Create an Online School With MemberPress Courses and CoachKit™

The MemberPress CoachKit™ add-on gives you all the tools you need to run a successful coaching site. Combine it with MemberPress Courses to turn your website into a fully-functional online school.

This document shows you how to create and run an online school with the MemberPress Courses and CoachKit™ add-ons.

Setup

Online school sites usually require user and membership management, protected content, a learning management system (LMS), as well a system for curriculum delivery. 

To effectively set up these elements, follow these steps:

1. Install MemberPress and activate it on your site. This will allow you to enroll students, manage payments, and manage access to protected content.
2. Activate and configure the MemberPress Courses add-on to create your courses and certificates.
3. Activate and set the MemberPress CoachKit™ add-on activated and set.
4. Add your coaching programs – the central element for curriculum delivery.

Understanding The Basics

• Programs – as mentioned above, coaching programs are the backbone of your curriculum delivery. These are elements that hold your entire curriculum track (e.g. a learning track of a single subject, boot camp, etc.)

  
  

• Milestones – your curriculum is delivered through program milestones. Milestones can represent single lessons or individual topics that need to be covered to complete the program.

  
  

• Cohorts – each group of students are organized into a cohort within your program. Cohorts can be used to, for example, separate different enrollment periods (one group per period), or to separate students into groups with a limited number of seats (e.g. 20 students per group).

  Each cohort is assigned a coach (e.g. teacher or lecturer, trainer, coach, instructor, etc.)

  
  
• Habits and Messaging – programs also include habits (recurring tasks) and messaging for learning support and guidance.

• Administrators – site administrators are responsible for creating and managing programs and coaches, as well as courses and memberships. They can also manage students and their subscriptions to memberships. Other user roles on your site do not have access to these options. 

Adding Courses To Your Programs

You can add courses created with the MemberPress Courses add-on to your milestones to include them in your program.

As mentioned, milestones are elements that represent single lessons or individual topics. They allow you to organize your course content into a logical flow of progression.

Bear this in mind when creating courses for your programs. Your content should be adequately distributed into multiple courses, matching your program milestones.

Once courses are created, you can add a course (or multiple courses) to each milestone by following these steps:

1. Navigate to Dashboard > CoachKit™ > Programs, and click Edit under the name of the program you wish to add courses to;
2. This directs you to the Edit Program page with the Milestones tab open, displaying any of the program's existing milestones.
3. Click Add New and select the Course option. This opens a popup;

4. The popup shows you the list of all courses you created on your site. Scroll down the list, select the course(s) you want to add, and click the Add Course button;

5. Click Update to save changes.

Quizzes And Certifications

In addition to using courses to deliver learning content, you can create courses specifically for testing purposes (mid-terms, finals, etc.) using quizzes. 

Depending on your Program organization, you can also add a final examination course as a last milestone and add a certificate to that last course.

If you set your program this way, your students will be automatically issued a certificate of completion once they've completed the program. 

CoachKit™ comes with the MemberPress Downloads add-on integration. You can add files uploaded with this add-on to milestones and habits.

To do this, install and activate the Downloads add-on onto your site.

This allows you to add files to your program to complement your courses. You can add any type of file supported by the MemberPress Downloads add-on. 

For example, you can complement your milestones and habits with detailed instructions or additional resources in the form of files (PDF, video, audio, etc.).

You can also complement your program delivery by adding the tests in the form of files. In this scenario, students can download your test file, complete it, and send it to their coach. 

In addition, the MemberPress Downloads add-on allows you to protect your files, and make them exclusively available to students with an active subscription.

Curriculum Delivery 

Each cohort within a program must be assigned a coach. Coaches are in charge of delivering the curriculum, tracking student progress, and providing guidance.

You can assign a coach to multiple cohorts within the same or multiple programs. As a site administrator, you can manage all your coaches by going to Dashboard > CoachKit™ > Coaches.

Once logged in, coaches can manage students enrolled in their cohorts by navigating to your coaching page (by default, the page will have the /coaching slug).

Coaching

On the coaching page, your coaches can see all their students under the Students option. 

If the Messaging feature is enabled and available for their program, they will have the Messages option too. Here, they can communicate with their students and provide support and guidance. 

Students 

After you've linked your program to a specific membership, students can enroll in your program by registering for that membership.

Coaches can see all their cohorts and students on the coaching page. You can filter students by selecting a specific cohort in the sidebar or using the filter above the list of students.

Click on a student's name to see details for that student. This page includes progress tracking, memberships overview, and adding notes.

Messages

Under the Messages option, your coaches can communicate with students enrolled in the cohorts they teach. This enables learning support.

Here, coaches can communicate with students in a chat-like messaging inbox. 

If messaging notifications are enabled, both coaches and students will receive a notification every time a new message is received.