Making Course Objects Non-Linear?

1

All,

We are trying to make two course objects (tied to the course) appear non-linear and to appear in a course outline as resources. We have the options to put these in the course outline, hide their visibility, and modify the access until the learner accesses or completes an activity - our current state. Our desired state would be to put them in the course outline outline below our scorm modules. However, if we do that, the learner will be denied access. We’ve explored the knowledge base without much success. We are fighting the linear nature of the course (which might be the problem). Does anyone have suggestions on how to make this work?

Thanks for any suggestions. -Dave

Full Details

We have a hybrid course with a course page (handouts), webform (dropbox), and 5 scorm modules. We would like to have the course page and webform be available to the learners at anytime, but we don’t want the learners to forced to jump through the handouts page or dropbox/webform. These two elements are tied to the course and not public. The course outline is set to course. We’ve only been able to put these elements at the top of the course outline and make them hidden or available on a condition (the learner accesses module 1 or complete module 1). If the learner goes in order of the course outline, they can jump to course page or webform as they see fit. We need the two elements to be available throughout the course, but particularly before the learner hits Module 2. We have this working in the linear mode, although we’d like to break free from linear and do not know if this is possible without rebuilding the course outline.

If the leaner hits the Ethos “previous” button, they are taken to the webform, which they have not previously accessed which is not desired. The system is trying to help the learner access course objects that they have not previously accessed. We’d rather the learner stay in order of the outline. Overall, we’d like to circumvent this entirely by making the first two objects available in the course outline without having to complete others. We can’t seem to make that happen with the course outline set to ‘course’. We’ve also found that our start button is grayed out and have submitted a ticket.

Access Settings for the first two objects are set to Event
“User started course object”
Course object - RCDP Module 1 - Introduction to RCDP

Is there a way to make a course like mostly linear or make certain elements accessible anytime without making them public or putting them at the top of the course outline?

learner_course_outline
learner_course_outline1317×632 95.9 KB

admin_course_outline
admin_course_outline1869×756 167 KB

2

Have you tried a parent/child set up?

3

Heather, this is a good suggestion. We didn’t want to make the objects their own course. If we make the objects skippable and required, I think we’d be able to make things work. The other workaround was to list the enrichment objects first in the outline and hidden until the learner accessed the first module. We could bulk mark the hidden objects as complete and then circumvented the issue with the start button missing.

One other takeaway that we encountered was that we needed to use deep links back to our enrichment materials. This is in the Ethos KB, which was a big help. Our testers were getting authorization notifications, when they clicked a link back to the course outline from within our scorm content.