Learning Recommendations

Before setting up learning recommendations, you need to understand your learner profiles and set up related product categories. Do you want to segment your learners and product offerings based on their learning styles? Based on how advanced the material is? Or based on the learner type?

Understanding this will help you create relevant questions and categories. See some sample questions below:

• How do you prefer to learn?
• How would you describe your familiarity with [TOPIC]?
• What topic are you the most interested in?

Once you understand your learner categories, you can create categories that will correspond to each question. For example, answering the question How do you prefer to learn? your learners might say: I prefer to learn by doing, I prefer to learn by reading, I prefer to learn by watching. Therefore, you will need to create three corresponding categories: workshop products, products with mostly text-based lessons, and products with mostly video-based lessons.

See the example below:

Learn how to create categories here: Categories.

Note that you can link multiple categories to one answer.

To start the setup, you will need to select the page where you want to display learning recommendations. Learning recommendations can be added to any Site Builder page. Before you can set up and configure the recommendation logic and flow, you will need to add the Site Pages Templates section:

1. From your Admin Dashboard, go to Channels
2. Select Website
3. Open the page where you want to display badges
4. Select +Add section
5. Search for and add the Site Page Templates section on the page.

The Site Page Templates section should be listed first in the list of learning recommendations sections you add and only include one of these sections. You do not need to change the settings for this section.

The Learning Recommendations Question section allows you to configure each question, its relative weight, and available answers and determine what answers link to which category. You will need to use the questions and categories you developed in Step 1. Each question requires its own section.

To set up the learning recommendations questions:

1. On the same page from Step 2, select +Add section
2. Search for and add the Learning Recommendations Question section to the page
3. Edit the Question details settings group
   1. Check the Is this question active? box
      Uncheck the box if you want to deprecate the question without deleting it.
   2. Write your question in the Question field and provide additional context and information in the Summary field.
      Use the questions you created in Step 1
   3. Determine how many answers can your visitors select at once in the Maximum answers allowed field
   4. Determine the weight of the question in the Weight field
      The higher the number the more impact it will have in recommending results.

      The question weight allows you to prioritize questions that are the most relevant to your business, product collection, or learner profile. There is no upper limit to the number of weight you can include, however note that the weight works relative to other questions' weights. For example, if you have two question and each has a weight of 10, each question is weighted equally when determining recommendations and their order. However, if one question has a weight of 1 and the other has a weight of 100, the responses to the second question will be highly prioritized over the responses to the first question.

4. Select +Add answer
5. Add an answer Lable
   This is what appears before each answer. Common labels include letters (A, B, C, D) or numbers (1, 2, 3, 4).
6. Write the Answer
   Use the answers you created in Step 1.
7. In the Category field, select categories that relate to this specific answer
   Use the categories that relate to the answers you created in Step 1. You can link up to 5 categories to a single question.
8. Optionally, use the Manually added categories to list all categories that relate to the answer.
   List each category on a separate line.

   You can use instructor name, course price, product type as categories in this field as well.

9. Repeat steps 4-8 for any additional answers
10. Repeat steps 1-9 for any additional questions

The Learning Recommendations Popup section allows you to customize the popup that appears. The popup is what hosts and displays questions you added in Step 3.

To set up the Learning Recommendations Popup section:

1. On the same page from Step 2, select +Add section
2. Search for and add the Learning Recommendations Popup section to the page
3. Edit the ID field, if needed
   Edit the ID, if desired. You will need to use this exact ID when configuring the call to action button later.
4. Edit the Style settings group
5. Edit the Buttons settings group
6. Edit the Error Messages settings group
7. Edit the When to show this popup? settings group
   This is the setting that allows you to define when the popup is shown. Select the SPT Button Press option when using a call-to-action button.

   We recommend using a call-to-action button, and the instructions reflect this recommendation. You can, however, chose to display the popup at different action (e.g. on a page load, exit intent, etc).

8. Edit the Who should see this popup? settings group
   These settings allow you to specify if the popup should be shown to specific learners only. Not recommended when using a call-to-action button to display a popup.
9. Edit the Sounds Effect settings group
   These settings allow you to specify if a sound effect should be used when a popup opens.

