Can't 'see' learners if they haven't clicked into the offering - Set up wrong?

Summary:

We have our courses set up as: Details, Requested, Active and the offering inside set up as: Details, Active, Active. Once a learner has gotten into the course, but hasn't proceeded to click 'enroll' into the offering we're not able to see them in the back end of the offering under learning assignments. We can see them at the course level under learning assignments as "No Offering Selected" (even though there's only one offering and it's set to active) but their name doesn't appear in the offering details. It this because we have something set up wrong? We were needing to manage some of the activities for a couple of learners at the