How can I lock my Course?
There is a multi-step process you can take to "lock" your Course down as much as you need:
Module order: This forces a learner to take the Course in a modular order. This can be turned on from inside Group settings in a Course.
Lock-stepping a Lesson: This forces a learner to go through the Lesson, screen-by-screen. They can't skip ahead or move on without viewing everything. You can do that from within the Lesson itself under Module settings.
Progress markers: Taking things a step further, this requires the learner to click on every single element that is inside a Lesson template. They can't progress on to the next screen until they've clicked everything. This can be enabled from inside your Workspace settings.
You may also want your learners to complete Course A before proceeding to Course B, and in that case, there is an additional step you could take:
Course prerequisite: This forces a learner to complete one or more Courses before they can start this Course. You can add Course prerequisites from the Overview page in a Course.
Should I lock or should I not?
Wondering if you should lock your content or not? And how much to lock it? Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started:
Why do you want to lock content?
If it is for compliance reasons, you may want to turn on Progress markers.
Instead of locking your content, you could also add a Quiz module to your Course to test your learners' knowledge. If they pass, you'd know they really went through the Course.How will locking content affect the learner experience?
If your learners already have some pre-existing knowledge on the topic of your Course, you may want to give them the freedom to jump around screens & modules, to get to the essential part for them.
On the other hand, you may want to lock it, because the order of the screens/modules is crucial to the Course, and skipping some content could be detrimental to the learner.Is reporting enough?
Keep in mind that you may be able to get all the information you need from the Reporting section. You can see how long learners spend on each screen. And if you don't lock your Course, learners will still need to go through all the modules and screens, just in the order they choose.