4.11. Enabling Self-Paced Courses

This topic describes how to enable the self-paced courses feature in your instance of Open edX.

4.11.1. Overview

By default, courses are instructor-paced. These courses run on a schedule, typically four to eight weeks, with new content released each week and set assignment due dates. You can configure your instance of Open edX so that it enables self-paced courses. A self-paced course releases content all at once and is available to complete for three to twelve months after the start date. In a self-paced course, there are no due dates other than the course end date.

To enable self-paced courses on your instance of Open edX, you must enable the self-paced course feature in the Learning Management System. Then, course teams are able to set up a course as either instructor-paced or self-paced in Studio.

For information about how course teams set course pacing, see the Set the Course Run Schedule and Pacing in Studio topic in the Building and Running an Open edX Course guide.

Note

Before proceeding, review Guidelines for Updating the Open edX Platform.

4.11.2. Enable Self-Paced Courses in the Learning Management System

To enable self-paced courses, follow these steps to edit the configurations, using the Django administration console for your Open edX LMS.

  1. Log in to the Django administration console for the LMS.

  2. In the Self_Paced section, locate Self paced configurations, and then select Add.

  3. Select the Enabled and Enable course home page improvements checkboxes.

  4. Select Save.