Adding a course
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Welcome to this video on creating a pathway course in Totara. The pathway course format offers a streamlined user experience and encourages learners to progress through the course using a visual pathway.
Each activity in a course is shown in the path. Users can select an activity to view it in the course page.
Learners can see which activities they have completed.
If an activity is locked until other activities have been completed, it will be shown with a padlock, and learners can select it to find out why.
The panel at the top contains the course title, status (whether it has been completed or not) and a progress bar.
If the user is not yet enrolled in the course, it will also include an Enrol button.
This is also where users can go to mark a course as complete if self-completion is enabled.
Above this, learners can use the three dots to access any course administration options they have, such as the option to unenrol from the course.
As the learner works through the course path, the selected activity is shown in the course page.
Learners can also use the Next button, or the arrows at the top to move sequentially through the course.
This course format is ideal where your course has multiple activities and where you want learners to have a sense of progress through the course. It should not be used if you want to show additional blocks on the course page (such as the course completion or calendar blocks). In that case, you would want to use the Topics format shown in another video.
Let’s set up a new pathway course as an administrator.
As with any course type, I can add a new course via the Course and category management page or via the catalogue.
All courses require a full name and short name.
The fields here are the same for all course types. To create a pathway course, I’ll choose this option from the Course format section.
I’ll Save and display to see the start of my course.
My course is displayed – but it doesn’t contain any content. Because I am in edit mode, the usual course administration options are shown in the left-hand panel instead. Here I can edit course Notifications, Badges, Course completion and more.
But I want to add an activity, which I’d like to be a course introduction, so I’ll add a Page activity.
I’ll add the content of my course intro to my page.
I can also add a video to my page by adding embedded media and selecting my video file or by adding the embed code for a video hosted elsewhere, such as on YouTube or Vimeo.
Completion tracking works in the same way in the pathway course format, so I need to decide if I want to track completion of my page. I’ll say that the activity is marked as complete when it has been viewed.
I’ll Save and display to see my content in the course page.
I can now see the content displayed in my course, and the start of my pathway.
Now my pathway has been started, you’ll notice that the administration options have disappeared. You can easily get to these using the three dots above the panel.
And if I want to see the administration options for the activity I have just created, I can use the second three dots above the content panel.
If I want to make changes to my page activity, I can Edit settings to return to the editor, then save when I’m ready to return to the course page
I want to add another activity, so I’ll Manage sections and activities within the course administration menu.
I’m taken to this editor view. Notice that I can return to the standard course view using the Back to course option.
The pathway can contain activities in one section, or across multiple sections. I’ll add a new SCORM activity to the next section so we can see how that appears.
I’ll give the activity a Name, upload my SCORM package, and indicate that learners must receive a Passed status from the SCORM to complete the activity in the course.
I’m happy with the other settings so I’ll Save and display.
My course now has two sections, each with one activity within it.
Learners can also collapse topics to clean up the pathway view, which is useful if your course contains a lot of activities within each topic.
So that’s setting up a new pathway course, in Totara, and adding sections and activities to it. What will your first pathway course be?