This article provides teachers insight on customizing course progression within their LMS.
Forced progression is often determined by a teacher, based on student needs, content delivery, and class expectations
After gauging your students’ learning needs and styles, adjust your content in a way that best suits them. For example, if you have students who learn best by seeing and doing, you may want to publish and activate Teach Its, Practice Its, and Show Its.
On the course level, a course may be able to be set with rolling enrollments where the LMS creates due dates and adjusts according to start and end dates. Others allow teachers to set due dates manually.
On the content level, teachers may be able to adjust forced progression by preventing a student from moving through course content freely. Forced progression can be set up for one student, a group of students, your entire class, all content, or specific content levels depending on the LMS.
Most LMSs have similar content setting restrictions.
- Student must complete the current activity before continuing onto the next activity makes the current activity required.
- Blocking access until student completes another activity forces a student to complete an activity or a series of activities before accessing the current activity.
- Blocking access until student masters a standard blocks the current activity until a student has mastered the pre-requisite standards you have associated.
- Student enters a password to access the activity requires a student to enter a password to access the activity.
IMPORTANT: Adding customized forced progression within a course may require the desired steps to be repeated per desired stop-gap. This may be at an assessment level, a lesson level, a topic level, or other designated locations identified by the teacher.
Online course progression can vary based on LMS.
Customizing Content in the LMS
Each LMS offers a variety of features that can modify and customize assessments. Select your LMS to see more information about Lincoln Learning Assessments in your LMS.
If you do not see your LMS listed, visit your LMS help center for assistance.Buzz
NOTE: If using Lincoln Learning Content in Buzz through Pulse, you can request Forced Progression set on an entire course.
Click the Play button below to view Customized Forced Progression Video.
Run Time: 09:23
TIP: Review the Visibility and access section of the Custom activity editor article in the Agilix Buzz Help Center to learn more. Advanced activity options of the same article will provide additional options for progression.
If you choose Block access until student completes other activity, you must then select Choose Activity.
IMPORTANT: You are clicking the activity or activities you want a student to complete prior to being able to access the blocked material.
In the example below, the Lesson 2 folder was selected (thus, you do not see that in the list of Lessons). For this folder, the desired items to complete are the Read it, Show It, and Watch it in Lesson 1. Once completed, the student can access the Lesson 2 Folder.
WARNING: Since only Lesson 2 is blocked, the students will have access to all other lessons.
Additional Buzz Resources
How do I manage course folders?
How do I make an activity's visibility dependent on competency mastery?
How do I manage Due dates, Visibility dates, and Grade release dates (Scheduling tab)?
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Canvas
Canvas provides opportunities to apply progression requirements at the module level. This can range from full module completion to specific items to complete.
TIP: Review the How do I add requirements to a module? and How do I add prerequisites to a module? details from the Canvas Help Center to learn more.
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Learning Tree
IMPORTANT: Making items required is an action that should be taken before students complete coursework. Taking this action after students have completed work will require them to return to and complete any previously skipped activities before they can move forward in the course.
Within Learning Tree, you can adjust progression through the Publish, Active, and Required toggles.
As a teacher, you can customize your course content by deactivating and unpublishing individual activities. You can also make these items required as well.
TIP: For Lincoln Learning content, the default setup is as seen above with all content published and activated but nothing required.
Publish - allows students to see the content in their Learning tab and is the first step to ensure they can work in their course.
Activate - allows students to click and access activities.
Required - makes items required for student completion. The student will see a star next to the required items they need to access to unlock the next activity.
TIP: Making items required is a way for you to force your students’ progression through the course.
Course - At the top of your course in the Learning tab, you will see the course-level toggles.
Publishing and activating all activities is the default setup for Lincoln Empowered courses and is ideal for asynchronous learning.
IMPORTANT: Teachers must always publish and activate content at the course level prior to adjusting content toggles on the unit, topic, or activity level so students can see and access any items which have been published and activated.
Making all activities required is what is considered full forced progression for Lincoln Learning content.
Unit - For synchronous learning, you may want to control when your students can see and/or access items in the course. You can do this on a unit level. When you’re ready for your students to see and complete the unit, you can publish and activate all items within every topic (lesson) within that unit.
You also have the option to make all items required within every topic (lesson) within that unit.
TIP: You can also choose to deactivate and unpublish units. This will remove the unit and all topics from the student view. It will also remove any graded activities found within that unit from the Report Card.
WARNING: Removing a unit will not remove the concepts from any Mastery Assess Its within the course.
Lesson (Topic) - Another way to use toggles for synchronous learning is to control when students see and access topics or lessons within the course. When you’re ready for your students to see and complete the topic, you can publish and activate all items within that topic.
You also have the option to make all items required within that topic.
TIP: You can also choose to deactivate and unpublish topics. This will remove the topic and all activities within that topic from the student view. It will also remove any graded activities found within that topic from the Report Card.
WARNING: Removing a topic will not remove the concepts from any lesson-level assessments or Mastery Assess Its within the course.
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Please note the images found in this resource may not match your screen. Access and/or features may vary based on client contract.
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