Course completion
What reaching 100% means, and what it does not.
When a course reads 100%
When the student has completed every lesson attached to the course. The progress bar fills and My courses shows 100%.
What happens next
Nothing.
There is no completion message, no certificate, no email, no badge, and no report. Completion is a number in the student's own view.
That is not a defect to work around silently — it is a fact to design for. Decide what completion should mean for your course and provide it yourself:
| You want | How to provide it |
|---|---|
| A closing message | A final lesson titled Finishing up, with the message as its content |
| A downloadable resource | Attach it to that final lesson |
| A certificate | Issue it manually, or with a separate tool |
| To know who finished | Ask students to tell you, from that final lesson |
The final-lesson pattern covers most of it. Add one lesson at the end of the last section that congratulates the student, links to what comes next, and hands over anything they have earned.
Courses that cannot reach 100%
The most common completion problem is a course that will not finish.
The percentage counts every lesson attached to the course, including lessons with no section — which do not appear in the outline. A student can complete everything visible and stop at 90%.
Check it before launch:
- Open Lessons and filter by the course.
- Look at the Section column.
- Any dash is a lesson counted but not shown.
Fix it by assigning a section, or by detaching the lesson from the course if it does not belong.
Completion in manual mode
If lessons are ticked manually, some students will finish the course and never reach 100% because they stopped ticking.
Nothing is wrong; the percentage is a self-report. Tell students how it works in the course description, and do not treat the number as an attendance record.
Completion does not affect access
A student who finishes keeps their access exactly as before — access is decided by login, rules and purchase, never by progress. Equally, finishing does not extend access: a lapsing subscription still lapses.
If completion should end access, that is a decision for your product setup, not something POM LMS does.
Adding lessons after students finish
Add a lesson to a completed course and every student who had 100% drops below it.
Their record is unchanged — the total simply grew. Expect messages about it, and either announce the addition or put substantial new material in a new course.
Verify
- Take a test student through every lesson of a short course.
- Confirm My courses shows 100%.
- Confirm the final lesson delivers whatever you want completion to mean.
- Confirm no lesson is attached to the course without a section.