Building a course

A course is a tree: modules hold lessons, and lessons hold the content a learner works through. Assignments and quizzes are lessons too — they sit in the sequence rather than in a separate area, so a learner meets them in order.

Structure first

Create the modules before writing the content. The module list is the course outline a learner sees on the overview page, and it is much cheaper to reorder an outline than to reorder finished lessons with cross-references between them.

A workable default:

• One module per week, or per theme.
• Three to seven lessons per module. Fewer reads as a stub; more and the sidebar stops being scannable.
• End each module with something the learner produces.

Writing lessons

The lesson editor takes rich text, images, code blocks with syntax highlighting, and mathematical notation. Code blocks and formulas render for the learner exactly as they preview.

Video is embedded by URL rather than uploaded, which keeps the platform out of the transcoding business and lets you keep using whatever your organisation already pays for.

Assignments

An assignment defines what is submitted (a file, text, or a link), when it is due, and how it is marked.

Attach a rubric if more than one person will grade the work. A rubric is what makes two graders arrive at similar marks — without one, consistency depends on both remembering the same unwritten standard, and at any volume they will not.

Publishing

A course is a draft until you publish it. Publishing attaches it to one or more cohorts, and every learner in those cohorts sees it at the course's start date.

Editing a published course takes effect immediately. For a change large enough to invalidate work already submitted, copy the course and publish the copy to the next cohort instead.