Drip Schedule

Drip Scheduling allows you to schedule the release of your course content over time!

About This Feature

A Drip Schedule allows you to control when students will have access to your course content. It is useful when you are launching on a specific date and want all students to access content at the same time or when you want to limit the amount of lessons that can be viewed in a certain period.

For example, maybe you do not want your students to access any of the lessons until your official launch date. Or perhaps you only want students to complete one Chapter a week to help pace their learning. This can be achieved by applying a Drip Schedule to your course!

How It Works

You can create a unique Drip Schedule per course, which will be applied to all students enrolled in that course. There are three Drip options, which will be covered in more details below:

Student Enrollment Date
Student Course Start Date
On a Specific Date (ie. Calendar Date)

If a student attempts to access a lesson that is not released yet, they will see a prompt within the Course Player indicating the date and time the lesson will be available. In the Course Player sidebar, the lesson also has a blocked icon to indicate the lesson is not accessible yet.

How to Enable the Drip Schedule Tab in Your Course Builder

In our latest update to the Course Builder, the Drip Schedule tab is now located under the Course Settings tab by default. If you’d like to enable this feature for your course, follow the steps below:

From your Admin Dashboard, select Products
Select Courses
Click on the course you would like to edit
Select the Settings tab
Scroll down to the Drip schedule section
Toggle the Enable drip schedule box
Click Save settings

That’s it! Your Drip Schedule tab will now appear in your Course Builder navigation menu and is where you can setup a drip schedule for your course.

Drip Schedule - Course settings enabled.jpg

Drip Schedule Options

Learn more about each drip schedule option below.

Student Enrollment Date

Drip is based on when your student first enrolls in your course. Each student will have their own schedule based on their unique start date.

This Drip option is customized in days. The day that your student first enrolls in the course is day 0.

For example, new students could access Chapter 1 lessons immediately (day 0), have access to Chapter 2 lessons 7 days after they enrolled, and Chapter 3 lessons 14 days after, etc.

Learn how to set that up here: Set a Drip Schedule by Student Enrollment Date.

Student Course Start Date

Drip is based on when your student accesses your course for the first time. This feature works great if you are using our Course Bundles feature or when manually enrolling students because although your student is enrolled into your course, they might not access the content right away. The Drip Schedule will only start when the student specifically accesses lessons in the Course Player.

For example, a student buys your bundle on Jan 15th. Your bundle includes 5 courses. The student doesn't start one of the courses, we'll call it Course B, until Feb 1st. No problem! The Drip Schedule for Course B will start on Feb 1st as soon as they access the course.

This Drip option is customized in days. The day your student first accesses the Course Player for this particular course is day 0.

For example, as soon as a student visits the Course Player for your course, they could have access to Chapter 1 lessons immediately (day 0), have access to Chapter 2 lessons 7 days after, and Chapter 3 lessons 14 days after, etc.

Learn how to set that up here: Set a Drip Schedule by Course Start Date.

On a Specific Date (i.e. Calendar Date)

Drip is based on a specific calendar date/time. This gives every student the same start date/time and release schedule regardless of when they enroll in your course. This option is great for cohorts that need to progress through a course together!

Learn how to set that up here: Set a Drip Schedule by Calendar Date.

Student Perspective

Students will only be able to view lessons in your course that are currently available according to your Drip Schedule. If they try to access a lesson that is not released yet, they will see a prompt within the Course Player indicating the date and time the lesson will be available.

To customize this message prompt, check out: Customize Drip Schedule Messaging.

Testing or Previewing Drip Schedules

We don't currently have an option for previewing your Drip Schedules when within the Course Builder. When Previewing Your Course as Enrolled Student it will ignore Drip Schedules completely. This is intentional so that you can still view all of your lessons.

The best way to test that your Drip Schedule is running correctly is to create a test student account and enroll in the course. You can then check in on the course from that student's perspective to ensure that they have access to lessons on the days you intend. Even if the lesson is not immediately accessible, you will see a notification of the date they will have access. Learn more here: How to Create a Test Student Account.

If you have a large group of students starting a course on a new Drip Schedule, consider enrolling a test student at the same time, in case you need to troubleshoot any schedule-based problems.

Important Considerations

This feature is available on all paid plans
Currently, no emails are sent when a lesson is released via drip schedule. However, if your are using the Thinkific Mobile App or a Branded Mobile app, your students will receive a push notification when new content is released. Learn more here: How are students notified when new Drip Content is released?
Drip Schedule applies to all students enrolled in your course. We don't currently have the option to adjust a Drip Schedule on a per-student basis. If you would like to add your vote to this feature request, please get in contact with us!
Editing the course's Drip Schedule that has an existing Drip Schedule will impact existing enrolled users.
Lessons in draft will not be available in the Drip tab to be added to the Drip Schedule. Publish your lesson before adding it to your schedule.
Drip Schedules do not prevent access to previous lessons. In the case that a student was not able to complete a lesson on the release date, they can sign back in whenever they are able, continue where they left off, and access to lessons will be determined by the specific Drip Schedule set up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What time will the drip content be released to the student?

If you create a student enrollment date Drip Schedule, and a lesson is set to release 1 day after enrollment, the student will have access to the content 24 hours after they enrolled. For example, if they enroll at 5pm their local time, they will get access to the Drip content at 5pm their local time the following day.

If you create a course start date Drip Schedule, and a lesson is set to release 1 day after start date, the student will have access to the content 24 hours after they first access the Course Player for this course. For example, if they first access your course at 5pm their local time, they will get access to the Drip content at 5pm their local time the following day.

For a calendar date Drip Schedule, the content will start releasing at the date and time you specify in the Drip Schedule settings screen. If you customize individual lesson drip schedules, students will have access to the content at the same time that is set in the main Drip Schedule settings. For example, if you set your Drip Schedule to begin releasing content on Jan 1st, 2024 at 4:00pm PST, and you set Lesson 2 to release at Jan 2nd, 2024, Lesson 2 will also release at 4:00pm PST on that day.

What happens when a student is re-enrolled into a course with a Drip Schedule?

This depends on the Drip Type that was selected.

Student enrollment date: When a previously enrolled student is re-enrolled in a course, either by re-purchasing the course or by being manually enrolled, their original enrollment date applies. This means they will have access to content based on the drip schedule according to their original enrollment date. For example, if they originally enrolled on Jan 1, 2020, canceled their subscription, and re-purchased on March 1, 2020, the drip schedule will be based on their Jan 1, 2020 enrolment.
Student Course Start Date: The Course Start Date is set when the student opens the Course Player for the first time. If they had never opened the course during their first enrollment, the course date would not have been set. If they had already started the course during their first enrollment, the drip schedule will show released content based on the original course start date.
On a Specific Date: The drip schedule will continue to release lessons based on the specific calendar dates that were set. If content has already been dripped, the student will have access to it.

What happens if I change the Drip Schedule while students are already taking my course?

Any change you make to the Drip Schedule will immediately be applied to the course, and will therefore affect any students who are currently enrolled. If your new schedule is more restrictive than the original one, this could potentially result in them losing access to lessons, including lessons they have already completed.

[back to top]