Scheduled reminders do the work of chasing learners up for you, saving you time to focus on other tasks.
A reminder can be scheduled that will be sent to a learner via email and in-app that a due date for a course or assignment is looming.
Using scheduled reminders
There are 3 scenarios that trainers may be faced with where scheduled reminders can assist:
Trainers need a method for nudging a learner to start a Course they were enrolled in but have not yet started.
Trainers need a method for reminding a learner they need to complete a Course they have started but have not yet completed.
Trainers need a method for reminding a learner that they need to submit an Assignment that they have not yet submitted and that has a due date approaching.
You can add up to 5 reminders per Course so that all 3 of the scenarios above and more can be applied to a Group in your course.
Creating Scheduled Reminders
Before you set a scheduled reminder you must ensure the following:
That you have learners enrolled into the Course, via a Group. Scheduled reminders only work with Groups.
That you have a Course availability or completion timeframe set. The system needs to know when a Course is due to start and end in order to schedule a reminder.
Step 1
From the Create > Courses page, click on the context menu on the course you want to set scheduled reminders on, and select the 'Course settings' option. Once the course setting modal opens, navigate to the 'Scheduled reminders' tab.
Step 2: Select the group that you would like to set a scheduled reminder for.
Reminders can only be created if you have set a Course availability date or course completion timeframe. Course availability dates are the dates that learners can have access to the course. If you haven't already done this, you'll see a message like the following:
To set the course completion availability dates, simply navigate to the ‘Completion settings’ tab and set up an ‘Available to’ date (the ‘available from’ date is optional). The example below is configured to provide learners access to this course up until 7/10/2024. After this date, they will be locked out of the course.
Step 3: When creating your reminder, you'll see that there are two conditions you can choose to apply to the reminder.
The most typical use case for reminders using availability dates is to send a reminder out to those learners who have commenced the course but have not yet completed it. In this case, you'd probably want to remind your learners a few days before the availability date arrives.
The second scenario sends reminders to learners who haven't yet started the course. In this scenario, you might want to provide a reminder much earlier to give these learners more time to get the course completed.
Please Note: You can create multiple reminders if you want to cover both the scenarios above.
Step 4: Once you're happy with your reminder, click the ‘Create reminder’ button.
Reminders you've created for this Course are listed down the page, and you create up to 5 reminders per group in order to cover all the scenarios you might have. Above each reminder, you'll notice a few controls that allow you to edit, preview, or delete each reminder.
Using scheduled reminders with Course completion timeframes
Course completion timeframes allow you to create dynamic course end dates based on the date the learner is enrolled in the course, or the date the learner commences the Course.
To use course completion timeframes, simply toggle the option to ON and select whether you want to determine the end date from the number of days from enrollment, or the number of days from commencement.
Choosing the days from enrollment option means that the learner must complete the course within X number of days from the day they were enrolled in the course.
Choosing the days from commencement option means that the learner must complete the course within X number of days from the date they started the course.
To create your reminder, follow the steps discussed in the previous section. The only difference will be the way the course due date is displayed — instead of a fixed date, it will display the number of days from enrolment/commencement.
Assignment due date-based reminders
Use Assignment-based reminders to trigger a reminder for learners that a due date for an assignment is looming. As with the other reminder schedules, you can choose to send these reminders to learners who have commenced the course but have not completed the Assignment, or send a reminder who has not yet commenced the course.
To use Assignment-based reminders, you must first ensure that your Assignment has a due date. If you have multiple assignments and want to trigger reminders for each you can do that also.
Click the 'Create reminder' button to create a reminder. You'll then be able to select the Assignment due dates in place of the course due date (see below). The Assignment due date will be displayed next to the assignment name.
