It’s here! We’re pleased to announce the release of the latest version of LearnDash, which includes some exciting new features, including the much-anticipated ability to offer course pre-ordering. 

What’s New? 

This jam-packed release includes course pre-ordering, start and end dates for courses (cohorts), and the ability to limit the number of students that can take a course. 

LearnDash Cohorts

Now you can add start and end dates to your courses. It allows you to run a cohort-based system by setting the dates that your course starts and ends. 

For example, you might want to run a cohort for a Summer and Winter intake with the same content while retaining certification for each. 

To do this, create a course for your first cohort with the required dates, then simply clone the course, change the name to reflect the second cohort, and add your other dates. 

Course Pre-Ordering

In conjunction with cohorts is the ability to pre-sell your courses. This works in the same way as cohorts do with start dates. 

If you associate a start date with your course, your users can pre-pay for the course but can’t start until the specified start date. 

Offering your courses for sale before they start is a great way to build hype about your course and generate revenue and interest. 

Student Limits

Whether you want to run a live course with a maximum number of students or offer 1:1 tuition to help support students and need to limit the number of students participating. 

The new functionality allows you to set the maximum number of students who can take your course. 

If the limit is reached, you can still manually assign new students in the admin if necessary. Or, of course, just modify the limit. 

Previously you needed to use WooCommerce for this functionality with a workaround. Now it’s native to LearnDash! 

Coming Soon

You might be wondering what’s next on the horizon for LearnDash? While we’re working on a whole heap of exciting new features and improvements for you, here’s a small glimpse; 

Cohorts for Groups

Just like courses, group cohorts are coming soon, along with the ability to pre-sell and set start and end dates. 

Quiz AI Builder 

More exploration into the world of AI, this time for quizzes. The LearnDash quiz builder will allow you to create an entire quiz with questions and answers for all question types. 

We can’t wait to get this into your hands and see what you create!

Access Expiration Extensions

We’ve heard you. A lot of customers have asked us about the ability to extend access to a course or courses in a group without needing to modify the original enrollment date. 

You’ll be pleased to know that this is in the works and coming to the next feature release of LearnDash! 

Soon you’ll be able to extend anyone’s course expiry in just a few clicks. 

Longer Term 

While the team is hard at work on a number of improvements, there are some larger projects we have in the works, including an entirely new template set to bring a fresh design to the front end of LearnDash and an improved user experience. 

In addition, more advanced eCommerce functionality, which we can’t wait to share more about with you. 

For now, we hope you love these new features, and if you have any questions drop our support team a message, and they’ll be happy to help!