When prospective learners register themselves on the waitlist for a paid course in Catalog, they aren’t automatically enrolled into the course when a spot opens. They receive an email notification of the “Waitlist Invite Email” type which contains a user-specific link to then pay and claim the spot. However, on the student dashboard, the learner can only view the course where they are waitlisted and not take any actions from there.
Our suggestion is to have a feature in the UI (e.g. on the Student dashboard list) for learners to not only view the waitlisted course but also accept the waitlist and continue to payment when it is their turn to claim the spot.
This would help to address two workflow problems we are facing with learners accepting the waitlist spot:
- The first issue is that the hyperlink and prominent action button in this email notification directs to a URL in the following format: http://[Catalog URL]/courses/[listingID#]/enrollment/new. Therefore, the learner must be logged in to their Catalog account first for this link to work, and otherwise they are treated as a new user and sees that the enrollment is full even if they follow the link. This creates confusion about accepting their waitlisted spot as stated in the default email notification.
- The second issue is that the hyperlink depends on a unique URL that is only contained in this email notification. At our institution we are asked to make emails link-free for cybersecurity reasons, and we would like to provide alternatives for learners to take actions from within the main Catalog interface wherever possible.
