Are you a course creator looking for ways to reuse your existing course modules in Learndash?
If yes, then you’re not alone!
Many course creators are looking for an effective way to increase their productivity while ensuring that they create the maximum number of courses for their LearnDash course website.
However, it takes work to create multiple courses.
Especially if you strongly believe in course quality, it’s because creating multiple courses simultaneously can cause a mess and ruin your course quality.
That’s the reason many course creators would prioritize quality over quantity.
But there’s a way to do both: secure the quality and launch multiple courses while being productive.
Do you know how? If you’re using LearnDash for your course creation, then you’re lucky, as LearnDash has a built-in feature called “Shared Course Steps”.
This feature allows you to easily reuse a specific course module, such as a quiz or lesson, for one or more courses simultaneously.
But you may now wonder how it works.
In this article, we will explore the Shared Course Steps feature and its workings. We will also cover its implications for your LearnDash course.
Understanding Shared Course Steps in LearnDash
But before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to set it up, it’s equally important to understand what it means to share course Steps.
Does it mean that you’ll have to walk with shared courses?
No, of course not!
However, Shared Course Steps is an in-built LearnDash functionality that allows users to create a quiz, lesson, or topic and spread it among existing courses.
Are you still trying to understand?
Let’s understand it with an example.
Suppose you’ve recently launched a digital marketing course on the LearnDash website, including three courses: SEO, SEM, and PPC. These are all advanced courses; however, one topic overlaps between them.
What would you do?
Will you work to create the same topic for all of these courses, or will you clone it?
Well, both options have several downsides. For example, your course topic will be repetitive, which is not good for your website in terms of SEO, and it will also take up a lot of your time.
So, it’s better to create a single topic page for all three courses to ensure that you can save time and be effective without hurting any Google algorithm so that your LearnDash course ranks high in SERPs.
See how beneficial it is to have a quiz, topic, or lesson that can be reshared across multiple courses.
That’s what Shared Course Step means; now, it’s time to explore its benefits in depth.
Benefits of Using Shared Course Steps
So far, we have covered the meaning of the Shared Course step and provided a real-life example to help you understand it.
It’s time to understand the exact benefits this feature offers!
Time Efficiency:
It might sound like a small benefit initially if you’ve just launched your LearnDash course website, but once you expand it with new courses, you will look for ways to save time.
Brainstorming can be difficult when you’re busy creating topics, lessons, or even quizzes for your courses.
Thus, when you enable this amazing feature on your LearnDash course website, you will automatically save a lot of time that you would have spent creating repetitive content for multiple courses.
Consistent Quality:
As a pro-LearnDash course creator, I can tell what matters the most.
You have dozens of courses in different niches, but none of them are actually valuable for your students. You have only focused on the quantity of courses, but what you have missed is the consistency among your courses.
But why does it matter?
Well, it means a lot, especially if you want to create a band. You would want a uniform structure for all of your courses, as it reflects a personality that your students can remember for a longer period of time.
So, always choose for consistent quality over quantity.
Simplified Updates
Imagine what would happen if you had ten courses and one lesson, for example, on Google’s algorithm, overlapped in all of them.
And since Google releases new updates about every six months, what would happen to your courses then?
Will you keep them as they are?
No, right? You’re offering courses through the LearnDash website for a reason: to maintain authority among course sellers.
How would you maintain authority if the information on your course lesson needs to be updated?
You only have options left, so pick each lesson from these ten courses and update it one by one to ensure that the structure of your courses is maintained.
But, then, it will take a lot of your time.
So, why not create only 1 lesson on Google’s algorithm and reshare it across these ten courses?
It will simplify your life as a course creator because you will only have to update one lesson, and all ten courses will be updated automatically.
There are endless benefits of having Shared Course Steps enabled, but obviously, we cannot discuss all of them as this article is mainly focused on setting it up.
If you’ve got bored, tighten your seatbelts as we get into this article’s technicalities.
How to Set Up Shared Course Steps in LearnDash
Setting up the Shared Course Steps is relatively easy. Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough of how to do it.
- Go to LEARNDASH LMS > COURSES in your WordPress admin dashboard.
- Click on the Settings tab at the top of the page.
- Scroll down to the Global Course Management & Display Settings section.
