TOPIC: Simplified User and Certification Path Management?

Hi,

Have a couple of questions. before I get to them, should provide you some background. We make courseware for institutions and sell to the colleges direct. Hence once a college buys, all their students get free enrollments into the courses the college has paid for. Also, most of this courseware is a work in progress. We keep adding lessons/subjects now and then, and replacing older ones.

The two problems I have are:
1) User Management
2) Certification Path Management

1) User Management: I have User Groups defined for each institution in Joomla ACL. I also have Access Levels defined for each course. Is it possible to simply assign the CertPath to a list of user groups (institutions) so that all users in the group automatically get access to the CertPath, or a better option would be to assign the CertPath for a specific Joomla Access Level, that way each CertPath would be assigned to only one Access Level, under which the user groups can be managed from Joomla ACL instead.

I know this means people signed up for a CertPath could be removed mid-way. But this is our model, since the course is actually free for the enrolled student, subject to the college making periodic payments (subscription). Hence access anyway needs to be cut when payments stop. The payments are for continued access to the CertPath, and not for a specific number of attempts. If there is a way to do this, it would simplify user management a lot.

2) Certification Path Management: The content provided under a Certification Path (courses, lessons) is dynamically changing. Since we're launching as a work-in-progress and the colleges understand this. For example for a specific program, we would launch with only 60% of the curriculum covered, provide access to that portion at the beginning of the year, and then keep adding courses/lessons as the year goes by, with the objective of covering 100% of the curriculum by the time students complete the first 60%. Also the courses/lessons themselves change every few months, while a student's enrollment lasts a year or more. Hence, courses/lessons constantly need replacement, old ones need to be removed, new ones need to be added to the CertPath.

However, once there are enrollments in a CertPath, I am unable to modify the contents of the CertPath. Please advise as to how I can go about this.

yes, you can put a whole group of users into the certification path, but they should also be in the Students group first.
you cannot change a Certification paths content after the first student has purchased access to it. You risk corrupting the database.
Think of it this way. If you have a CP with lessons 1 2 and 3, then a student buys access to it, he completes lesson 1 and 2, then you delete lesson 2, you have corrupted the data.