Courses are a keystone of any education program. They are made up of sections, lessons, and pages and provide a canvas for a dynamic learning experience. Courses allow for page-to-page navigation and a sidebar menu that includes the course outline and a variety of course utilities.
Use Case Information
The first step in creating a native Thought Industries course is building out your course outline or shell. When creating your course outline, you are actually creating the hierarchy structure of your course, similar to devising chapters in a book. The native Thought Industries course follows a precise structure, which includes Sections, Lessons and Pages. Any easier way to understand this is to think of Sections as Topics, Lessons as Subtopics within the main topic and Pages as the content.
When configured you can control the following:
- Create long format Courses with multiple sections
- Create short format Courses contain 1 or a more sections
Tip
This structure must be followed when creating a course, however, if you prefer a less formal structure, please refer to this article on how to build a MicroCourse.
Creating a Course Content Type
By default, your platform offers a ready-to-use course base content type for creating and building your course. Before you begin, it's important to determine if "course" is the appropriate content type terminology for your learners. For example, you might prefer your learners to see "Module" as the content type instead of "Course".
To create a new content type based on the course base content type, see this article.
Tip
If you've already completed this step, or you're good to go with the term "Course" displaying to learners, skip ahead to creating a course!
Anatomy of a Course
Before building your course outline, let's understand the Thought Industries course taxonomy:
Section
A section is the top of the organizational hierarchy in the course. Each section title should have clear objectives and focus on one significant idea. Think of it like a chapter in a text book.
Lesson
Lessons are the next level down from Sections. Each lesson title should have a clearly-defined purpose and focus on a single objective. Think of it like a chapter sub-heading.
Page
Pages are the main building blocks of courses. Each page should have a single topic that helps build learning toward the lesson's objective.
As you create your course you will see the outline looking similar to this.
Note
There are reserved routes in course navigation for the following list of words. If certain course utilities or pages are enabled, these options will appear in the left navigation menu in a course. Because of this, these words should not be used as section titles.
- Resources
- Notes
- Gallery
- Workbook/Workbooks
- Quiz
- Meetings
- Search
- Assignments
Tip
To find the course ID for a course, you can refer to the URL. In this example, the course ID is highlighted for you in the image.
How to Create a Course Outline
Now that you understand the taxonomy of a course, let's break down the steps to create the outline of a course:
- From your homepage, select Courses > All Courses.
- Click the plus icon in the top right corner of the page to Add New Course.
- From the content creation flow, click the Select button on the Courses tile.
- Next, decide if you'd like to build your course from Blank (scratch) or off of a previously built course (template).
- If starting from blank, next choose your Content Type and then name your course.
- If not starting from Blank, select the existing template to work off of from the dropdown menu and title your new course.
Tip
If you are taking advantage of templates, the content type and many other settings will be carried over to the new course. To learn more about templates, check out this help article.
- Click Create.
- Now you're in the process of creating your new outline. Click Add Section. This will be your first section header, or "chapter" of content.
- Enter section title and click Save.
- You may choose to reveal the section on a future date, which you can indicate in the Release On field. Once a date is saved, an orange dot will appear on the corner of the section in the outline. Hover over it to easily view the release date.
- Enter section title and click Save.
- Click Plus Icon in outline and choose Add Lesson. This will be the first lesson within the section.
- Enter lesson title and decide who to open the lesson to:
- Open to learners only: the lesson will be locked and only available to learners who have access to the course.
- Open to everyone: the lesson will be unlocked and free for preview to the public.
- Open to everyone with email capture: the lesson will be unlocked and free for preview to the public, in exchange for an email address.
- Click Save.
- Enter lesson title and decide who to open the lesson to:
- Click Plus Icon in outline and choose Add Page.
- Choose the type of page you want to create.
Tip
Please refer to our articles for course page types for examples and further guidance.
- Choose the type of page you want to create.
- Repeat steps 4-6 until you have your desired course outline.
- Be sure to click Publish Changes when you are done curating your outline so that your content is able to be viewed by learners when they access the course.
Learner View:
Tips
If the course should be displayed in the catalog, click the Release button in the Release step. A course must have one or more sections or lessons in order to release the course to the catalog. See our article on releasing content to the catalog for more information.
