With the Drip-Feed feature, you can organize the timely release of your content (per each course section ) so that not all of your course content becomes available to your users all at once after they sign up.
You need to create your course, the Course Sections, and add Learning Activities. Then, determine when exactly you wish your course sections to become available to your users. The course sections are basically the parts you make available gradually to your users.
Enable the Drip-feed
To drip-feed your courses:
1. Go to Course Manager and choose the course you wish to drip-feed.
2. Click on the Drip feed feature under the Course Outline.
3. Enable the Drip feed and select the type that best suits your course flow (Drip by date - Drip by days).
4. Save your changes.
Drip by Date
You can unlock course contents on specific dates regardless of the time students enrolled. All students will acquire access to the learning material at the same time.
When the drip is set to date, the below No Date specified (or the footsteps) new button is shown in the Contents tab, linked to the drip feed.
When the date is not specified, the section will be available to users. To ensure it remains hidden, be sure to select a future date.Drip by Days
Unlock course contents based on the date the student enrolled in the course (i.e. 1 week, 2 weeks). Each student will get access to the learning material separately.
When the drip is set to days, a 0 days (or the footsteps) new button is shown under the Course Outline tab linked to the drip feed.
0 days means that the section is unlocked from day one.Set up the Drip feed for Course Sections
Each course is divided into course sections, which are basically the parts you drip feed; hence you make them available gradually to your users.
1. Enable the drip feed feature in your course (see above).
2. Go to the Contents tab, where you will see that the course is dripped.
3. Click on the No date specified (Drip by Date) or 0 days (Drip by Days) (or the footsteps) icon to start setting up the drip-feed date for each course section.
4. In the Section edit panel that appears next, you can choose the Course Section Access.
If you are offering a paid course that includes free sections, the drip-feed feature will not apply to those free sections. However, if you have a free course with free sections, the drip-feed feature will work as expected.5. Then you should set up the date this section will unlock for all enrolled users. The drip feed date you just chose for this course section will now replace the previous No Date specified or 0 days button.
6. If you wish, you can set up an email notification to be sent to students once this section becomes unlocked.
Review User Drip Feed Timeline
You may want to check users' access to each course section or unlock a section ahead of time for a special user. This is only available in the Drip by Days feature and you can learn more here.
When the drip is set to days, click on the users' button next to the specified date.
Review the Users' progress in the specific section, check the day each user is per section, and search for users across sections.
If you wish, you can also Unlock a Section Ahead of Time using Drip-Feed (available for Drip by Days only).
Notifying Users
You can also notify users who are enrolled in a course once a section is unlocked.
Once the section is unlocked, your users will receive an email notification you will have personally written about the newly dripped material. You can use variables to make the email personal and engaging.
Important Notes:
- The notification email must include content in its subject and body otherwise, the email notification will not get delivered to users once the course section gets dripped fed.
- The drip-feed section is unlocked, and the email is sent at 00:00 based on your school's time zone. Make sure to set up the drip-feed notification at least 24 hours before the unlock (otherwise, the email notification will not be sent).
- If two or more sections of a single course are scheduled to be released on the same day/date, only the email notification for the last section is sent, so you will only need to set up the Send email notification option for the last section.
- Always have a section (for example, the first one) with zero days or with the course's starting date applied to track each user's current location in terms of drip-feed progress.
- If a section is set to Soon, an you use drip-feed, it will remain locked and inaccessible to users. To make it available, you must manually update the section’s status.
- If you set up a drip feed in a course (whether it's paid, private, or set to release soon) and then change the course status to Free, the drip feed setting will automatically be disabled.