Branching Lessons

Send learners down different paths through your lesson based on their choices or performance.

Teacharium supports several branching approaches — from simple “click here to go there” navigation to complex conditional routing based on scores and variables.

Action buttons

An Action Button lets you navigate to any specific step in the lesson when clicked. Add one to a step, set its action to Navigate to Step, and pick the target step from your lesson structure.

This is the simplest branching mechanism. Use it when you want a “Go to advanced content” or “Skip to the summary” button that bypasses the normal next/previous flow.

A Navigation Choice component presents two or more options the learner can click, each routing to a different step. This is the foundation of choose-your-own-adventure style lessons.

Add a Navigation Choice component, then configure each choice with a label and a target step. When the learner clicks a choice, they jump to that step — bypassing the steps in between.

Navigation choices pair well with variables. You can set a variable when a choice is made and then use that variable later in the lesson to show personalized content.

See the Navigation Choice reference for configuration details.

Conditional visibility

Not all branching requires navigation. Sometimes you want different content to appear on the same step based on what the learner has done. Use visibility conditions on components to show or hide them based on variable values.

For example, after a question step you might have three feedback components on the results step — each one only visible for a different score range. Every learner sees the same step but gets different content.

Branching Logic controller

The Branching Logic widget on a step evaluates conditions and routes the learner to different next steps based on their values. This is automatic branching: the learner clicks Next, the controller checks your conditions in order, and navigates to the matching target.

Configure it with a list of conditions:

Each condition has a logical expression (like score >= 8 or path == "advanced") and a target step
Conditions are evaluated from top to bottom — the first matching condition wins
Set a Default Target for learners who don’t match any condition

Use Branching Logic when the routing decision should be invisible to the learner — they just click Next and the lesson routes them appropriately.

The Flow Map

The Flow Map gives you a bird’s-eye view of your lesson’s branching structure. Open it from the editor toolbar to see all steps as nodes and all navigation connections as arrows.

Use the flow map to verify that every path leads somewhere sensible and that you haven’t created dead ends. It’s especially valuable in complex lessons with many branches.

Building branching with AI

Branching lessons can be complex to structure manually. The AI assistant can help:

Describe your branching scenario in the lesson abstract (e.g., “Learners make three choices that lead to different outcomes; paths rejoin at the debrief”)
Ask the AI to generate the lesson structure, and it will create steps with appropriate navigation connections
Ask the AI to add or modify branches after the initial structure is created

For a complete walkthrough of building a branching lesson from scratch, see Create a Branching Dialogue Lesson.