A Journey is a structured learning experience built from sections, where each section contains the content learners work through. Journeys give you control over how learners move through the material — what order, how much they need to complete, whether they can test out, and how content is paced over time. This article covers what Journeys are, when to use them, and how they fit alongside other Continu content types.

What a Journey is

A Journey is a container for a complete learning experience. It’s made up of one or more sections, and each section holds the content learners actually consume — articles, videos, workshops, assessments, and other content types from your Continu library.

The structure looks like this:

• Journey (the program)
  • Section 1 (a logical grouping of content)
    • Content item, content item, content item
  • Section 2
    • Content item, content item
  • Section 3
    • Content item, content item, content item

Sections give the Journey shape. They let you group related material, pace the program, and signal to learners where one part of the journey ends and the next begins.

When to use a Journey

Reach for a Journey when you need a learning experience that’s more than a single piece of content but more structured than a topic-based list. Common use cases:

• Cohort onboarding — a multi-week new hire program where each week’s material builds on the last
• Certification paths — foundational modules followed by advanced modules, with a final assessment
• Leadership development — a long-running program with reflection and practice time between sections
• Compliance programs — regulated training that requires specific content sequencing
• Customer education — a guided introduction to a product, paced for the customer’s experience level
• Skill certifications — competency-based programs where learners demonstrate skill at each stage

Journeys are not the right tool for a single piece of content or an ad-hoc list of resources. For that, use Continu’s content types directly (Articles, Videos, Workshops) and let learners find them through Explore or assignments.

Anatomy of a Journey

Every Journey is shaped by four design decisions you make at build time. These decisions, taken together, define what learners experience.

Section order — locked (sections must be completed in sequence) or open (sections can be approached in any order). The Journey-level setting; same option also applies per section for the content inside it. See Section Order: Locked vs. Open.

Section completion mode — each section requires All Content, Some Content (you set the number), or is Optional (doesn’t count toward Journey completion). See Section Completion: All, Some, or Optional.

Test-out assessments — a section can offer an assessment that lets learners skip the content by demonstrating competence. Pass the assessment, the section is complete; fail and the learner works through the content normally. See Skip-Ahead (Test-Out) Assessments.

Delays between sections — in a locked-order Journey, a section can have a calendar-day delay before it unlocks. Section B becomes available a set number of days after Section A is complete. See Delays Between Sections.

The combination of these four decisions covers everything from a strict week-by-week cohort onboarding to an open resource library with optional deep-dives.

How learners experience a Journey

When a learner opens a Journey, they see:

• The Journey title, description, and any banner imagery you’ve set
• A list of sections — each showing its name, its completion status, and whether it’s currently locked
• The content inside each accessible section, with their personal completion progress
• A clear indication when a section is locked due to order requirements or a delay — including a countdown when applicable
• Overall progress against the Journey’s completion requirements

Learners progress through the Journey by completing content. Each section’s progress is tracked separately. When all required sections are complete, the Journey itself is marked complete.

If a section offers a test-out, the learner sees the assessment as an alternate path alongside the content. Passing the assessment marks the section complete without working through the content.

How Admins build a Journey

Building a Journey is a sequence of decisions and content choices, in roughly this order:

1. Create the Journey with a title, description, and banner. Decide whether to set section order to locked or open.
2. Add sections — one per logical part of the program.
3. For each section, drag in content from the Continu library. Set the completion mode (All, Some, Optional). Decide whether to require content completion in order within the section. Optionally add a test-out assessment. Set a delay if applicable.
4. Save the Journey as a draft, then publish when ready.
5. Assign the Journey to the right audience — directly, through an Automation, or by releasing it into Explore (with Smart Segmentation if you want to scope visibility).
6. Monitor progress through the Journey reports.

For the step-by-step build, see Creating Journeys.

Editing a Journey after it's live

Journeys can be edited after they’re published. Existing learners continue on the version of the Journey they started — their experience doesn’t change mid-flight. New learners see the updated Journey.

This versioning model means you can refresh content, tweak completion rules, or add sections to a long-running program without disrupting people who are mid-program. It also means that significant structural changes don’t reach in-progress learners — for major redesigns, the cleaner pattern is to archive the old Journey and create a new one.

See Editing a Live Journey for the full model.

Journeys vs Learning Tracks

Continu has two related content structures: Journeys and Learning Tracks. They serve different needs.

For a simple sequence where every learner sees the same content in the same order, a Track is fine. For anything with more nuance — branching, optional material, test-outs, time-based pacing — use a Journey.

Smart Segmentation and Journeys

Smart Segmentation works on Journeys the same way it works on other content types. Restrict a Journey to specific groups, locations, departments, or any combination of user attributes.

Common patterns:

• A leadership Journey scoped to Directors and above
• A regional onboarding Journey scoped to a specific Location
• A product certification Journey scoped to a specific Team
• A cross-functional program scoped to multiple Departments

See Smart Segmentation: Designing Populations That Maintain Themselves for the rule model.

Common pitfalls

See Also

• Designing Journeys: Best Practices — for design guidance across all the levers
• Creating Journeys — for the step-by-step build
• Section Order: Locked vs. Open
• Section Completion: All, Some, or Optional
• Skip-Ahead (Test-Out) Assessments
• Delays Between Sections
• Editing a Live Journey
• Smart Segmentation — for scoping Journeys to specific audiences