Course delivery
Everything that happens inside a course.
Authoring, content types, how a student moves through a course, how work is assessed, how completion is certified, and what a course can offer people once they have finished it.
Authoring
A full interactive content-building tool, not a document uploader.
A Guidepost course is built page by page from content blocks. Every block type is available to every author, on every page, without a separate editor or a plugin to install.
Eleven content block types
Rich text, image, video, link, popup, quiz embed, survey embed, file download, knowledge check, embedded page, and tabs. The set is deliberately finite — an author learns it once and it does not change between courses.
Tabs, for parallel material
A tabs block holds any number of titled panels and shows one at a time. It exists for material that genuinely runs in parallel rather than in sequence — a procedure that differs by role, region or equipment, where forcing a linear reading order would misrepresent the content.
Popups and required prompts
A popup block can be marked required, in which case a student must open and acknowledge it before continuing. Required prompts are clearly marked and confirmed with a checkmark once opened. Optional prompts sit alongside them for extra context and do not block anyone's progress. Either can be presented as a standalone button or as an inline trigger inside authored text.
Accordions and scheduled visibility
Accordions are a separate attachable feature with their own scheduled-visibility date, so a section can be authored now and revealed on a date you choose.
A visual map of the course
The Build page shows the whole structure of modules and pages laid out visually, so the shape of a course is something an author can see rather than infer from a list of titles.
Who can change what
Editing versus restructuring
Instructors, and staff placed above a course in the hierarchy, can edit content that already exists within their scope.
Creating a new course, or restructuring one by adding, removing or reordering its modules and pages, is reserved for an ISD assigned to that specific course. This keeps course structure consistent even as broader oversight reaches further up the organization.
Version history
Nothing authored is lost
Materials, videos, surveys and scheduled reports each keep a full version history. Open the item, look for its history, and view or revert to any earlier version.
Content libraries
Materials that belong to a course, and graphics that belong to everyone.
Course-scoped materials and video
Materials and videos belong to exactly one course — the course they were uploaded for. This keeps a library from becoming an undifferentiated pile that every author has to search through to find their own work.
Library pages default to showing items relevant to your own courses. A course filter narrows further, and a "Show all" control lifts the default entirely for search and reuse across everything you have access to.
A shared graphics library
Images remain a shared, cross-course library, because they are referenced by things that structurally cannot belong to a single course: unit emblems and banners, landing-page blocks, and page backgrounds.
The distinction is deliberate rather than incidental — the scoping rule follows what an item is actually attached to.
The student experience
How a learner moves through a course.
Credit mode
Follow the course as designed
Credit mode gates forward navigation on required content — a student cannot skip ahead of material they have not completed — and requires all quizzes to be completed as designed. Finishing earns credit and, where applicable, a certificate.
Browse mode
Explore freely, for review
Browse mode allows free navigation in any order, but structurally blocks quiz access and certificate issuance. It is for review or preview, and it does not earn credit.
A student chooses one mode when they open an online course for the first time. Once chosen, the mode is locked for that enrollment — which is what makes credit mean something.
Two progress bars, one calculation
A module-level bar shows every module in order, marked not started, in progress or complete. An overall completion bar shows the whole course. Both compute from the same shared function, so the two figures cannot disagree.
Weekly schedules on time
Each week's schedule appears when that week arrives. If a student cannot see a week yet, it has not been released — the gate is the point.
Discussion and messaging
Every course has a discussion board. Private messaging between students and course staff is available where a course turns it on; it is off by default.
Assessment & certification
Measuring what a student has actually done.
Quizzes
- Five question types
- Automatic and manual grading
- Bulk question import via CSV or Excel
- Embedded directly into a course page as a content block
Surveys
- Six question types, including Likert scale, Matrix (a multi-statement grid) and Ranking
- Delivery targeted at an individual, a group, a directory group or a whole course
- Auto-send triggers — per student on completion for online courses, per cohort at course end for in-person — with configurable reminder offsets
- Results charted and exportable to PDF
Certification
Certificates are issued automatically on completion and are independently verifiable by code. Issuance and enrollment graduation happen as a single act, shared by both automatic paths — finishing required content, and passing a completion quiz.
The status transition fires only when a certificate is newly issued, so a staff override recorded on the roster survives a student re-opening a page or an instructor regrading an attempt.
Course project topics
Instructors can define one or more projects per course, each with its own pool of topics. A topic's capacity is either unlimited or exactly one.
Where capacity is one, the constraint is enforced by the database and selection is race-safe — the write is attempted and the database is the arbiter, rather than a check followed by an act that two students can pass simultaneously.
After completion
Alumni content, and why it works the way it does.
Course content published specifically for the people who have finished the course — and a set of deliberate decisions about what that must never do.
Authored exactly like anything else
An author marks a module "alumni only" on the same Build page, using the same authoring tools and the same content block types. There is nothing new to learn and no separate editor.
One site-wide Alumni page
Alumni content is reached from a single page that gathers everything a person has earned across every course they have completed, grouped by course. The navigation link appears for a student once they hold their first certificate.
Removed from its own course entirely
An alumni module is absent from the course sidebar, the reading order, in-course search and the printable copy — for every viewer, not hidden per person. That is what lets those surfaces exclude it unconditionally instead of each having to work out the right answer for the current reader.
A definition that matters
Completion means holding a certificate
Not simply having an enrollment marked alumni. These are genuinely different sets of people: a daily process moves every active enrollment to alumni status once the course end date passes, whether the student finished anything or not.
Access to alumni content is governed by actually holding the certificate — one shared definition, used by both alumni surfaces so they cannot drift apart.
Keep reading
The other half happens around the course.
The hierarchy and role model, the calendar, rosters, enrollment gating, landing pages and reporting are covered on the Administration page.