Choose the right course type (legacy)
Determining how you release content to your students has a big impact on their learning experience. If you release content too quickly, your students might not have enough time to take action on what they're learning. If you present content too slowly, they may get bored and lose interest or momentum.
Choosing the right course type on Ruzuku is an important decision, because it determines the tools you'll have available to regulate how your students receive content from you.
Before we get into what you can do on Ruzuku, let's take a look at the two theories of how to release course content: all at once, or over time.
Releasing Content: All at Once or Over Time
Releasing content all at once works well if your course is designed to be a "work at your own pace" experience for your students. As soon as they register, they'll have access to all the content and can work through it as quickly - or as slowly - as they'd like.
Releasing content over time works well if you want to give your students time to absorb what they've learned and take action. By controlling how quickly the lessons come, you're also building in time to reflect and allowing space for learning and implementation to occur.
Content Release Options on Ruzuku
Once you know how you'd like to release your content, you're ready to set your course type on Ruzuku. "Course type" describes the model you've chosen to release your course lessons to your students.
There are three course types available to you: open access, on demand, and scheduled. Open access courses release content all at once, while scheduled and on demand courses release content over time.
Open Access
Open access courses are for the "work at your own pace" courses. As soon as a student enrolls in an open access course, they'll be able to see all the content in that course. If you want your students to be able to access all of your course content as soon as they sign up, you would choose the "open access" option.
You can prepare an Open Access course for a future release date and pre-enroll students before the course is ready. They will see all lesson and activity titles but won't be able to click the links to access the content until the course Start Date.
Scheduled
Scheduled courses allow you to choose the calendar dates on which lessons will become available to your students. This type of course is particularly good if you're planning to have your students move through your course as a group, with set start and end dates.
For example, if you want to start your course this Thursday, and release a new lesson every Thursday for 6 weeks, you would choose the "Scheduled Course" option.
You can prepare a Scheduled course with a Start Date corresponding to the date you would like to begin enrolling students and pre-enroll students before the course is ready. You can create a "welcome/orientation" lesson to be released on the same date as the Start Date, so students can orient themselves to the classroom, update their profile, greet each other and get acquainted (through a Discussion Prompt in the orientation lesson) before the course content begins, with course content lessons scheduled for a release date in the future. They will see all lesson and activity titles but won't be able to click the links to access the content (other than the orientation lesson, if you have created it as indicated here) until you're ready to begin releasing content.
On Demand
On Demand courses also drip content to your students over time, but they do so based on the number of days that pass after a student signs up. This type of model is good for courses where people will sign up at different times, and go through the course on the schedule you have determined based on their date of enrollment (Day 1, Day 8, etc.).
You cannot pre-enroll students in an on demand course. The first day that students can enroll will be the start date of your course.
Need help?
If you're not sure which Ruzuku course type best fits the student experience you're looking for, email our Customer Success team at [email protected]. Be as specific as you can about what you're trying to achieve, and our Success team will be glad to help!