Selling a Course
- Luc Richard
This article assumes that ecommerce has already been enabled on your system. If it hasn't, please contact your administrator.
As an instructor, you are able to sell your courses and specify the fees for (a) an individual users or (b) an entire site.
Step-by-step Guide
To sell courses:
Go to the course in question
Go to Course Administration > Users > Enrollment Methods
Select the "Self enrolment (Advanced)" method from the "Add method" pulldown menu
Fill out the first two sections of the web form as usual.
In the "Payment settings" section, enable "Collect payment"
Specify the various fees
The box next to the "Individual license" is meant to collect the fee for one (1) user license. In other words, if you enter "$10.00" and a user buys 3 licenses, they would be charged $30.00 total (plus applicable taxes.)
The box next to the "Site license" fields is meant to collect the total fee for all users in a given site. In other words, if you enter "$1000.00" and a site has 500 users, they would prepay $1,000.00 (plus applicable taxes) total, and all 500 users could potentially enrol in the course without being prompted to pay again.
Specify the currency
Specify the sales tax
If your organization is responsible for collecting and reporting taxes, please consult with your finance department regarding which sales tax you should be collecting. If Dual Code is acting as your Agent, please contact Dual Code if you're not sure what taxes to collect.
Select one or more payment method.
Specify when the license expires (e.g. when will all enrollments expire, in days)
Click on the "Add method" button at the bottom of the page
Important Notes
The “License expires after” value is different than the "Enrolment duration", which can be found on the same web page. The "License expires after" specifies how long after a purchase all enrolments will expire. The "Enrolment duration" specifies how long after a user enrols in a course they will continue to have access to the course. If the “Enrolment duration” is left empty, it means the user will continue to have access to the course until the license expires.
You can add multiple enrollment methods of the same type. By setting a value for "Only cohort members" in any method, you can therefore set different prices for different cohorts. For example, if you have a cohort called Preferred Partners, you can set "Only cohort members" to "Preferred Partners" and set the “Individual license” to be $100 per user. You can then add a second enrollment method without any restrictions and set the “Individual license” to $200 per user. By doing so, the preferred partners would pay $100 and everyone else would pay $200 to enroll in your course. In order for this to work properly, the "Preferred partners" enrollment method must be at the top of the page in the list of enrolment methods (e.g. above the non-restricted enrolment method).
Using the same strategy as explained above, you can add a third / free enrollment method for your staff to self-enroll at no cost. If doing so, please make sure that you set "Only cohort members" to a cohort that represents your staff.
Given the complexity of refunds (who gets refunded, how much is refunded, how long do they have to get a refund, etc.), refunds must be are handled manually.