- Ensure the “Course Builder” is enabled by toggling the switch.
- Next to “Shared Course Steps,” flip the toggle switch to the “on” position. This allows lessons, topics, and quizzes to be shared across multiple courses.
- Save your changes to activate the feature.
What will happen next?
Well, you will see the change when you browse lessons or quizzes on your LearnDash website.
The lessons or quizzes are no longer associated with a single course as they were being shown earlier.
Now, visit a particular lesson or quiz.
You will have an “Associated Content” box in your sidebar. It appears when one enables the Shared Course Steps.
What’s the use of it? Will it help you move or reuse content among multiple courses? Instead, it only shows the courses or lessons associated with the one you have opened. You can only edit or move your course lessons through a course builder.
Here’s how the Associated Content box functions:
- View Only, Not for Assignment: The Associated Content box is not meant for assigning or moving content between courses. It simply displays which content a particular item is currently linked to. Use the Course Builder instead to add, change, or remove a step from a course.
- When Editing a Course: The Associated Content box will display all lessons, topics, and quizzes linked to that course. You can click on any of these course steps to go directly to their edit screens.
- When Editing a Lesson, Topic, or Quiz, The Associated Content box will show all courses that include the current item. Additionally, you’ll see a Course Switcher dropdown, which allows you to view the associated content of that item for different courses if it’s linked to more than one.
This feature is designed to give you a clear overview of content associations, making it easier to navigate between related course elements.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them:
If you’ve successfully enabled the Shared Course Steps, that’s amazing!
But you might have missed a step if you’re still having an issue resharing your lesson, topic, or quizzes across multiple courses.
It’s better to follow the reverse approach to understand what step you’ve overlooked! Still, to help you, we have included common issues you can face while enabling the Shared Course Steps for your LearnDash course.
Forgetting to Enable Course Builder Option:
- If this feature is not enabled in settings, reusing steps will not work as required.
- Solution: Double-check that the course builder option is enabled before working with the Shared Course Step.
Accidentally Overwriting Content:
- When updating a shared step, changes will reflect across all courses that use it.
- Solution: Make sure that any updates to a shared lesson or quiz are suitable for all courses where it is used. If the content needs to be course-specific, consider creating a separate step instead.
Course Content Not Associating Correctly and Redirecting to the Original Course:
- This issue occurs when the shared lessons, topics, or quizzes redirect students back to the original course instead of staying within the current course.
- Solution: Go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and Enable Nested URLs. This will help ensure that content is properly associated with each course and avoid unwanted redirection issues.
By following these steps and being aware of everyday challenges, you can effectively utilize the Shared Course Steps feature in LearnDash to save time, maintain content consistency, and streamline course creation.
Basic Terminologies for Shared Course Steps:
Before wrapping up, let’s quickly go over a few terms that will help you better understand the Shared Course Steps feature:
- Course Builder: A tool within LearnDash that allows you to create, organize, and manage course content, including lessons, topics, and quizzes.
- Shared Course Steps: A LearnDash feature that allows lessons, topics, or quizzes to be reused across multiple courses without duplication.
- Associated Content Box: This is a display box showing the courses or lessons currently linked to your edited content, but it is not for assigning or moving content.
- Nested URLs: A URL structure that reflects the parent-child relationship between courses and lessons, helping with proper content association and navigation.
- Primary Association: The original course that a shared lesson, topic, or quiz is first linked to.
- Secondary Association: Additional courses where a shared lesson, topic, or quiz is also linked, apart from its primary course.
Understanding these terms will make navigating the Shared Course Steps setup easier and avoid any potential challenges.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, leveraging the Shared Course Steps feature in LearnDash can significantly enhance your course creation process. By allowing you to reuse lessons, quizzes, and topics across multiple courses, this functionality enables you to maintain high-quality content while boosting your productivity.
As you create engaging courses, remember the key benefits of Shared Course Steps: time efficiency, consistent quality, and simplified updates. These advantages empower you to focus on delivering valuable learning experiences without the hassle of repetitive content creation.
If you have any questions or encounter challenges while setting up Shared Course Steps, feel free to reach out in the comments below. We’re here to assist you and ensure you make the most of this powerful tool. Happy course creation!
