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Can I collect information from my members at registration?
Can I collect information from my members at registration?

Collect custom data from your members when they sign up.

Laurie Garcia avatar
Written by Laurie Garcia
Updated over a week ago

For administrators

We're often asked about the need to collect specific data about members when they first join the account, subscribe, or register in a specific course. The data you're seeking to collect might range from phone number or physical address, to organizational role or affiliation, to highly specific data unique to your educational goals or organizational needs.

Registration with Pathwright is simple: we require only...

  • first name

  • last name

  • email address

How to collect additional information

While we don't currently support adding custom required fields on the registration form, there are a variety of ways to capture the additional information that you need.

1. Profile fields

Each member can optionally update their profile with their location and bio, and these fields are only visible to staff by default. If you'd like to allow learners to share their profile information with other learners, you can optionally turn on the Member Directory for your course(s).

The location and bio are included in the downloadable Member Progress Report for easy export.

If these fields will meet your needs, consider prompting users to update their profile in the first step of your course. You can include a link to the profile settings along with any instructions if there's a specific way you'd like them to input the information.

The link to open the profile settings is your domain plus /manage/profile/.

2. Embedded survey or form

Alternately, you can use a third-party survey or form embedded inside a course to collect any additional information that you need.

Here are further instructions for embedding a third-party survey or form in your path.

We really like Typeform, and it's possible to send hidden data fields, like user name and email address, when learners complete the embedded Typeform in Pathwright.

3. Emailed survey or form

If you'd like to send a third-party survey or form by email, you can automate this via our Zapier integration.

Here are some possible Zapier triggers for sending a survey or form by email...

  • New school member — triggered when a new member account is created.

  • New student subscription — triggered when a member subscribes to a subscription plan.

  • New registration — triggered when a member joins a course.

  • New cohort — triggered when a new cohort is created (helpful for tracking new member-created cohorts)

For example, if you would like to share the survey only when a new member creates an account for the first time, you can set that up using the "new school member" trigger. The action would be sending the survey, or sending a customized email with a link to the survey.

4. Send billing addresses to Stripe

We also recently added an option to require learners purchasing a course or subscription plan to enter their billing address on the Stripe Checkout page (primarily for tax purposes). This sends their billing address to your connected Stripe account. However, this is limited to learners that pay you and would not include any learners who are studying for free. Contact us and ask us to enable this option for your account.

5. Assessment questions

It's also possible to build a survey within Pathwright using ungraded assessment questions.

The benefit of using built-in assessments is that learners' answers to assessment questions can be viewed and graded by staff right there in the platform via the Review screen and Inbox. This also provides built-in private feedback discussion on the assessment responses.

Staff enrolled in the course will be automatically notified when a step is completed that is set up to be reviewable.


However, answers to assessment questions created in Pathwright cannot currently be exported. If a spreadsheet of responses is required, using a third-party survey or form as detailed above will better meet your needs.

FAQs

Q. What if people skip over an embedded survey?

A. Here are some ideas to consider:

  1. Following the embedded survey, add a Tasklist Block with a single task: "I have completed the survey." Learners won't be able to mark the step complete (and thus won't be able to complete the course) unless they also complete the accountability question affirming that they have submitted the survey.

  2. Use the honor system, but with a little more weight. Add a Multiple Choice Block and add a statement like "I understand that I will not receive any credit for this course unless I have submitted the registration form. I have submitted the form." Answer options: "True/False." Under the step settings, add a point value and minimum passing score. Learner will have to select "True" in order to complete the step and earn completion on the course.

  3. Add an extra layer of accountability. Add the Multiple Choice Block as described above, and under the step settings, add a point value and minimum passing score and then select "Make reviewable." The teacher or moderator will be notified to review the step completion. If the survey was not received, assign a 0, and learners will need to resubmit the step.

Learners will be required to affirm their survey submission before they can mark the step complete in order to earn completion on the course and download a certificate, if offered.

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