-Check
• Sign-off
• Video
• Webinar

How to Add an Activity

• Click the  button in the appropriate Activity Block.

• Select the activity and complete the configuration options for the activity.

• Click the Edit link to make changes to your activity configuration.

• You can move activities around within a block or to other blocks or lessons by hovering over the   button, clicking and dragging and dropping the activity in the desired location.

• Click the  icon to delete an activity.

Activity Blocks

Activities are added to your learning product using Activity Blocks. These blocks let you determine how your learners will flow through the activities in the course. You can designate which activity must be completed first, second and so on, and which ones are required for completion. 

Adding and Using Blocks

New Learning Products start out with one Lesson and one Block.

• In the appropriate Lesson, click the  button and select Activity Block.
• To add an Activity to your Block, click the Add Activity button and select the appropriate activity type.
  • You can add any number of activities to a block. If there are multiple activities in a block, they will all be accessible to the learner at the same time. This means that your learners do not have to complete the activities in order. 

• You can move blocks to different locations by dragging and dropping. Hover over the gray bar at the top of the block, click and drag and drop the block in its new location.

• Click the  to collapse a block and its child blocks in the admin view. Note that this does not affect the learner's view of the content. Click again to expand.

• Click the  icon to delete a block. Note that deleting a parent block will delete all of its children blocks as well.

  Completion Requirements

Gating

• Blocks are used to create the structure of your Learning Procuct. They control the order in which activities can be accessed by your learners. This is referred to as Gating.
  • Activities inside "Parent Blocks" will be accessible to your learners first. To add activties that can only be accessed after completing the activities in the parent block, create a "Child Block".
    • After adding a new block, hover over the gray bar at the top of the block, click and drag and drop the block under the parent block. Notice that a red box appears, letting you know where to drop the block in relation to the other blocks. When the red box in your desired location fills in, drop the block in place.
    • If you add a child block to a child block, you will create a structure that requires completion of activities in order. You can add as many child blocks as necessary to control the flow of activities.
  • You can create "Sibling Blocks" by adding a block to the same level as another block. This will let your learners access the activities in both blocks at the same time.
  • You can move your blocks around to any location and make changes to the structure as you build. Note that when you move a parent block, all of its children blocks move with it.

Tips for designing the layout of your lesson:

• Blocks are used to control the order in which Activities are accessed by learners.

• Blocks can be a “parent,” “child,” or “sibling” to another Block.

• An Activity must be contained within a Block. 

• A Block may contain as many Activities as you like. To create more structure in the learning product, separate Activities into different Blocks by the order in which they should be accessed and completed.

Credit Blocks

Credit blocks let you add Credit Profiles to the Learning Product structure so that learners can claim credit after completing certain requirements. Credit blocks are added in the same way as activity blocks. You can drag and drop the credit block anywhere so that it is gated by the activities that are required to achieve credit. You can add multiple credit profiles inside the block and your learning product can include as many credit blocks as needed to facilitate the credit and requirements.

• In the appropriate Lesson, click the  button and select Credit Block.

• To add a Credit to your block, click the  button.

• Use the Credit Profile Picker to select an Activity by name, or click  to select a New Credit Profile:
  • Fill all required Credit fields in Credit Information, Integration Information, and Statement of Credit on the “Standard Credit Profile.”
  • more about Credit Profiles

• Click  to finish adding yourCredit Profile.

• You can move credit blocks to different locations by dragging and dropping. Hover over the gray bar at the top of the block, click and drag and drop the block in its new location.

• Click the  to collapse a block and its child blocks in the admin view. Note that this does not affect the learner's view of the content. Click again to expand.

• Click the  icon to delete a block. Note that deleting a parent block will delete all of its children blocks as well.

All of your activities and credits are encompassed by a larger framework called Lessons. Each learning product starts out with one lesson.

Multiple lessons are useful when you have a large course with many activities that are broken into modules, course topics or semesters. Smaller learning products with just a few activities may only need one lesson. 

A lesson contains a block or blocks of activities. Lessons can be used to control the order in which blocks of activities are accessed, as well as control the credit profiles applied to blocks of activities. Gated access can be used to lock a lesson until other specified lessons have been completed, or all lessons can be available immediately. In the learner view, lessons can be collapsed for a broad view of the learning product, and then opened to view each block of activities. Lessons can include resources, a description and a title.

• Click the  button at the top right of the page to add a new Lesson.
  • The new lesson will appear under the existing lessons.

• To move the lesson to a new location, hover over the orange bar, click and drag and drop the lesson in place.

• To name the lesson, click on the Empty link in the orange bar, enter the name and click the  button to save. To remove the name, click on it, delete the text and save.

• T add a description to the lesson, click on the Empty link next to the Description header, enter the text and click the  to save.

• To delete a lesson, click the  icon inside the orange bar.
  • If you are deleting a lesson that gates another lesson, be sure to remove the gating first.

