Configure the enrollment tracks

As part of the preparations to your course, before enrollments start, you are advised to check the configuration for the enrollment tracks.

Note

In the Open edX jargon, a “course mode” is the specific track or enrollment status that one learner can have in a particular course. This record mainly affects the way the certificates and e-commerce work.

There are four types of course modes or enrollment tracks:

● Audit: When a learner enrolls in the course for free, does not have the right to opt for a certificate. “Audit” is the course mode set by default in all new courses which is the reason why at first you are not able to configure certificates for your course.

● Honor: This is a course mode used in cases where you need your learner to enroll in a course for free and still have the right to get a certificate when passing the course. The course mode is called “Honor” because it dates back to the time edx.org offered certificates to non-paying users and there was not a way to assure that the user in the certificate was the one that truly took the course and the exams; the certificates with this course mode rely on the learner compliance of the “honor code”.

● No-id-professional: This is used when the course is only paid, but there is no an ID verification. This mode requires to activate the e-commerce module for the site.

● Verified: This is a course mode designed for the case where the learner enrolls in the course for free but eventually has to pay to get a certificate. This mode requires to enable the e-commerce module for the site as well as an id verification process. The way edx.org works is quite unique and its verification procedure is not available to anyone else. Based on this, we have simplified the verification process in order to have courses free with an upgrade option. In the simple verification procedure, the user may get to upload their id photo and may have to take a web cam picture. However, there is not a real verification process that confirms that the data in the images really match.

Every learner enrollment is assigned to one enrollment track.

When the course modes have not been configured for the course, all learner enrollments are assigned to “audit”.

Once the course modes have been configured for the course, new learner enrollments will be assigned to the corresponding enrollment track.

Note

In case you need to change existing enrollments from the default Audit to the newly configured Honor enrollment track, you can do so by unenrolling the users in bulk and enrolling them again in bulk from the LMS instructor dashboard - Membership tab. As long as you don’t select the check mark for sending an email notification to the learners, the process will be completely transparent and learners that used to be in the Audit track will now be in the Honor track with everything else remaining equal.