Learning paths: guiding members through multiple courses

A membership with one course has an easy answer to the question “where do I start?” A membership with fifteen courses does not. As your library grows, new members face a page of course titles with no obvious order, and many either pick at random, pick the wrong course or put off picking at all. Experienced members, meanwhile, may never discover the advanced course that would suit them best.

Learning paths solve this. A learning path is a recommended sequence of courses, and sometimes other resources, that leads a member toward a particular goal. Paths turn a catalog into a set of journeys, and they give members a reason to keep going after their first course, which is good for learning and good for retention.

Start from member goals, not your catalog

The natural instinct is to look at your existing courses and group them. It works better to start with the reasons people join. Most memberships have a handful of distinct goals, and each can become a path.

If you are not sure what those goals are, ask. A single question in your welcome survey can tell you a lot:

What would you most like to be able to do a year from now, thanks to your membership? Pick the closest: build my first piece of furniture; make gifts and small projects; improve my joinery and finishing; set up a workshop that could earn some income; something else (please tell us).

Once you have the goals, map your courses to them. You will usually find that some courses belong to several paths, some to none, and some goals have no courses at all. Those gaps are useful, because they tell you what to build next.

Order the courses within each path

Within a path, the order should follow what a learner needs, in the same way you would structure a single course into modules, only one level up. Three principles help:

1. Prerequisites first. If a course assumes a skill, the course that teaches that skill comes before it.
2. An early win. The first course on each path should be short and produce a visible result.
3. A clear destination. End with a course or project that brings the path together, so members know when they have arrived.

Paths do not have to contain only courses. A useful path might include a key article, a recorded live session, a worksheet or a community challenge between courses.

A worked example: paths for a woodworking guild

Imagine an online woodworking guild with around fifteen courses and a large article library. It might offer three paths:

• First Furniture: Workshop safety basics, then Measuring and marking, then Your first cutting board, then Simple joinery, and finally Build a small side table.
• Gifts and Small Projects: Workshop safety basics, then Hand tool essentials, then Boxes and trays, then Turning your first bowl, and finally a gift-making challenge.
• Fine Joinery: Sharpening, then Hand-cut dovetails, then Mortise and tenon, then Finishing like a professional, and finally Build a wall cabinet.

Safety basics sits at the start of two paths, which is fine. Members who complete it once should see it as done on both. Each path has a named destination, and the path names describe outcomes rather than skill levels.

Help members choose a path

Paths only help if members find the right one. Give them a simple way to choose, such as a short “which of these describes you?” question on your start-here page, with each answer leading to a path. For some subjects, a quick self-assessment helps members skip what they already know: a member who can already cut a clean dovetail does not need to begin at the start of the joinery path.

Make it easy to switch paths, too. Goals change, and members who realize they chose the wrong path should be able to move without losing credit for the courses they have finished.

Put paths where members will see them

A path hidden on a page nobody visits does little. Put paths where decisions happen:

• On your start-here page, so new members choose a direction on their first visit.
• On the member home page, showing each member's current path and next step.
• At the end of every course, pointing to the next course on the member's path.
• In your library, alongside the categories and collections you use for organizing a growing content library.
• On your sales page, where named paths show prospective members what they could achieve.

Paths also strengthen the case for bundling courses into a membership, because they show that the courses fit together into something bigger than any one of them.

Keep paths current as the library grows

Every new course raises a question: which path does it belong on, and where? Make that decision before a course is published, not after. Review your paths once or twice a year as well. If members often abandon a path at the same course, that course may be too hard, too long or in the wrong place. And if one path attracts far more members than the others, it may deserve more courses, or a split into two.

Creating your first learning paths

1. List the three to five main goals members join with, asking them if you are unsure.
2. Map every course to one or more goals, and note the gaps.
3. Order each path with prerequisites first, an early win and a clear destination.
4. Give each path a name that describes the outcome.
5. Add a simple way for new members to choose a path on your start-here page.
6. Link the end of each course to the next step on its path.
7. Plan your next course around the biggest gap you found.

Even two or three well-chosen paths can transform how a crowded library feels to a new member: less like a warehouse, more like a map.