At Thkee, we take extremely seriously our responsibility to protect students from requests for personally identifiable information (PII) and upsells. The course should be learning-focused and free of any promotional content.
That being said, we are aware that obtaining the necessary materials, software, or certification often requires additional financial investments while preparing a course. Providing the learner with extra features, such as resources and discounts, is essential to creating a top-notch Thkee course.
These resources may be provided through the Course Setup Lecture in order to accommodate them while maintaining the integrity of the course experience.
What is a Course Setup Lecture?
An arrangement of courses One of the course's initial lectures, this one is posted following the introduction but before the learning section of the course materials. You can use this area to go over or include a list of the prerequisites needed to finish your course. It is regarded as an essential resource that students should consult before starting their course.
The Course Setup Lecture is usually used by instructors to give:
- Exam vouchers
- Discounts for software taught in the course
- Industry-standard certificates or credits administered by the instructor
- Free interactive labs on an instructor’s website cannot be offered through the Thkee platform
What are the rules for the Course Setup Lecture?
To guarantee that any shared resources are restricted to those necessary to meet the course requirements or learning objectives, the course setup lecture includes a number of rules.- For each course, only one Course Setup Lecture is allowed.
- To make it easy to identify the Course Setup Lecture from other lectures, the word "Setup" must appear in the title. For instance, "Setup Lesson," "Course Setup Lecture," "Getting Set Up for Your Course," etc.
- The student must give permission before being a part of any mailing lists if the instructor receives an email from the learner.
- Suggestion: You could think about including a lecture description that says something like "Official Course Setup Lecture" to help prevent misunderstanding with other lectures that might also have the word "setup" in the title.
We also want instructors to be as clear as possible about what the student will need to do in order to access these resources on the course landing page and during the Course Setup lecture. Examples of this kind of transparency include:
- Any associated costs
- Whether a credit card is required to access free trials
- Whether signup is needed for another site
- Personally Identifying Information (PII) collected
- How will any PII be handled e.g. if learners will be added to any newsletters or mailing lists
- Whether the resources are provided by third parties, or directly from the instructor
When using Thkee, students should know exactly when to stop and when to provide personal information (PII) or payment details to other platforms.
What shouldn’t I put in a Course Setup Lecture?
Any reference to resources that are suggested but not necessary, such as instructor offers that may be purchased, should be provided through the Bonus Lecture. This consists of:
- Course coupons or discount codes
- Instructor offerings with associated fees like labs, coaching, books, etc.
- Recommended readings
- Proprietary instructor certificates that require PII
Escalation policy
We will consider it a violation of our policies when an instructor is obviously breaching the letter or spirit of Thkee policies in an effort to manipulate the system, or if we observe a significant detrimental effect on the student experience (high rates of refunds or unsubscribes).
Find out what happens when there is a violation of our policies.