Tips for designing the layout of your lesson:

• Blocks are used to control the order in which Activities are accessed by learners.
• Blocks can be a “parent,” “child,” or “sibling” to another Block.
• An Activity or Credit Profile must be contained within a Block. 
• A Block may contain as many Activities or Credit Profiles as you like. To create more structure in the learning product, separate Activities into different Blocks by the order in which they should be accessed and completed.

An outline numbering system is shown on the lessons and blocks. The labeling is used to help show which items are blocked by, or dependent on, other lessons or blocks. The outline labeling is just an aid when designing the learning product flow and is not shown to learners.

notice that the blocks below are in Lesson 1, and the first block is labeled as 1.1, the next block is 1.2 and so on. The first block in Lesson 2 is 2.1. 



Child blocks continue the numbering of the parent block—the child block below is 1.1.1, the next child block is 1.1.1.1.



The bottom block below is a sibling block to the one above it, so it is labeled as 1.1.1.2.

Lessons can be used to gate your activity and credit blocks.

• Under Gated Access, select Never Locked to let your learners access the lesson and its activities at any time.
• Select Locked Until the Following Lessons are Completed to choose other lessons that must be completed before this lesson can be started.
  • Click on Empty and click in the field to see the other lesson numbers that are available.
    You can select one or more lessons and then click the blue checkmark to save.
  • To change the gating, click on the lesson numbers that you chose and click the X to remove them.

If you want to create a gating structure for your activities where they must be completed in a specific order, you'll need to add more blocks. In Learner Community, we refer to blocks as "parent, sibling and child blocks". A parent block must be completed before any of its children blocks can be started. Sibling blocks can be accessed at the same time.

• To make a block a child to another block, hover over the gray bar at the top of the block, click and drag the block under the parent block. Notice that a red box appears, letting you know where to drop the block in relation to the other blocks.
• When the red box in your desired location fills in, drop the block in place. You can move your blocks around to any location and make changes to the structure as you build.

Note that when you move a parent block, all of its children blocks move with it.

There are many ways that you can set completion requirements in your learning product. You will need to think about the learner experience and the requirements for how they get credit or a completion, and how they should be able to move forward in the course.

• When a lesson is required for overall completion, all of the completion requirements within that lesson must be completed to mark the lesson complete. If you uncheck the Lesson Required for Overall Completion box, the overall learning product can still be completed even if some of the required blocks or activities in the lesson aren't complete.
  • You should have at least one lesson required so that the learning product will not show an automatic completion upon enrollment.

• Inside the lessons you can set completion requirements for each block.
  • You can choose to make the block required for completion of the lesson.
  • You can require the learner to complete all of the activities in the block, only a certain number of them, or none of them to achieve a completion of the block.
  • If the block is required to complete the lesson but all of the activities in it are optional, its child blocks will be accessible without completing the parent block.

If a learner fails a required activity within a block, that block will not mark complete. If the block is required to complete the lesson, that lesson will also not mark complete. If the lesson is required for completion of the overall product, that product cannot be completed and will be marked as failed.

Resources can be added to a lesson as supplemental content. These will not be included in the course flow or as completion requirements and will display at the top of each lesson. Resources can be links or files such as PDFs or slide decks.

• Click   and choose the URL or File option.
• Enter the URL or upload the file. The Name that you set will be displayed to your learners

All file types are accepted except .exe or .bat.

The  button lets your review your learning product from the end-user perspective.

As an administrator, it is important to be able to review your learning products as you assemble them and before publishing live. You have two options when reviewing on staging:

• Normal Enrollment lets you see the learning product just as your learners will, with all gating and completion requirements intact.
• Ungated Review lets you access all activities without any gating or requirements. You are able to launch every activity without needing to complete anything first.

When reviewing an enrollment, you have some Administrative Options on Staging to assist with your review.

• Click the  button to completely remove your enrollment in the learning product.

• Click the  button to refresh your enrollment and remove any progress or completions.

• Validate Certification: To check your certification to be sure it is ready to publish, choose the Validate Certification Option from the drop down list. You will see a list of Errors and/or Warnings letting you know about any issues that will prevent your certification from being published, or possible missing elements that you may want to include in your certification.
  • Warnings are only meant to inform you of items that you may want to include, but that are not required.
• Publish Certification: The Publish Certification option lets you publish the certification to your live portal. You can also publish certifications on the Certifications Dashboard. When you click to publish, you will see a list of Errors and/or Warnings letting you know about any issues that will prevent your certification from being published, or possible missing elements that you may want to include in your certification. If there are no Errors, you will need to check the I have reviewed the product and agree it is ready to be published box and then click Publish.

*Note: It is important that you review the product to ensure that it is ready for use by the public. 

Republishing after edits:

Structure: If your structure has changed, Enrollments and Completions will be maintained but all enrollment progress may be lost. If evaluation or assessment questions and/or choices have been changed, this will affect reporting on those items if Learners have already submitted responses.

Completion Criteria: If the completion criteria changed it will not affect existing completions. However, changes could cause new completions to be recorded automatically.

Credit Profile: If a Credit Profile has been set to expire, Learners will no longer be able to claim the credit after the expiration date of the credit profile. New credit profiles may become eligible for Learners that have already met the credit profile criteria.