Integration with WP Courseware

Learning Management System (LMS)

A learning management system (LMS) comes equipped with all the features and functionalities you need to create, manage and run online courses.

WP Courseware is a learning management system for WordPress that allows you to publish a course in a matter of minutes. You can use it to create your course modules/lessons,  keep students engaged with quizzes and surveys, motivate students by awarding achievement badges, track course progress and issue a certificate upon course completion.

Later this year, I'll be launching an online course on How to Plan, Build and Grow a Profitable Membership Site and I'm using the power of DAP, Thrive Content Builder and WP Courseware to put together my course. And I must add that there may not be a better (and easier) combination than these 3 to create, manage and deliver online courses :).

The integration between DAP and WP Courseware is very simple. It'll take you less than 15 minutes to integrate the two. In fact, even if you want to offer multiple courses through your membership site and want more granular control over course enrollment and access, you can do that using DAP and WP Courseware shortcodes. You just need to disable automatic enrollment in WP Courseware. The students that have purchased the course will find an enrollment button in their members area. They can click on the Enroll Now button to get started with the right course. The enrollment button will only show up if the students have access to the right product/level in DAP.

Here are the steps to integrate WP Courseware with DAP:

Please Note: I won't be covering the actual steps to create courses, modules and course units in detail here. You can refer WP Courseware Documenation for details.

Step 2: Add a Course

Click on WordPress Admin => Training Courses => Add Course to create your course.

You can configure the next lesson/unit to appear only after the previous lesson/unit is complete OR configure all units to be visible regardless of completion progress.

Step 3: Grant Access

Click on WordPress Admin => Training Courses => Add Course => User Access tab. 

You can set up Automatic Enrollment where all newly created users will be given access to the course automatically OR set it to Manual where your students can only access the course if you grant them access or provide a way for them to self-enroll. 

If you want more granular control over course assignment, set it to "Manual". If set to "manual", your students can click on an enroll button in their members area to self-enroll. The enroll button will only be visible to the logged-in members that have purchased the course.

Step 5: Create Course Units / Lessons

Each module is a collection of course units. Units are same as lessons. You can visit WordPress Admin => Course Units => Add New to add your course units.

You can also convert your existing Post/Pages in WordPress into a Course Unit by clicking on Convert Page/Post into Course Unit in your WordPress page/post editor:

Step 6: Drag & Drop Course Units into Modules

Visit Training Courses page. Click on the Modules, Units & Quiz Ordering button under the actions column.

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You'll find a list of your training courses, modules, units and quizzes here.  Drag and drop the course units (and quizzes) to the modules.

Step 7: Define your Product in DAP

Visit DAP admin => Products/Level => Manage page to create your Course Product.

Step 8: Set up Payment Details

Visit DAP admin => Products/Level => Manage => Pricing Tab to set up payment/access details.

Step 9: Set up Welcome Email

Visit DAP admin => Products/Level => Manage => Notifications Tab to set up welcome email. In this email, you can send the "Login Credentials" to your members using the DAP personalization tags.

Step 10: Protect / Drip your Course Content

Visit DAP admin => Products/Level => Manage => Content Responder tab to protect/drip your course units/modules. If you just want to protect the course content but don't want to use dripping, that's fine. Just set drip start day to 1 (that's the default setting as well). The course units/modules will be listed under "Custom Post Types" in the "Available Content" area.

Step 11: Enable DAP => WordPress Syncing

Visit DAP admin => Setup => Config Page => WordPress Related Section. And enable syncing between DAP => WordPress. If the syncing is not enabled, DAP cannot create account in WordPress and your students won't receive access to the purchased course in WP Courseware.

If you do not enable WordPress syncing, the integration between DAP and WP Courseware will NOT work. So this is a key step in the integration process.

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Step 12: Granular Integration between DAP and WP Courseware

If you want users of a specific product to receive access to a specific course in WP Courseware, you can use a mix of DAP and WP Courseware shortcodes to do that. Click here to access a txt file with these shortcodes.

Here's an example: 

(say your DAP product Id = 1 and WP Courseware course ID = 1)​

This shortcode will only display a "Click to Enroll and Get Started" button to Logged-In members that have access to DAP product Id = 1.

[DAP hasAccessTo="1" isLoggedIn="Y" errMsgTemplate=""]

[wpcourse_enroll courses="1" enroll_text="Click to Enroll and Get Started!" /]

[/DAP]

This shortcode will display DAP Login Form to not-logged-in users.

[DAP isLoggedIn="N" errMsgTemplate=""]

Login below to Enroll!

[DAPLoginForm template="template5" redirect="/my-courses"]

[/DAP]

This shortcode will display "Click here to Sign Up!" message to logged-in members that don't have access to product Id = 1 . You can also display a button or a link here to send users to your registration page.

[DAP isLoggedIn="Y" hasNoAccessTo="1" errMsgTemplate=""]

Click here to Sign Up!

[/DAP]

Course Delivery Models

Evergreen Model

All lessons are released right after payment. But too much information can overwhelm the students and  they might abandon the course. It's also harder to get students to take action and actually complete the course when they know that all course content is available from day 1. So consider your specific situation, your course content, get your audience feedback and factor in all of that when deciding on the right delivery model for your course.

Day-Based Drip Model

Lessons are released to students per a fixed schedule. For e.g. Unit 1 can be accessed on day 1, Unit 2 becomes available after 7 days... You can decide the drip schedule based on the payment plan, complexity of each module, student feedback etc. If you want to offer your course throughout the year where students can join anytime during the year, and the drip schedule is relative to their start date, you can use this model.

Date-Based Drip Model

If you want to run your training program / online course only certain number of times in a year, you can use date-based dripping. In this delivery method, all students begin the course on the same date. This is great if you want to create urgency/scarcity and get students to decide (and take action) quickly or say you have a live training where it makes sense for all students to work toegther (classroom style) and start/finish at the same time. This will allow students to work in sync completing discussion, quizzes and homework together.

Conditional Drip Model

Students can learn at their own pace. Students can unlock the next lesson when they complete the previous lesson.

Combination Model

Say you want to drip release each module, but want to allow your students to unlock lessons within each module instantly when they get access to the module.  A combination of Drip + Conditional model. But when you use this model, you'll have to clearly communicate the course release schedule with your students so there is no confusion.