The Learning Recommendations List section does not show up as a preview in the Site Builder. You need to save your changes and then preview the page as a student to see the changes.

The Learning Recommendations List section is the section that displays all of the recommended products, based on the learner responses. The section appears on the same page after all of the questions are answered. It displays recommended products that are arranged in the order of the most relevant (based on the provided answers and relative question weights).

1. On the same page from Step 2, select +Add section
2. Search for and add the Learning Recommendations List section to the page
3. Edit the Section Headings settings group
4. Edit the Product Database settings group
   
   1. Select the number of items to show
      This determines the maximum number of products that will be shown in the recommendation list. If there are more matching products than the allowed number, only the most relevant products will be displayed.
   2. Check or uncheck boxes to determine which product types to include (courses, bundles, or communities)
   3. Check if you want to Download the JSON file and upload the JSON file
      Use this setting if you have a large course catalogue. See the section below to learn more.
   4. Determine the minimum score required
      The minimum score determines how many times the product needs to be associated with an answer in order to show up on the list. The higher the number, the more restrictive the criteria are and the more relevant the results are. For example, if the minimum score = 2, then a product needs to be associated with at least two answers that the student provided. If a product is associated with one answer only, it will not show up on the list. Note that making these criteria overly restrictive can lead to no / few suggestions only.
5. Edit the Product Categories settings group
   This section allows you to specify the identifier for each product type, so you can use it as a category when setting up learning recommendation questions. Most of the time, you do not need to adjust this setting.
6. Edit the Card settings group
   This setting group determines how product cards are displayed and what happens when a card is clicked.
7. Select +Add exclusion and specify which products should be excluded from the recommendation list.

Products set as Hidden are not automatically removed from the recommendations list. You must add them to the exclusion list to remove them from recommendations and prevent learners from seeing these options.

Using the JSON file to load recommendations

By default, the recommendation list selects the right product to load and loads them on the page using the APIs. If you have a larger number of products that can be recommended (across all questions, answers, and categories), this can cause the page to load slowly. To improve the performance and loading speed, you can use JSON file to load product recommendations instead. To do configure that:

1. In the Learning Recommendations List section, select Download the JSON file
2. This will download the JSON file on your device
3. In a new tab, from your Admin Dashboard, select Products
4. Select Courses
5. Select any existing test course or create a new test, or dummy course
6. Create a Download lesson
   You can keep this lesson in draft
7. Click Preview, then Current lesson
8. Find the file you just uploaded and click Download
9. The file will open in a new tab, and copy its URL
10. Go back to the previous tab with the Learning Recommendations List section
11. Paste the URL under the JSON URL field

The Text and Mega Media Banner section hosts a call-to-action button that triggers the popup with the questionnaire. This step is optional and the necessity of this step depends on how you choose to display the learning recommendations popup (step 4). We recommend using the call-to-action button.

You can use any other section that allows you to display a popup and specify a popup ID.

To set it up:

1. On the same page from Step 2, select +Add section
2. Search for and add the Text & Mega Media Banner section to the page
3. Edit the Pre Heading settings group
   The pre-heading shows up on top of the header.
4. Edit the Heading settings group
5. Edit the Summary settings group
6. Edit the Button (primary) settings group
   1. Edit the Button Text
   2. Set the Button Type to Open Popup
   3. Under Page, select the page you are on
   4. Under the Open link in, select Same Window
   5. Select Button Color Style
   6. Under Popup ID, provide the ID from the Step 4.
7. Optionally, edit the Button (secondary) settings group
   Leave blank, if you do not want to add another button.
8. Optionally, edit the Content after main buttons settings group
   Leave blank, if you do not want to add additional content.
9. Edit the Media settings group
10. Edit the Layout settings group
11. Optionally, edit the Section settings group
12. Edit the Who should see this section? settings group
    Select Section enabled? to display it for all
13. Optionally, edit the Smart Pages settings group
14. Edit the Background settings group
15. Optionally, edit the Section Effects settings group