Setup Considerations: course structure

What this achieves

A course is the unit your whole catalogue is built from, and its shape decides what people can find, what they are credited with, and what you can report on. These decisions are far cheaper to make before the catalogue exists than after people have completed things.

Decision 1: how big a course should be

The temptation is to make one course per subject. The better test is what a learner should be able to finish in one sitting and be credited for.

Option	Description
Fewer, larger courses	Less to maintain. A learner who stops halfway is credited with nothing, and reporting shows only that they did not finish.
More, smaller courses	More to maintain. Progress is visible in smaller steps, and each piece can be reused in more than one learning path.

Smaller courses combine into a learning path, so granularity costs you little and buys reuse. A single large course cannot be split later without losing the completion history attached to it.

Example: HC Corp UK Ltd builds separate short courses for its induction topics and sequences them into one path, rather than a single induction course a new joiner either finishes or does not.

Decision 2: modality

Option	Description
Self-Paced	Online, taken whenever the learner chooses.
Live	Online, delivered at a set time.
ILT	Instructor-led, delivered in person.
Blended	A combination.
External	Hosted by an outside provider, reached by a link.

Modality is not cosmetic. An external course points at someone else’s platform, so Humavera records that it was assigned and completed but does not hold the content — you are tracking, not delivering.

This is the distinction most often got wrong, and it has real consequences.

Option	Description
Related skills and competencies	What the course is about. Used for catalogue search, filtering, and recommendations. Awards nothing.
Grants on completion	What the learner is credited with when they complete, at a proficiency level you choose.

A course listing a skill as related but not granting it will never move anybody’s skill profile, however many people complete it. If your gap analysis is not improving after a training push, this is the first thing to check.

Example: an HC Corp UK Ltd course related to a technical skill appears when James Whitfield searches for that skill — but unless the skill is also configured as a grant, completing it leaves his profile unchanged.

Grants are idempotent: someone already at the same or a higher level is left alone rather than downgraded. That makes a grant safe to add to a course people have already taken.

Decision 4: whether completion issues a certificate

A course can auto-issue a certificate on completion by nominating a certification template. Two things follow.

The template must be active, or nothing is issued — an inactive template is a silent failure. And if the template carries a validity period, every learner who completes starts an expiry clock, which becomes a renewal obligation you will be managing later.

Do not attach a certificate to a course merely because you can. Attach it where the credential genuinely matters and somebody will act when it expires.

Decision 5: cost

Cost is recorded per learner and does two things. It decides whether assigning the course routes for approval — free and internal courses enrol immediately, paid ones need approval first — and it feeds budget calculations when learning paths are generated from skill gaps.

Record real costs even where the number feels notional, because both behaviours depend on it.

What is expensive to change later

Decision	Cost of changing later
Splitting a large course into several	Highest. Completion history belongs to the original course and does not transfer.
Modality	High. Changing from self-paced to external means the content stops being yours.
Adding a grant	Low, and safe — grants are idempotent.
Adding a certificate to an existing course	Medium. It applies to future completions and creates ongoing renewal work.
Cost	Low. It changes approval routing from the point you set it.

What happens next

Create the courses, add their content, and publish. Publishing is what makes a course enrollable, and a course cannot be published until it has at least one content item.