Course Access and Navigation

Introduction:

When a course has been purchased in the Professional Learning Portal (PLP), learners will use the following process to access and navigate through their course.

Details:

If you are not already there, please login to the Professional Learning Portal.

1. On your personalized dashboard, select the course tile in the "Active Courses" module.
   
2. At this point, the course will open in a new window in which you can navigate through the course. There are four navigation menus at the top left of the page: My PLP, Course Links, Certificate and Help & Support.
   Note: The following steps do not apply for ed2go courses.
   • My PLP contains links to general resources that do not pertain to any one course. Clicking this link will result in displaying My Home, My Account, and Course Catalog.
     1. Select My Home to return to your homepage in Brightspace, the learning management system. From here you can switch to your other courses.
     2. My Account will bring you back to your PLP Dashboard (list of Active Courses, Completed Courses, etc.).
     3. To browse or purchase another course, click the Course Catalog option.
   • Course Links provides you with the information you will need to navigate the course. The options displayed will depend on your course. At a minimum, selecting this option will display Content and Grades as menu options, additional Course Home, Announcements, Discussions and Class Progress may appear.
     1. Choose Course Home to return to the course home page, the start page of your course. Not all courses are configured to have a course homepage, so this menu option might not be displayed.
     2. The Content link allows you direct access to the table of content for your course. In some courses, you can also access bookmarks, the course schedule and an overview from here.
     3. Announcements offer course related information. Announcements are not available in all courses.
     4. Discussions is an area in which conversations can take place. Not all courses contain discussions. If discussions are part of your course, you will automatically encounter them if you follow the course navigation. It is recommended to use the link in the navigation only to check back on discussions you already accessed following the course navigation.
     5. Grades allow learners to view their progress within the course.
   • Help & Support allows you to access helpful articles around course format and policies, and provides you with a direct link to our Customer Care Team. The articles cover topics like course navigation, netiquette, course accessibility, technology requirements and our SCECH policies.
3. The course design will vary.
   • The first course design will contain a side menu bar to the sections of the course on the left, and list the items of each section on the right.
     
   •  The second course design will display the table of contents centered on course access, where each section can be expanded vertically.
     
   • To start the course click on the top-most section and select the first content item. In most courses, content items will receive checkmarks once they are accessed.
     Note: To check whether you successfully completed an activity, refer to the gradebook by selecting Course Links in the navigation and choosing the Grades option, as the progress checkmarks are measuring access but not successful completion.
4. Finally, once the learner has completed the course, proceed to the Completion Certificate process.