Creating your first course

A course is what your members open to learn. You build it as a draft that only your team sees, then publish it. From then on members see the published version, while you keep working on the next one in the background.

Open your courses

Before you start

Whether Courses is on depends on the choice you made at signup. If the Courses area is missing, switch it on under Settings > Features.

Your role needs the matching permissions: View Course to see the course list, Create Course to create one, Edit Course to work on it and Publish Course to publish or unpublish it. The Content tab also needs View Module. Adding a module takes Create Module, while opening a module and changing its status take Edit Module. Giving members access takes Assign Member or Group to Course, and deleting a course takes Delete Course. Roles are set under Settings > Team & Roles.

Inviting your team and setting roles

Create the course

Click Add above the course list. The Create New Course dialog asks for two things:

• a Title, which is required and can be up to 255 characters,
• an Image in 16:9 format, used as the course thumbnail.

Click Create and the course opens straight away, with you as its first author.

Your plan sets how many courses you can have. When you reach that number, the dialog offers an upgrade instead of creating the course. Deleted courses no longer count.

Add the first module

The course opens on the Content tab. Content lives in modules, so start there:

• Create new Module builds a new module for this course. Pick Learn-Module for lessons or Exam-Module for a test and give it a Title.
• Connect existing Module adds a module from your module library.

A new module starts as Hidden, so members will not see it even after you publish. Click its status and switch it to Visible once it is ready. Open the module with Edit to add sections and lessons. Sections start as Draft too, so set them to Visible as well.

Structuring a course with modules and lessons

Describe the course

The Information tab holds what members read before they start: Title, Subtitle, Description and the thumbnail, which you replace with Change Thumbnail. Under Goals you list what members will work toward, and under Authors you name the people behind the course. Only team members can be added as authors.

Members find the description, the authors and the goals on the course's own Information tab. It appears once at least one of them is filled in.

What members see in a course

The Categories bar above the course list helps you keep a long list tidy. Course categories are only shown to team members, never to your members.

Publish the course

Until you publish, the course is a draft and nobody outside your team can see it. Click Publish Course in the course header. In the dialog:

1. Under Select a version to publish, keep Current changes. Publishing it creates a new version.
2. Fill in Version name (optional) and Version description (optional) if you want to label the release.
3. Decide on Notify members about new content. When it is on, members who have access to the course, directly or through a group, receive an email and an in-app notification with a link to it. On a first release this reaches members who already bought a product that includes the course, because they get access the moment you publish.

Click Publish. The course is live, and the header button now reads Update Course.

The button is grayed out while there is nothing new to publish. If publishing fails, the previous version stays online unchanged.

Earlier releases stay in the version list; select one to see its name and description under Version details. Publishing an earlier version brings back exactly the content it had when you first published it.

Give members access

The Access tab stays locked until the course is live, because members can only be given access to a published course. After that you assign members and groups there. Members who bought a product that includes the course before it was published get access automatically when you publish.

Course access and enrollment

Check it as a member

View as member opens the course the way your members see it and needs Edit Course. It sits in the three-dot menu of the course list and of the course header, for published and unpublished courses, and shows your current draft. Nothing you do there is saved.

What members see in a course

The menu in the course list also has Unpublish. Members can no longer see the course, but its content and their progress are kept, and you can publish it again at any time.

Managing the course list

The three-dot menu of a course in the list offers more:

• Copy course link copies the address members use to open a published course.
• Duplicate creates a copy of the course and lets you decide for each module whether the copy gets its own duplicate or stays synchronized with the original. The copy starts unpublished. It takes Create Course and counts toward your plan.
• Delete opens Delete this course?. Under Its own modules you choose whether the modules used only by this course are deleted along with it. Modules used in other courses always stay. The course moves to the trash, where you can restore it.

Select several courses to act on them at once: Publish puts courses that are not live online with their current content, Unpublish takes them offline, Assign category sorts them into a category, and Add Members or Add Groups gives access. Deleting several courses this way keeps their modules in your library.

Deleting a category from the Categories bar keeps your courses, they just lose this category.

• Shared and reusable modules
• The trash
• Lesson content types
• Structuring a course with modules and lessons
• Marketing badges for your courses