The Course Settings tab in LearnDash provides tools to customise how learners access, engage with, and progress through your course. This guide will walk you through the key settings available and how to use them to create an optimised learning experience.

1. Course Access Settings

Course access settings allow you to control how learners gain and maintain access to your course. There are several options to choose from:

• Open Courses: These courses are free and accessible to anyone visiting your site without requiring registration, login, or payment.
• Free Courses: While no payment is required, learners must register and log in to access these courses.
• Buy Now: Learners must register, log in, and pay a one-time fee to access the course. No free access is allowed with this option.
• Recurring Payments: Access requires registration, login, and a recurring fee. You can set a billing cycle in days, weeks, or months to suit your needs.
• Closed Courses: These courses require registration and login, and you can sell them via e-commerce or membership add-ons like WooCommerce or MemberPress. You also have the option to manually enroll learners or use group enrollment.

2. Course Prerequisites

Prerequisites allow you to require learners to complete specific courses before accessing the current one. You can assign one or multiple prerequisite courses to ensure learners have the necessary knowledge base.

3. Course Points

Course points are a flexible way to motivate and reward learners:

• Award Points: Assign points upon completing a course to track progress or achievements.
• Require Points: Set a required number of points for learners to access a course, creating a progression path through your curriculum.

4. Course Access Expiration

This setting allows you to define a time limit for course access. You can specify the duration from the registration date, after which the learner will no longer have access.

5. Course Materials

Include additional learning resources for your learners:

• Upload media files like PDFs, videos, or audio.
• Add links to external websites or tools.
  These materials provide supplementary information to enhance the learning experience.

6. Course Certificates

Certificates can be awarded to learners upon course completion. These serve as proof of achievement and motivate learners to complete their training. You can design custom certificates tailored to your course.

7. Challenge Exams

Challenge exams allow learners to skip a course if they demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the material:

• Assign a challenge exam to the course.
• If learners pass, they can skip directly to the next course in their progression path.

8. Course Progression

Control how learners move through the course:

• Linear Progression: Learners must complete lessons in a predefined sequence. This structure ensures they follow the intended learning path.
• Free Form Progression: Learners can navigate freely through lessons and topics without a set order. This provides flexibility for self-paced learners.