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Let Learners Take Lessons in Any Order

Reference libraries, elective content, and skills catalogues work better when learners pick their own path. This guide switches a LearnDash site from forced linear progression to free-order lessons.

You need: LearnDash and Tangible Tweaks for LearnDash active.

1. Enable Independent Lesson Completion​

  1. Go to Settings > Tweaks for LearnDash.
  2. Tick Independent Lesson Completion.
  3. Leave both sub-options on:
    • Allow all lessons to be independently accessible in any order
    • Shared lesson completion
  4. Click Save Changes.

2. Test the learner experience​

As an enrolled learner (test account or private window), open a course and go straight to a lesson in the middle of the list:

  • The lesson opens and shows its content.
  • Mark Complete is available immediately, with no "complete the previous lesson" gate.
  • Completing it updates course progress the same way an in-order completion does.

3. Understand shared completion​

With Shared lesson completion on, a lesson that appears in more than one course only needs to be completed once. Every instance is marked complete together. This is what makes cross-course lesson reuse practical: learners aren't asked to repeat identical content.

note

The plugin maintains a hidden All Lessons course as part of this feature and keeps it out of your course archive automatically. Don't edit or delete it.

Combining with drip​

Free ordering and scheduled release work together: use Drip Lessons to control when lessons become available, while this feature lets learners take the available ones in any order.