At Discover eLearning we have worked with a number of clients to successfully implement LearnDash-based learning technology solutions into schools, as either supplementary digital learning aids for school students themselves or to provide staff members with opportunities to develop their CPD and professional skills with the online courses that our clients provide.
For clients that deliver services to school as part of an online curriculum designed for students, one of the most critical requirements that any Head Master or school leader often asks for is the ability to report on student achievement and to be able to compare results at different tiers such as by form, by year group, or across the entire school.
LearnDash’s own reporting systems can provide the grouping and group-level reporting mechanisms that most organisations may need to be able to see how staff are performing in different departments, but the ability to combine users across different groups and levels is not something easily achieved out of the box even when using LearnDash nested groups.
In order to accomplish such combined reports easily we would highly recommend the Uncanny Groups For LearnDash plugin, which in version 4.1 introduced the ability for Group Leaders who are the leader of multiple nested groups under one ‘parent’ group to be able to access that parent group and click a single button in order to combine all sub-group users together into one single report that can be ran at the parent level.
This make such functionality ideal for the school reporting scenario where a head of year may need to be a Group Leader across a whole set of form groups and be able to run reports at either single form, or combined form level.
Then for Head Master level though it may not be a requirement to view each form individually if they instead wanted to see that holistic report across the entire school then a report generated at the very top tier ‘School’ level, combining all year groups and form groups together, would deliver everything needed in one combined report.
The additional amazing features of Uncanny Groups For LearnDash also provides Group Leader roles with quick and convenient ways to generate per user reports, quiz reporting, and course-level reporting for any group (or combined groups) as well as being able to download all results to a CSV file.
Further customisation is then achievable for LearnDash developers that wish to make customisations to how user groups shortcode information is displayed by adding the user_groups_shortcode.php file from the LearnDash templates folder to your child theme folder under ‘child/learndash/ld30/shortcodes’.
The file can then be edited further such as by changing the terminology used on groups and Group Leaders in order to make this more school-centric. Here is one such example which you will find at around line 64 of the file:
<?php printf( // translators: group. esc_html_x( 'Assigned %s(s)', 'placeholder: group', 'learndash' ), learndash_get_custom_label( 'group' ) ) ?> //Change Assigned %s(s) to create a new label, such as 'My School'. See the image below for the result:
For more great idea for how you can customise LearnDash LMS to meet your organisations needs, check out our blog post series covering more great tips and tutorials for LearnDash LMS.
You can also feel free to contact Discover eLearning at any time to discuss any custom development needs for your own bespoke Learning Management System.
