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Deploying BeedeezThe foundationAcademiesWhen not to create an academy

When not to create an academy

An academy walls off the learner's experience: it gives each brand or banner its own universe, with its own identity and its own selector. It is the tool for multi-brand networks, and a disproportionate tool for almost everything else. This page walks through the needs that look like that case and the lighter tool that covers each of them. The setup itself is described in Creating an academy.

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When not to create an academy

An academy walls off the learner’s experience: it gives each brand or banner its own universe, with its own identity and its own selector. It is the tool for multi-brand networks, and a disproportionate tool for almost everything else. This page walks through the needs that look like that case and the lighter tool that covers each of them. The setup itself is described in Creating an academy.

The question that decides

Do your learners need to know they are changing universe?

  • Yes, two banners, two identities: that is an academy. See Understanding academies.
  • No, you only want to file, target or wall off administration: one of the tools below is enough.

Filing content: the sub-track or the category

Once a population receives thirty tracks, you start looking for one more storey to file them in. An academy looks like it fits; it is not a filing level though, it is a wall the learner has to cross. Two tools file without walling off:

  • Create a sub-track adds a level of grouping inside the track, with its own reading of progress. See Organising the content of a track.
  • The Category is the learner’s search axis: the track distributes, the category files, and a category cuts across tracks. See Categories.

Lightening the home page

If the need is only for the home page to breathe, untick Show this track in the home page track widget in the track’s settings: the track stays reachable without taking up room on the home page.

Restricting content to a population: the group

Distribution already goes through groups: a learner outside the group does not see the content. Restricting a track to a population needs no universe at all. See Understanding groups.

Walling off administration: the department, without academy mode

A department already has its own content, groups, analytics and administrators, and it is invisible to the learner. Academy mode adds one thing only: walling off the learner’s experience. If nobody on the learner side should perceive the separation, leave the This department is an academy toggle off.

What an academy costs

These costs apply from the first academy onwards:

  • the learner gets a universe selector and has to understand where they are; without a distinct visual identity per academy, switching becomes confusing;
  • analytics are read per perimeter through the department filter: a learner present in two academies counts in both, and the two completion rates do not add up. See Academies, analytics and engagement;
  • engagement settings have to be decided academy by academy, since each academy only overrides what it defines and inherits the rest from the main account;
  • an academy is still a department: content belongs to the department it was created in and circulates only by pinning or duplication. See Sharing a track across departments;
  • when a permission is attached to a department, the Administrator profile is no longer offered: Deputy becomes the most complete system profile available for that permission.

What an academy does not separate

An academy does not partition everything the learner sees, and expecting it to is the second source of disappointment.

  • A ranking never compares the learner to the members of their academy alone. The three modes available are Global ranking, Ranking with users sharing the same groups and Ranking with users sharing the same primary groups. An academy can hide the ranking through Activate rankings, but it cannot turn it into an internal ranking.
  • A forum belongs to the capsule, not to the academy. A capsule pinned into two academies has a single forum, and learners from both answer each other there.
  • A notification does not bring the learner back into the right academy. Opening one that points at another academy’s content switches nothing.

The trap

⚠️ Going back involves the whole department. An academy is a department: its groups, its content and its learners live in it, and removing a department also deletes all its users, sub-departments included. If none of the tools above covers your need, raise it rather than repurposing the academy: an established workaround becomes a permanent constraint, for you and for your learners.

Going further

Academies, analytics and engagementCommon problems: academies
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