A course session walkthrough

In this webinar, Kris demonstrates all the existing and new features of the course session. He starts off with the things that you need to remember when setting up sessions. A brief description about course and course session is also highlighted in the webinar, so you can fully understand the difference between the two. Of course, there are different ways to set up a course session and are demonstrated with the relevant settings and options that you need to be aware of. 

Kristoffer's recommendations:

• Topics
  For each topic, it's recommended that you create one course with a session for each instance of the course. For example, an onboarding course could have training sessions every month. Therefore, the course would be onboarding and it would have a separate session for each month. You use sessions to set up details such as dates, locations, and participants. (2:42)
• Instructors  
  Using instructors lets you manage the status, class list, and so on. Instructors can have access to the Instructor's dashboard which gives them an easy overview of their sessions and participants, etc. (4:05)
• Statuses 
  Use the statuses to clean up and eliminate the sessions that are no longer relevant and that are being shown everywhere. (5:00) 
• Outlook invites

  If your users decline the course session invite in Outlook, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re automatically removed from the session. (5:10) 

Ways to set up a course session:

• Course wizard
  Specific templates for course sessions make it easy to set up sessions using the Course wizard. When you use the template that doesn't include course sessions, the Course Session tab is not displayed. (7:10)
• Course Session wizard 
  This wizard makes it a lot easier to create a course session. As a domain admin, you probably want to set up one course with one session to start with and then your course admin can create new sessions based on this setup. (11:04)

Reminder of features:

• Max participants
  This is the maximum number of participants allowed for a course session. (12:56)
• Waiting list
  If this is enabled, users can sign up to the course session even if it's full. The course instructor or the admin will get a notification that somebody has signed up, and if the slot frees up, the first one on the waiting list will be automatically enrolled. (13:07)
• Manager approval required
  If this is enabled, managers will receive an email that a user has enrolled to a course session. Managers are the ones who will decide if they want to approve the pending enrollment. (14:10)
• Only available for this group
  You can restrict access to a course session, for example, if you want to only make it available to a specific group. (14:44) 
• Organizer
  The user that sends out invite; the one that’s receiving the email. (15:40)
• Assign instructor
  This option searches for existing or new instructors that you can assign to a course session. You can send them a notification saying that they have been assigned as an instructor. (16:07)
• Seats available
  This is the number of seats available at the moment. (17:20)
• Course Catalog
  The typical way of providing courses or sessions to users is through the Course Catalog. The Course Catalog, depending on how it’s set up, shows the session that’s available. (17:50)
• Tool Panel
  If users are signed up to two or more sessions, this option helps them track which one is active and is in progress. (19:05)
• Enrollment
  Enrollment and evaluation forms are system surveys that you can set up to track the course. Whenever somebody signs up, they are prompted to answer the survey. (20:40)
• Communication and notifications
  The first thing that you might want to consider is to set up notifications in Full Admin (Solution Admin) where you have the option to enable the different Push Notification features. (28:14)
  In the Control Panel, you can set up a notification timeline for your course session through SMS or email. You can set this up in the Course Session editor, on the Communication tab. (32:05)
• Course instructors
  If a user is assigned as a course instructor, they will have a role that gives them access to the Reporting mode – Instructor’s dashboard. On this page, depending on how it's set up, they can see all the things that's assigned to them. For example, they can view what’s going on with the sessions, see who’s attending them, and set new status for each one. (37:40)
• Timezones
  If this is set up, it will give users timezones for a particular session. (44:30)
• Multi-sessions
  Multi-sessions can be used, for example, if a session is covering a 4-day event where you need sub-sessions. Users just need to enroll to the main session but will see in their calendar that there are four sessions coming along. (44:59)
• Prerequisites 
  Aside from restricting courses to a specific group, you can also create prerequisites. For example, you can set up that users should complete the Excel beginner first before before proceeding to Excel expert. (46:14)
• Course objectives
  All courses have learning objectives which you can use in the learning plans. For example, if you want to use the webinar as part of the learning plan, drag it to the relevant learning plan in the Phases settings. Don’t use auto-enroll if you have sessions. (47:33)