As an author, you can make edits to content, republish and get those changes out to learners. This is great to be able to update information, add more content, or fix any mistakes that were not picked up before publishing (we're all human, after all!).
Overview of effect on learners
You can easily make small changes and fixes to content. When you republish, those changes will flow out to all scheduled, current, and past class activations based on that content.
Very generally speaking, edits within an element - updating text, fixing broken links etc. - won’t affect learner progress or submissions, so a republish is generally fine.
However removing entire elements, tasks or pages loses associated learner contributions.
Adding tasks or pages can decrease some learners’ progress as there is now new content they haven’t completed.
So if possible, avoid republishing changes that involve removal or addition of entire elements. Instead create a duplicate, make your changes and use this course for future activations.
Note: Remember any changes you make will immediately be visible to learners and could impact their learning experience. Therefore you should be careful and think through implications when making larger changes and whether you should let learners know about what changes have been made via the class Talk channels.
Be sure to check out Updating course content - to republish or duplicate? to help you decide if editing and republishing is right for your situation.
The rest of this article will detail the effect for learners on changing different content elements.
Which class activations see changes when you republish?
When you make changes to content in the body of a course and republish it, those changes are rolled out to all the current class activations, as well as scheduled and past activations.
What happens to tasks and learner responses to tasks?
When you update a task and republish, changes made will be visible to all learners who have not yet seen or started the task. Learners who have already viewed, made a submission or saved a draft, will continue to see the previous version of the task.
When learners submit a task, we (the iQualify system) know that their submission is attached to variation A of task element 1. If task element 1 disappears, so does the learner’s submission.
But, one cool thing that variations allow is that you can add variation B to task 1, delete variation A and because the task element 1 still exists, we (the system) still have something to attach learners’ submission to. That is, submissions remain if the original element remains, even if the original variation disappears.
When a task with variations is changed, the author gets to choose whether to replace the task for all learners, or only those who have not yet seen or started the current task.
Note: If your task does not have variations then you will not see this option.
For more detail about the process, see Republishing variations.
What happens to learners' in-page discussion comments?
Making changes to the text of an in-page discussion and republishing it won't affect the comments. If you delete or disable an in-page discussion and republish, the discussion and any comments won't be visible for any activations.
Note: The conversation isn't lost as such, just hidden. So, if you re-enable the discussion and publish the course again, the conversation will reappear.
What happens to learners' Talk channel comments?
Talk channels are set up in class activations and are separate from the course content and cannot be edited by the author so are unaffected by a republish.
What happens to learners' private study notes and social notes?
Private study notes and social notes are "attached" to an element within a page (textbox, video, task etc.). As with tasks, as long the entire element still exists, learners' notes can remain attached. This means you can edit an element and learners notes will be a-okay.
If you remove the element the notes are attached to (and/or the whole page), the notes disappear and cannot be brought back. So, where possible, instead of removing an entire element/page, try to change the content within the element/page, such as re-writing over existing content.
If you do need to remove entire elements or pages from a course the best approach is to duplicate the course, make your changes, and use the revised course for future activations.
What happens to learner progress?
Progress is based on how many pages you have completed out of the total. If a page only has text, images, videos etc., then to “complete” that page, learners only need to view it. If a page has tasks on it, to “complete” that page, learners need to have completed every task on the page. If, for example, learners have only completed 1 task of 2 on a page, we give them half of the progress value for that page.
This means that:
Changing non-task elements within a page will not affect learners' progress (whether they’ve viewed the page or not)
Adding or removing tasks from a page can affect learners' progress (depending on if they’ve already attempted tasks on that page etc.)
Adding or removing entire pages from a course will affect learners' progress.
Summary
When you republish course content, all changes to content in the body of the course will flow through to scheduled, current, and past class activations. Course attributes (overview etc.) are not updated. Be careful when making larger changes (assessed tasks, removing entire elements etc. as it may impact learners who are currently studying, especially those online when you hit publish!). If the changes are larger, you can make them and not republish until the current class activations have closed, or consider duplicating the content instead.