What will my learners see in a course built with the new course builder?
The rebuilt learner experience that comes with course builder courses, what stays the same for your existing content, and what your support team should expect.
Courses built in the course builder use a rebuilt learner view. Content groups into sections that learners see as chapters, a progress bar across the top shows where they are, an outline sidebar shows the whole course and what they have finished, one Continue button drives them forward, and returning learners are offered a resume prompt.
Courses built in Classic keep the learner experience they have today. Nothing changes for anyone partway through one.
How do learners move through a course?
One button. A learner works through what is on the screen, then presses Continue. The button stays disabled until the screen is genuinely done, so someone cannot skip a checklist they have not worked through or a question they have not answered. Learners can also move with the arrow keys.
What does the progress bar show?
Two things at once: where the learner is in the course overall, and how far through the current screen they are. The second matters on a screen with several items to work through or with narration playing.
What is in the outline sidebar?
Every section, the screens inside it, and what has been completed, with a count of items per section. Learners can jump straight to a section rather than clicking through everything in front of it, which matters when someone returns to a course to look one thing up.
How does narration behave?
When a screen has narration, it can drive the screen as it plays. Items reveal in turn and checklist items tick off as the narration reaches them, so a learner can listen through a screen rather than reading and clicking at the same time.
What happens on a phone?
Courses adapt to smaller screens, and the person building controls how. In the builder's mobile view they can reorder blocks so they stack sensibly on a narrow screen, and hide blocks that do not work on a phone such as a wide table. They cannot change the words for mobile, so learners get the same content wherever they are.
What should my support team expect?
Two learner experiences will coexist in your product for as long as your users have Classic courses in circulation, so your team needs to recognise which one a customer is describing.
- Screenshots and walkthroughs go out of date for new courses. Any help content, onboarding video or training material showing the current learner view still describes Classic courses correctly, and describes course builder courses incorrectly.
- "The buttons have changed" is a real ticket. A learner who takes an older course and then a new one will notice the difference, and will not know why.
- Skipping ahead is deliberate. Learners can jump between sections from the outline sidebar, because people often return to a course for one specific thing. Within a screen they still cannot skip past incomplete work.
- Completion behaves the same. Reporting, tracking and results are unchanged by which builder made the course.
Frequently asked questions
Do learners need an account?
No. Share a course by link and anyone can open it without logging in, the same as before. You can still ask people to identify themselves first if you want to know who completed what.
Will learners notice the difference between a Classic course and a course builder course?
Yes, if they take both. A course builder course has the sections, progress bar and outline sidebar described here. A Classic course looks and behaves exactly as it always has.
Does the learner view change for courses already in progress?
No. A learner partway through a Classic course sees the same thing they saw yesterday and finishes it the same way.
What do learners see in a quiz?
One question at a time, then a results screen at the end. The person building sees all the questions stacked down the page so they can reorder them.