On July 14, 2020, CN added a new course type: Pathway LMS Course (or Pathway courses).

Pathway courses allow for a more streamlined learning experience. They best suit self-paced online training.

Create a Pathway Course

Create an Institutional Pathway Course

To use a Pathway course as part of the course offerings from your institution, your institution admin should create the course for you from CN Channel. Read how.

Create a Personal Pathway Course

STEP 1: To create a personal Pathway course, first click on the "Create a Course/Network" link from the "Courses" dropdown, or click on "Build Online Course/Training" from the bottom of the left menu on the home page.

STEP 2: Then on the "Create a Course" page, select the second option, "Pathway LMS Course". Then you can continue the steps to create your personal Pathway course. You are allowed to create one free and one paid personal Pathway course. Read this article to know more about CN personal course pricing and payment. 

Setting Up a Pathway Course

Pathway courses are built on "activities" (watch a video, take a quiz, create a post, etc.) that learners take one at a time. You can then group these activities together under "lessons". 

STEP 1: After you've created your course, you first need to add a Course Introduction Message.

STEP 2: Next, you can add the first lesson by clicking on the "Add a Lesson" link.

STEP 3: After adding the lesson, you can add an activity from the "Add an Activity" button.

A variety of activity types will then show up for you to select one to use:

Here is how to fill out the activity form:

First, choose the Activity Type. There are quite a few content types to choose from.

After you've selected the Activity Type, the form will expand to provide more fields to fill out. On all activity types, you need to enter the name of the activity and write a brief description or provide some instructions for the activity.

Below the "Description or Instructions" field will be a field (or fields) specific to the activity type you selected. So for example, if you selected the "Video" activity type, then a "Video" field will appear for you to add your video.

After you're finished everything on this form, make sure to click "Save Activity"

STEP 4 (optional): Once you're done adding activities to the lesson, you'll be prompted to award a badge for when learners complete all the activities on the lesson. Issuing a lesson badge is optional.

If you choose to issue a badge, a window will appear for you to select the badge. You can select from the list of available badges by clicking the checkbox above a badge, or you can create a new badge from the "+" button.

Set Up Course Completion

Once you're done adding all your lessons and activities, you can set up the Course Completion. First, you can write a short message congratulating the learner for completing the course and suggesting the next steps, such as new courses to take. 

After writing the Course Completion Message, you can choose the rewards the learners can receive for completing the course. Select the first checkbox to issue a Course Completion Badge. If your course belongs to an institution that has licensed CN, and if that licensed institution has properly set up the Course Completion Certificate in their CN Channel, then the second checkbox will be available for issuing the certificate.

And now the course has successfully been set up! You're ready for learners to start taking the course.

Edit the Pathway

You can hover over the lesson name to see a gear icon. Click on this gear to access the dropdown. Here, you are provided with many different options, such as editing the lesson, deleting it, moving it up or down in the path, editing the lesson completion badge, or adding another lesson or activity.

You can also find a similar gear dropdown by hovering over an activity. 

Student View

To view how your learners will see the course, you can click at the "Student View" tab at the top. You can also use the path in the left menu to view the student view of any activity.

Import Pathway

If you want to reuse a created pathway course and import its course path into a new course, please refer to this guide. 

Invite Course Members

There are two easy ways to invite members (other instructors and students) to your course. 

Approach 1: click the course settings gear from the top of the course, then click Invite a Member. 

Approach 2: simply share the course URL and Access PIN (if you set up one) with the people you would like to invite. You can find the course URL and Access PIN from the About page.

Please note that when people join your course on their own, they are in the student role. You can go to the Roster to change their role and permissions. 

View Course Completion Data

You can find more course settings and features from the Menu tab on the left.

From both Analytics>Course Completions and Roster, you can find member course completion data. 

If you have any questions about the CN Pathway LMS Course, feel free to contact CN Helpdesk help@thecn.com.