Adaptive Learning in Your LearnDash Courses

By: Justin Ferriman • January 17, 2019
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Here is a great way to create unique learning paths for your learners based on their quiz performance!

Part of your job as a course creator is to help your users along on their educational journey. This could be in the form of coaching, emails, forums, or making sure they have the right knowledge before starting a course.

For example, when using LearnDash the prerequisites feature is a great way to do this to verify that your learners are “booked up” on a particular topic before they progress to another course.

Another way to accomplish this in LearnDash is by using the Adaptive Learning with LearnDash plugin (free). This plugin allows you to design courses in a non-linear fashion. You could create a variety of child-courses and your users can go to these courses based on quiz performance. Using this you could have one course funneling to two separate courses based on their knowledge.

This will add a menu item under your LearnDash LMS menu titled “Course Levels”. These levels don’t directly correspond to a single course.

In our example we will create a level titled Beginner and specify that anyone who scores between 0-25% on all the quizzes in a course will be assigned to the “Beginner” track of courses.

We could then make more levels based on scores obtained (such as “Advanced” and “Master”).

Once you create your levels all you have to do is assign your level to the desired courses. Just go to your desired course, click EDIT, and then from the option you will find a “Course Level” option. Here is where you select the level.

Whatever you call your levels is up to you. You can also assign to any course (one, several, or all of them). The important thing to remember is that the course levels are granted to a user based on their quiz performance (this is demonstrated at 6:42 in the overview video above).

If your users meet the parameters of the Course Level (that is, they score within your desired range) then they will be automatically enrolled into the courses that have been assigned the level.

Some final reminders with this add-on:

  1. Course Levels are granted based on user quiz performance in a course.
  2. If you have multiple quizzes in your course, the Course Levels plugin will take an average score obtained based on all quizzes in the course.
  3. Make sure all child courses have a CLOSED price-type so they cannot be accessed without first completing the prerequisite course(s).

If this kind of granular course experience appeals to you, then you can get even more advanced by using the Uncanny Automator.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter