Question
- How can my students repeat a course they have already taken?
- Can I re-enroll a student in a course they haven't finished?
- Can I reset my student's progress in a course?
Solution
Sometimes a student might want to retake a course. Maybe they got partway through the course and want to restart from the beginning; maybe they never got to the course the first time around, or they just want to review the material. Luckily, because the way Thinkific courses are set up, they can usually do this without any additional input on your part.
By default, any student who is enrolled in a course can always go back and review previous lessons. They don't need to re-enroll or pay for the course a second time: they can just go back and start at the beginning! If a student really wants to get the feeling of starting from the beginning, they can also use the Mark Incomplete button at the bottom of lessons they have previously completed, to reset their course progress back to 0%.
While this should work in the majority of cases, some course settings can make things a little more complicated:
Course expiry
If you have set an expiry date on your course, and the student's initial enrollment has already lapsed (or it is about to expire), you may want to extend their access to your course. In that case, the easiest thing to do is to manually re-enroll them, which will reset the timer on the course.
Drip schedules
If your course uses drip schedules to release lessons and assignments at particular times, re-enrolling the student will not reset the drip schedule. The drip schedule is based on the date they first enrolled in the course, so any access they have will continue even if you reset their enrollment.
Email notifications
Course welcome or course completion emails will only be sent once to a particular student for a particular course, so if your course relies heavily on these emails it may be difficult for a student to fully restart the course. If you want to provide that same experience to a student repeating a course, you could send those emails out manually.
Learn More About
What happens when a student re-enrolls in a course with a drip schedule?