Packaging courses into learning paths

Overview

A single course teaches one thing. A learning path strings several courses into a journey — foundations first, advanced material later. StretchLearn builds paths in two complementary ways: it packages related courses automatically, and it lets you enforce order with prerequisites.

How automatic packaging works

StretchLearn groups your courses into learning paths using their category and level. On the Dashboard, the Learning path packaging panel shows each path with its course count, total lessons, and total runtime. This gives you and your learners an at-a-glance map of how your catalog fits together — without you having to build the grouping by hand.

To influence how courses package:

Open a course in the Builder and click Edit course.
Set the category (the theme, e.g. Operations) and a niche if you use one.
Set the level (beginner, intermediate, advanced).
Repeat across related courses so they share a category and span levels.

Courses that share a category naturally cluster into a path, and their levels imply the order to take them.

Prerequisites: enforcing order

Packaging suggests a journey; prerequisites enforce it. A prerequisite says "a learner must finish course A before they can start course B."

Select the advanced course in Catalog or Records.
Open its prerequisites (in the Builder / course settings).
Choose the required course(s) — the foundational courses that must come first.
The requirement type is completion: the learner must complete the required course.
Save. StretchLearn now treats the advanced course as gated behind the required one.

Tip: A course can't be its own prerequisite, and StretchLearn ignores any attempt to set that. You can list several prerequisites; they're ordered so you can present them in a sensible sequence.

A realistic path

Suppose you offer three operations courses:

```
Category: Operations

1. Operator Basics (level: beginner)
2. Operator Certification (level: intermediate) ← requires: Operator Basics
3. Shift Lead Certification (level: advanced) ← requires: Operator Certification
```

Because all three share the Operations category, they package into one path on the Dashboard. Because each advanced course lists the previous one as a prerequisite, a learner can't jump to Shift Lead Certification without first completing Operator Basics and Operator Certification. The result is a guided ladder from novice to shift lead.

Reviewing a path

On the Dashboard, the Learning path packaging panel totals each path:

Courses — how many courses are in the path.
Lessons — the combined lesson count.
Runtime — the summed estimated duration.

Use these totals to spot gaps (a path with only one course isn't really a path yet) and to set expectations ("This path is about 4 hours across 3 courses").

Tips

Give every course in a related set the same category so they package cleanly.
Use levels to imply order even before you add prerequisites — beginners see the entry course first.
Add prerequisites only where order genuinely matters. Over-gating frustrates learners who could handle the material out of sequence.
Keep prerequisite chains shallow. A course gated behind five others is a course most learners never reach.

Troubleshooting

Two related courses aren't packaging together. Confirm they share the exact same category value — a typo splits them into separate paths.
A prerequisite won't save. You may be trying to require the course of itself, which is ignored. Pick a different required course.
Prerequisites don't seem to gate anything. Confirm the prerequisite feature is enabled in your workspace; if saving prerequisites returns an unavailable message, ask your administrator to enable it.
The path runtime looks wrong. Runtime is the sum of each course's lesson estimates. Fill in missing lesson durations to correct it.

What to do next

Make sure each course in the path is live via Publishing and managing your catalog.
Track how learners move through the path in Tracking completion and certificates.