The capacity of the Pathways is expanded by opening up the possibility of blended learning of courses and events. Previously it was only possible to include courses, online content that the learner completes on his own schedule. From now on, the learner can be summoned to events within the pathway itself, with the possibility of delivering several sessions for different learners. In this article you will see how to manage these events from the LMS Admin, and how they are displayed in the LMS.

The hybrid or blended learning feature is active by default for all instances, it is not necessary to request it. However, it is necessary to activate the Events functionality beforehand.

Adding events to a pathway

Events are added to the pathway as another content, in the same way as courses. The only point to take into account is that courses and events cannot be combined in the same stage. If you add one of them to the stage, it gets set up only for that type of content. In other words, the way to combine courses and events in a pathway is to create different stages that include one or the other type.

In LMS Admin, in the Contents section, look for the path you want and access the editor. By clicking on the button + Add stage you can see that two options are now displayed, Stage of courses and Stage of events, depending on the content you want to add. By selecting the second option you can add events you have previously created to the pathway. Next to the title of the stage you can see the type of content it includes in brackets. Clicking on the button + Add Event displays a side window with all the events published in the instance. You can add as many as you want to the stage, as well as sort or delete them.

Remember that to add an event to an pathway you must first create it and publish it from the Events section in Contents.

You can also add requirements to the events, so that it is necessary to complete other contents before accessing them. Click on the three dots next to the event and choose the Manage requirements option, a side window appears with all the previous contents, courses and events, to select the ones you want to be required. Also, in other course stages you can mark a previous event as a requirement so that it is mandatory to complete it before accessing the course.

Training of an event inside a pathway

For the training, the interface is also similar, but the new concept of Session is added. Each event can have different trainings within the pathway training itself, since in practice there can be several editions of the same event for different attendees. The different trainings of the same event are called sessions. For example, if in the pathway training there are some students with a more advanced progress, you can make one session with them, and another one later with the rest. It is also useful if you teach several sessions of the same event in different locations, for example different offices, so you can enroll the same student as recommended in all of them, and it is he who decides which one he attends.

To be able to enroll a student in the session of an event, he must be previously enrolled in the pathway's training. When you are going to manage the students enrolled in a session, only the students enrolled in the pathway training will appear in the list.

Entering the pathway training you can navigate through the tree of contents on the left to click on the event you want. A main screen is displayed where you can manage the sessions for that event. To create a new one click on the New session button, the usual Training details window appears. Session dates must be within the date range you have set for the training, if you enter a date outside that range, the platform returns an error message. After setting the parameters and creating the session, click on it to enrol students, and manage the trainers and the attendance. Remember you can only enroll students who are included in the pathway training.

Sessions can only enroll students individually, the options to enroll by CSV file or by group are disabled to avoid incompatibility problems.

As long as there are sessions in any of the events of the pathway, regardless of their status (open, planned or closed), it is not possible to modify the Training details, the platform will return an error message

Attending an event within an pathway

When the student accesses the LMS the pathway and events are displayed as usual. If there is a milestone marked, clicking on the padlock icon displays a new window with the contents to be previously completed.

If an event has several sessions, clicking on it displays a new window with the options for the learner to choose which one to attend. If the learner attends one of the sessions (the trainer approves his attendance) the event is completed, and new contents are unlocked if there are milestones marked.