Rearranging Section, Lessons and Pages
Courses consist of one or more sections, lessons, and pages. During the course creation process you can easily move entire sections, lessons, and pages within your course.
- From your homepage, select Courses, then All Courses.
- Click the Content Title for the course you want to alter and you'll land on the Content step.
- To move a section/lesson/page, simply drag and drop the items where you want them to go.
- Changes are automatically saved.
Copying an Existing Page
The copy existing page feature allows you to move an existing page from one lesson to another. This comes in handy if want to move pages across courses.
Tip
If you're interested in copying an entire course, see our Copying a Course article.
- From your homepage, select Courses, then All Courses.
- Click the Content Title for the course you want to add a page to and you will land on the Content Tab.
- Within the course outline, go to the lesson where you'd like your new page to appear. Click the Plus Icon in the outline and click Add Page.
- Instead of selecting a brand new page type, go to the Existing Page tab and search for the page you'd like to copy. You can search for pages within the same course, or from another course within the same instance.
Tip
This search includes all current and deleted pages for your instance. If you accidentally delete a page within any course, you can search for the page title and "copy" it to restore it. We recommend always naming your pages for this reason!
- Click Preview to view any page listed in the search results.
- Select the page title for the page you want to copy and click Use Selected Page at the bottom of the results.
- This will copy the page to the new location in your outline and you can edit from there.
Tip
You can drag and drop to rearrange your pages, but if you're moving a page from one lesson to another by copying, you'll need to delete the original page after copying.
Note
In order to copy a page, the original page must have a page title. If the page you are attempting to copy does not appear in the search results, check the original page to confirm it has a page title.
Managing Utilities in a Course
There are multiple settings that can be enabled to allow learners to engage in areas outside of the course content. These settings can be used to control whether or not learners will have access to certain sidebar and utilities. To set up steps follow these easy steps:
- From your homepage, select Courses, then All Courses.
- Click the Content Title for the course you want to alter and you'll land on the Content step.
- From the left sidebar, click Utilities.
- Navigate between sidebar and utility options.
- Toggle any setting to Yes to enable it.
Utilities Options
Utilities are divided into the following 3 options, each with its own nested options:
- Display Options
- Discussion Options
- Study Tools
Display
- Display Page Titles in Syllabus?: If enabled, learners will see title names for every page, in addition to the titles for sections and lessons.
- Display Assessment Results Page?: If enabled, Learners will continue to see the assessment results page if they navigate back to an assessment page in the course.
- Show Progress?: If enabled, Learners will be able to see their progress in relation to the completion criteria set for the course.
Discussions
- Discussions Enabled?: If enabled, Learners can create or join discussion boards at the bottom of each course page. If enabled, you will also have the option to use a display type of tiles or threads and will be able to toggle on Enable 'liking' of discussion comments?
- Galleries Enabled?: If enabled, Learners can upload images to share and others can view or comment on them.
- Instructor Messaging Enabled?: If enabled, allow Learners to send a private question or message to Instructors in the course. If enabled, you will also have the option to fill out Instructor Emails.The list is delimited by commas.
- Annotations Enabled?: If enabled, instructors can add supplemental notes to the learner view of course pages without changing the course page content. Check out our article on Annotations for more information.
Tip
If discussions are enabled, you also have the option to display discussion rules that learners would see before posting a new thread. This is done in the global Settings area (Settings > Content > Organization & Display > Advanced). Note that discussion rules would apply to all courses where discussions are enabled.
Study Tools
- Reflections Enabled?: If enabled, Learners can access all individual Reflection pages in a single place from the sidebar, in order to view or print.
- Linked Reflections Enabled?: If enabled, Reflection pages from this course will be linked together into a cohesive study tool. Versions can be saved and accessed from the sidebar.
- Skip to Linked Reflection Summary enabled?: If enabled, Learners can answer all questions from the Summary page instead of clicking through each Reflection page.
- Resources Enabled?: If enabled, Learners can access downloads and resource pages directly from their sidebar.
- Quiz builder: If enabled, Learners can practice topics by building their own quiz using questions from any quiz in the course.
Note
Utilities like Gallery and Notes appear in previews for logged-out users, even if the toggles are disabled.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a character limit to course titles
Thought Industries recommends a limit of 80 characters, at which point you will receive a warning. However, the platform can accommodate more, and the Admin UI permits you to exceed this recommended limit.