How to Use Course Content Types, Navigation, and Progress Tracking in Thrive Apprentice

In this article, you’ll learn how to organize your Thrive Apprentice courses using the four content types, understand how navigation works for your students, and see how the progress section tracks their advancement through your course material.

Understanding the Four Content Types

Thrive Apprentice uses a hierarchical structure with four content types that let you organize your course material from broad to specific:

• Course — The top-level container that holds all of your content. Every piece of material lives inside a course.
• Module — An optional organizational layer that groups related chapters or lessons together (e.g., “Module 1: The Basics”).
• Chapter — A sub-section within a module (or directly within a course) that groups related lessons together.
• Lesson — The individual content unit where students consume your material—text, video, quizzes, and more.

Tip: You don’t have to use every level. A simple course can contain just lessons, while a comprehensive certification program might use all four levels. Choose the structure that best fits your content.

Structuring Your Course Hierarchy

When building a course, think of the hierarchy as a nesting system. Here’s how the levels relate to each other:

1. Create a Course as the outermost container.
2. Add Modules inside the course to divide it into major topics or units.
3. Add Chapters inside modules to break topics into smaller groups.
4. Add Lessons inside chapters (or directly inside modules or the course itself) for the actual learning content.

For example, a photography course might look like this:

• Course: Mastering Digital Photography
  • Module 1: Camera Fundamentals
    • Chapter 1: Understanding Your Equipment
      • Lesson 1: Camera Body and Lens Basics
      • Lesson 2: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO
    • Chapter 2: Shooting Modes
      • Lesson 3: Manual vs. Auto Mode
  • Module 2: Composition Techniques
    • Lesson 4: The Rule of Thirds
    • Lesson 5: Leading Lines and Framing

How Course Navigation Works for Students

Thrive Apprentice automatically generates a navigation sidebar for your students. This sidebar displays the full course structure—modules, chapters, and lessons—so students always know where they are and what comes next.

Key navigation features include:

• Expandable sections — Students can expand or collapse modules and chapters to focus on the content they need.
• Next/Previous buttons — Lessons include navigation buttons that move students sequentially through the course.
• Clickable structure — Students can jump to any unlocked lesson directly from the sidebar.
• Breadcrumb-style orientation — The current lesson is highlighted in the sidebar so students can see exactly where they are in the overall structure.

How the Progress Section Tracks Student Advancement

The progress section gives students a clear visual indicator of how far they’ve come and how much remains. Thrive Apprentice tracks progress automatically as students complete lessons.

• Progress bar — A visual bar shows the percentage of the course the student has completed.
• Completion checkmarks — Individual lessons display a checkmark once the student has finished them.
• Module and chapter progress — Higher-level containers show aggregated progress based on the lessons completed within them.
• Course-level overview — On the course overview page, students can see their total progress at a glance.

Note: Progress is tracked per student, so each logged-in user sees their own completion status. Students must be logged in for progress tracking to work.

Dynamic Labels That Adapt Based on Visitor Access

Thrive Apprentice uses dynamic labels that automatically change based on each visitor’s access level. These labels appear alongside courses and lessons to communicate access status without any manual configuration on your part.

Depending on the visitor’s permissions, they may see labels such as:

• Free — The content is available to anyone without restrictions.
• Login Required — The visitor needs to log in to access the course.
• Purchase Required — The visitor must buy a product to unlock the content.
• Restricted — The content is not available based on the current access rules.

These labels update dynamically—if a visitor logs in or purchases a product, the labels change to reflect their new access level. This keeps your course pages accurate and personalized without extra work.

That’s it! You’ve successfully learned how to use the four content types to structure your courses, how navigation keeps students oriented, how progress tracking shows their advancement, and how dynamic labels adapt to each visitor’s access level.

Related Resources

• Creating Your First Course: Learn how to create your first Thrive Apprentice course from scratch.
• Course Bundles: Learn how to create course bundles to package multiple courses together.
• Access Restrictions: Explore how to set up access restrictions and rules to control who sees your content.
• Thrive Apprentice Knowledge Base: Browse the full Thrive Apprentice Knowledge Base for more tutorials.