Use Case: Rolling out a Learning Path
End-to-end walkthrough for publishing a course with scheduled lesson release — from strategy selection to monitoring adoption.
For the full feature reference, see Learning Paths. For the admin dashboard side, see Learning Path Overview.
Prerequisites
- A course with at least a few lessons already built
- Familiarity with the course editor and enrollments
- Your org admin has approved the strategies you plan to use (see Organization Setup)
Phase 1: Pick the Right Strategy
Before touching the editor, decide how you want students to move through the course. The four active strategies each suit different teaching patterns.
Self-paced catalogue → All at once
Best when students should have the entire course available from day one — for example a reference library or a free-to-browse demo course.
Cohort drip → By date
Best for marketing courses, bootcamps, or any course where every student should hit the same lesson at the same time after enrollment. Use offset from enrollment for rolling cohorts and absolute date for fixed cohorts.
Mastery-first → After previous
Best for sequential skill-building where each lesson depends on the one before. Students cannot skip ahead — a finished lesson unlocks the next.
High-touch coaching → Manual release
Best for private tutoring and custom pacing. You release every lesson yourself, typically from the student's Path tab or the course Roster grid.
Phase 2: Configure the Course
Open the course editor and go to the Learning Path release panel on the right.
Pick the Strategy
Select one of the four strategies from the dropdown. A description appears below explaining the behavior.
Set Per-Lesson Details (if needed)
For By date: open each lesson and set its offset (days after enrollment) or absolute date. For After previous: the default prerequisite is the previous lesson by order, which usually works — override only for branching paths.
Sanity-check with the Release Chip
Scroll the lesson list. Each lesson's release setting shows as a small blue chip — for example Release: +7d, Release: Apr 25, 2026, or Release: after Lesson 3. If anything is missing or wrong, click the chip to fix it.
Changing strategy on a course with existing enrollments does not affect them. The amber warning under the strategy picker tells you how many students are already enrolled so you can decide whether to backfill.
Phase 3: Enroll Students
Invite or batch-invite students the same way you always have. See Managing Enrollments.
When each student accepts, their personal lesson list is generated automatically — future lessons appear as locked until they unlock under your chosen rules.
Phase 4: Apply to Existing Students (optional)
If you already had enrolled students before configuring the Learning Path, the new rules only apply to new enrollments by default. To apply to existing students, click Apply to existing students in the course editor, confirm the dialog, and watch the progress modal. Passed lessons keep their state; only the locked/unlocked state is recomputed.
Phase 5: Monitor Progress
The Path tab on each enrollment shows every lesson with a state chip — Passed, In progress, Unlocked, or Locked — plus a header strip summarizing completion and next unlock. Use it during one-on-ones or whenever a student pings you.
For course-wide visibility, open the Roster tab on the course page: a students × lessons grid that makes stuck lessons immediately obvious.
If a student is stuck on a lesson for too long, click the locked or unlocked cell in the Roster grid (or Release now on the Path tab) to manually move them forward. A 5-second Undo toast lets you cancel if you misclicked.
Phase 6: Watch for Bottlenecks
Over time, org admins can see which lessons block cohorts across multiple courses via the Learning Path Overview dashboard — specifically the Stuck cohorts widget. If your course shows up there, consider:
- Splitting the blocking lesson into smaller steps
- Adding review material before it
- Adjusting the release offset to give students more time
Next Steps
- Learning Paths — Full feature reference.
- Managing Enrollments — Enrollment is what generates each student's Learning Path.
- Learning Path Overview — Admin-side dashboard for org-wide patterns.
Q&A
What if a student enrolls before I finish configuring the Learning Path? They are enrolled under whatever rules (or legacy behavior) were in place when they accepted. After you finish configuring, use Apply to existing students to bring them onto the new schedule.
Can different courses in my org use different strategies? Yes. Strategy is per-course. You can run a By date bootcamp and an After previous mastery track side by side.
If my org requires approval for manual releases, does that affect the Manual release strategy? Yes — significantly. Under the Manual release strategy every single unlock is manual, which means every unlock becomes an approval request. Only choose Manual release if either your org does not require approval, or if you are prepared for admins to approve each unlock. See Learning Path Overview (Admin) for the approval workflow.
Can I test the schedule without real students? Enroll a test account into the course. You will see its Path tab fill out exactly like a real student's — a good way to sanity-check offsets and prerequisites before inviting your cohort.