Throughout the lessons, enrolled test users have reported myriad instances of being told to “go back and complete” previous quizzes or topics when they get to a subsequent quiz or topic, even if they have indeed completed the prerequisite quiz or topic.
To try to eradicate this problem with the quizzes, I changed settings in all quizzes so that no prerequisite quiz was required. That took care of maybe half of these “go back!” situations.
One big problem is that, in a lesson with linear progression, LearnDash requires a topic to be “marked complete” before moving to the next topic, requiring the user to understand what the “mark complete” buttons do!
The “Mark Complete” only appears if it needs to be clicked. (I think that, by default, it turns into a “Marked Complete” button.) Trouble is, the checkmark sorta implies it’s all set and complete, does it not??” I’ve had several test users complain about this. I did add some explanation of this in the “Course navigation” topic of the “How to take this course” lesson, but that lesson is not required and, quite frankly, shouldn’t be necessary! (And, admittedly, I could fill out the discussion of the issue a bit more within the topic.)
There are at least two plug-ins that can help remedy the “Mark Complete” button problem. One is part of a pricey suite of “pro” plug-ins. So I of course opted for a freebie single plug-in, “Autocomplete LearnDash Lessons and Topics.” In a nutshell, if I’m understanding things correctly, the plug-in “autocompletes” the topic for the user if the user gets to the topic page. Then, the “Mark Complete” and “Next Topic” buttons both take the user to the next topic. If the user revisits a topic page, the “Mark Complete” button will no longer be there. Things seem to work similarly in the navigation found at the top of the topic pages.
Fingers crossed this solves the “Mark Complete” problem!