Scenarios

  • You offer a lot of small learning journeys in your learning environment. All learners may decide which courses they want to follow and which ones they want to quit.
  • Your learners purchase a subscription that gives access to all learning journeys available in the catalogue.
  • You want to spend as little time as possible on the administrative part of subscribing and unsubscribing learners to courses.
  • You offer 'Incorporate trainings'. All products are available for all employees until they leave your company.
  • Your learners will be subscribed to a profile. Learners can choose which learning journeys they will follow in order to acquire competencies.

Roles

Administrator, Reseller

In this tutorial we assume that the templates you want to offer in your catalogue, are already published or are ready to be published.

We will start on the page. Click on next to the template that you want to make available for your learners.

1) Enable the widget 'Subscription'

In order to make it possible for learners to unsubscribe themselves from a course, the widget Subcription should be enabled. With the right settings enabled learners can 'End the subscription' here. 

2) Enable the option that learners can unsubscribe themselves

Widgets are only visible if something can be shown here. When testing the template, the widget Subscription will not be visible.
To make the widget visible, you should enable the setting that learners can unsubscribe themselves. This can be done at two places in the platform:

a) Default instantiate settings

This is on template level and has its benefits to set it up here. First, the widget will be visible when testing the template. Second, the setting made on this level will also apply to the courses that will be created under the template.

Click on the button in the template and click on Settings in the menu.

Select the following options: Learners can end the subscription and Learners can start the course again.

Did you already create courses for this template? Then keep in mind that the settings you enable here, will not change the settings of the existing courses.

b) The settings of the course

You can also find the same settings as mentioned above per course. Go to the tab Courses in the template and click on the name of the course to go to the Settings. You will find the settings under Learner properties.

In the article Creating a course we explain how to create a course.

3) Determine the preservability properties

You can also determine how long a course will be accessible for learners on the pages mentioned at a and b of the previous step. The default setting is one year because a user licence in aNewSpring is also valid for one year. After this year the course will not be active anymore.

When learners can subscribe and unsubscribe themselves this also means they are able to reactivate expired courses.

Therefore you could consider to turn of the preservability properties. However, this means that every year a licence will be deducted for all learners. There are some ways to prevent this. In Step 6 you can find how to manage your learners and their licences.

4) Add the course to a product in the catalogue

Follow the steps in Tutorial: Put a learning journey as a product in the catalogue and pay attention to the following:

Step 2
Make sure the catalogue is only available when logged in so people from outside cannot participate.

Step 4
Don't make use of access codes but link the course directly to a catalogue product.

Step 7
Set the purchase method to Free (direct access). When learners have to pay to follow the learning journeys then its best to arrange the payment process outside aNewSpring.

5) Give learners access to the learning environment

Before learners can get access to the catalogue, you have to create an account for them in the learning environment. There are several ways to do this.

a) Manually

When you don't have a lot of learners yet, you could consider to create the accounts manually in your learning environment.

b) With an import file

When you have to create accounts for more than 10 learners at the same time, it is recommended to make use of the import file.

You really should consider this option if you choose option b in Step 6. Then you can use the import file to make the licences not automatically renewable. Add the column Renewable with the value 'no'.

c) API, potentially combined with SSO

Do you have a lot of employees or learners that should be removed from aNewSpring when they leave your company? Then you can use the API to create accounts for your learners.
By using the API you can make an integration between aNewSpring and an administration system. When you add, deactivate or delete learners/employees in this external system, this will also be done in aNewSpring due to the integration between the systems.

You can also make use of SSO. You can read more about this in the following articles:

6) Learners and managing licences

Every year a licence will be deducted for learners when the courses don't have an end date and when the license of learners is renewable.
In that case it is necessary to manage the licences of your learners. When using an API integration, you can arrange the deactivation of learners in the administration system. If you manage everything in the aNewSpring platform,  there are two options:

a) Learners will have unlimited access to aNewSpring until you decide when this stops

Every first day of the month you can receive an overview in Excel with learners whose licence shall be renewed in the upcoming month.
You can archive the learners you don't want to give access for another. Archived learners are no longer able to login. 

b) The licence of the learner is not renewable by default

You could also setup that licences of learners are not renewable. After one (licence) year the status of all course subscriptions will change to expired.

Reuse the import file for learners that should get access to the courses for the next year. Import these learners again in aNewSpring before their licence expires and fill in 'yes' in the column Renewable.

If you choose this option it is recommended to keep the original import files.

The  licence of a learner will be activated the moment he starts with the learning journey. The date the account for the learner is created, is not automatically the date the licence should be renewed one year later.

How and when licences are renewed, is explained in How do I manage the licences of the learners?

This can be solved in two ways.

b 1) Create a report

Create a report with the start date of the course the learner started first. Add a year to this date and you will know per learner on which date all course subscriptions will expire. Follow the steps below on the Reports page to create the report:

  1. Type
    Results
  2. Columns
    Learner name, Start date of the subscription
  3. Group rows
    Group rows based on: User
    Optionally in combination with: None
  4. Filter
    Select all courses
  5. Sorting
    This is optional
b 2) Create a short learning journey in which you subscribe and start all learners

With this option the expiration date will be predictable for all learners. In this introduction learning journey you can give a small explanation about your learning environment and how the catalogue can be used.

Add the column Course to the import file used in Step 5b to subscribe learners immediately to the course and add the column StartCourse. Fill this column with 'yes' in every row and the course will be activated right away for all learners. Excactly one year later the licences will expire.

Learners subscribe themselves through the catalogue

Learners can click on to see the course offer. With the button Add they can subscribe themselves to the learning journey. This course can be found on the Home page.

Learners end and delete the course subscription

In the learning journey the widget Subscription is visible where learners can end the subscription.

After ending the course subscription this learning journey can be found below Ended on the Home page. Learners can filter the courses visible on this page. In the tile of the learning journey it is possible to Start or Delete the course.

When starting the course, the learner can continue the course where he left off.

If the learner clicks on Delete the learner removes the course subscription but also all progress and results of the course. Learners can add the course again in the catalogue. Then they can start over with the course.

Achieved certificates will always be visible in the Results overview, even if learners ended or deleted the course subscription. If the learner starts the course at a later moment, the certificate of the course will still be marked as achieved.