Course access & prerequisites

Every course has two settings that decide who can open it and when. They live in the course's settings — Edit course details in a course's row menu, or the Settings button at the top of a course's workspace — and take effect immediately.

Setting	What it decides
Who can open this course	Draft, Open, or Invitation only — see below.
Prerequisite courses	Other courses a learner must finish before this one opens.

Who can open this course

One choice, three answers:

Draft — staff only. Instructors and admins can open it — including with View as learner, so you can try it as your learners will before you open it. Learners don't see it; one who follows a link to it is told This course isn't open right now. Use this while you build the course, and again when the term is over.
Open — anyone in the organization. Everyone with access to your organization sees the course in their list and can enrol themselves. This is the default for a new course.
Invitation only — learners you enrol. Learners still see the course in their list, so someone told "take the audiometry course" can find it — but they can't enrol themselves, and only the students you add on the course's Enrollments tab can open it. Until you add someone, nobody but staff can get in. A learner who isn't on the roster is told to ask their instructor, never sold anything.

A course parked as a Draft remembers whether it was Open or Invitation only, so reopening it later doesn't quietly change who can get in.

If you've used Theta for a while

This used to be three separate switches — Status (Unlocked / Locked), Visibility (Visible / Hidden) and Enrollment (Open / Gated). They collapsed into the one above because only three of their eight combinations meant anything: Locked was Draft, Gated was Invitation only, and Hidden did nothing an access rule ever read. An old course left Unlocked but Hidden now shows as Open (or Invitation only) and becomes visible in the learner list the next time you save its settings.

Prerequisites deserve the rest of this page.

Prerequisite courses

A prerequisite is a whole course a learner must complete before they can start this one. The classic use is onboarding: a university program can require every student to finish Intro to Theta before any of the program's own courses unlock, so nobody meets a graded case without first learning the audiometer.

Pick prerequisites in the course's settings. The picker offers:

Your organization's own courses — any of them except the one you're editing. A course that is a Draft or Invitation only is offered too, with a badge saying so, because learners will need to be able to finish it: a draft can't be started by anyone who hasn't already, and an invitation-only one needs them on its roster as well.
Intro to Theta — the one Theta course you can require. Every account can reach it at no cost, so a prerequisite can never turn into a surprise paywall, and it is the requirement that means something: learn the audiometer before meeting a graded case. Theta's other courses — the library topics, the masking course, anything paid or Pro — aren't offered: they are Theta's teaching content, not gates for your curriculum. (A topic published in the Theta Library can be copied into your organization if you want to require it — the copy is yours. Theta's sold courses, such as the masking course and Comprehensive Hearing Testing, can't be copied.) Neither are the Audiogram of the Day or the Weekly Refresher, which never "finish".

You can pick more than one. When you do, learners must finish all of them — there is no "any of these" option. Requiring two or more is unusual, but nothing stops you.

What counts as complete

A learner has completed a course when they have a finished attempt on every lesson and every quiz in it. Readings, videos and other passive content don't count either way, and an attempt an instructor has voided doesn't count at all. The moment the last one is finished, the completion is recorded on the learner's enrollment with the date, and kept from then on: voiding one of their attempts later, or adding a lesson to the course, changes what's left for them to do today, not the fact that they finished it. For your organization's own courses you'll see it as a Completed badge (with the date) on the learner's member page, in the course's Progress tab and as a "Course Completed" line in their activity there; the learner sees it on the course in their own course list and on their dashboard. For Intro to Theta and other Theta courses the learner sees the tick on the Requires line of the courses that need it; there is no per-learner view of Theta-course completions inside your organization yet. A prerequisite course that has no lessons or quizzes yet is treated as already complete — the lock appears the moment you add the first lesson to it.

Starting, not continuing

Prerequisites decide who may start a course. Because a completion is recorded when it happens, a learner who has finished Intro stays eligible for the courses that require it even if you later void one of their Intro attempts so they can redo it, or add a new lesson to Intro. (If a learner finished a course before Theta was recording completions, Theta works it out from their attempts until it records it — and for them, voiding an attempt or adding a lesson can still change the answer.) And a learner who has already begun a course — any attempt or quiz in it, or a recorded completion of it — keeps it regardless, so nobody is ever stranded mid-course. Learners who haven't started yet must satisfy the requirement as it stands today.

What learners see

In the course list, a course with prerequisites shows a Requires line naming each one, ticked once finished. Until every one is done, the course's button reads Complete … first (just Complete first on a phone) and takes the learner straight to the course they still owe.
Opening the course directly shows the same list in place of the content, with finished courses ticked and a link into each unfinished one.
Enrolling is a separate question. Learners aren't offered Enroll while a prerequisite is still owed (they couldn't open the course anyway), but you can enrol a whole class from the course's Enrollments tab at any time — the roster never waits on prerequisites; starting does.

What staff see

Instructors and admins of the organization are never locked out of their own courses by a prerequisite, so you can always open and check what you've built. If you want to experience the lock exactly as a student would, use View as learner, which removes the exemption.

Guardrails

No loops. If course B already requires course A, you can't make A require B (directly or through a chain). Theta refuses the save and names the loop, because a loop would leave every learner unable to start either course.
Deleting a course removes it as a prerequisite from any course that named it. Nothing stays locked behind a course that no longer exists.
Unenrolling a learner deletes their enrollment record, and the recorded completion date with it — the same happens when they're removed from the organization. Their attempts are kept, so if they come back Theta works the completion out again from those; a lesson added in the meantime would then count against them, exactly as it would for someone who hadn't finished.
A prerequisite that is itself a Draft can't be started or continued by anyone who hasn't finished it, so the courses behind it stay closed to those learners until you open it again. Learners who had already finished it are unaffected.
Copying a Theta catalog course into your organization gives you a fresh copy with no prerequisites — set them on the copy if you want them.

At a glance

"Who can open this course" is one choice (Draft / Open / Invitation only); prerequisites are a list of courses to finish first.
Requiring several prerequisites means all of them.
"Finished" means every lesson and quiz attempted to completion — voided attempts excluded. It's recorded with a date the moment it happens, and kept.
Prerequisites gate starting a course; a learner already in it keeps it.
Instructors can still enrol anyone; staff are exempt; loops are refused.
Intro to Theta is always offered as a prerequisite, for every organization.