What is Accredible Pathways (Learning Pathways) & How Can You Use Them

Pathways is Accredible's feature for building learning pathways. Learning pathways are groups of credentials that issuers create to visualize learner behavior, encourage continuous learning, and motivate course completion. In this article we will explore how to use Pathways, the benefits of using Pathways, and how to measure the effectiveness of a learning pathway.

What is Pathways?

Pathways is a feature used by issuers to create learner roadmaps to earning high-value, career-advancing credentials. Issuers have the freedom to create any grouping of credentials to represent job title competencies or career paths. Issuers can include both optional and required credentials as part of the learning pathway and set-up auto-issuance milestone credentials to help boost learner motivation.

Pathways enable the issuer to provide clear guidance for their candidates regarding what credentials should be earned, and when they should be earned. They can create linear pathways of credentials that provide visibility into the next recommended steps of the learning experience. Pathways encourage candidates to keep progressing until they earn all the credentials within the learning pathway. Candidates have visibility of which credentials they have earned, their progress so far, and which credentials they still have to take. This serves as additional motivation for the candidate and helps to drive them towards the pursuit of continuous learning. As digital credentials can be uploaded to a candidate’s LinkedIn profile, the learner is further incentivized to earn more credentials that will help their professional ability stand-out to potential recruiters.

How to create a learning pathway using Pathways

Pathways is a feature on Accredible’s Connect and Growth plans and can be set-up via the ‘Pathways’ tab on the ACMS dashboard. Comprehensive guidance can be found in our help center here: How to Build a Credentialing Pathway.

Setting up a learning pathway using Pathways

What are the benefits of using Pathways?

Pathways makes it possible for issuers to drive engagement and course completion, visualize learning journeys, offer flexible learning opportunities, track real-time completion rates, create auto-issuance milestone credentials, and reduce costs and increasing time savings.

Motivate Continuous Learning

A key benefit of Pathways is the increased visibility to learners for their next recommended steps. Learners can see from the credential page how many credentials they have earned within a learning pathway and how many credentials are outstanding. This serves as additional motivation to earn all credentials within a learning pathway so they can achieve the final credential and showcase their competences in a topic or variety of topics. Links to the next credential within a pathway can also be included in the credential delivery email and on the dedicated credential page. For issuers that are charging per-course, this increased visibility helps to drive revenue by encouraging learners to take more courses.

Encourage Completion Rates

Increased visibility of credentials within a learning pathway and learner behavior also helps to encourage course completion rates. Learners aren’t left guessing on where they should go next and with better visibility into learner progress, issuers can identify where learners are failing to engage with certain credentials. They can use this data to identify if amendments or further support is required and make informed decisions on the success of a learning pathway. Learners that are paying for courses should be getting value out of the programs they sign-up to and Pathways analytics are an effective way for issuers to assess value.

Create Flexible Learning Opportunities

Pathways enable issuers to create short or long pathways with optional requirements and various levels of complexity. This is great for issuers that offer a variety of learning pathways that have different earning criteria that needs to be accommodated. Using Pathways, it's easier for issuers to communicate this effectively to their learners with visual representations of what courses come next in the learning journey and visibility into all requirements along a learning pathway.

Reduce Cost and Increase Time Savings

Pathways offers issuers the ability to set auto-issuance milestone and capstone credentials as learners progress through and complete the learning pathway. These milestones are issued automatically once the learner has reached a certain point and do not need to be manually checked by the issuer. This means issuers spend less time checking individual learner progress and helps to reduce the cost of delivering a comprehensive learning pathway.

How to measure the success of learning pathways

Once recipients have started to earn credentials, issuers can refer to the Pathway analytics for insights into the success of their learning pathways. Issuers gain visibility to see what milestone credentials learners are reaching and track completion rates of learning pathways. This helps issuers make data-driven decisions about what new learning pathways they can offer to their candidates and how to keep them engaged as they progress.

In Summary

Pathways (learning pathways) is an excellent way of engaging learners by providing guidance for which credential they should pursue next. By creating learning pathways with the aim for the learner to acquire a particular skill or achievement, issuers can promote continuous learning and encourage completion rates. The increased visibility of credentials within a learning pathway and the candidate's progress helps to motivate learners to complete the entire learning pathway.

To learn more about Pathways, learning pathways, or digital credentials, reach out to the team to request a platform demo and see digital credentials in action.