How to Build a Course

Creating a course enables you to deliver structured and engaging content to your audience. By following these steps, you can efficiently design, customize, and manage your courses, ensuring they meet your students' needs and reflect your curriculum's objectives.

To begin, navigate to the "Memberships" section from the left sidebar. In the Courses dropdown, you will find the "Products" tab, where you can view existing courses or start creating a new one. Selecting "Create Product" allows you to use a pre-designed template or build a course from scratch. 

For this guide, we will focus on the custom creation approach. Click on “Start from Scratch” to continue to the next page.

In the "Build Your Own" column, click on “Start Building” to begin creating a custom product that matches your content.

Naming Your Product

The first step in crafting your course is to name your product. This name should reflect the content and objectives of your course, as it will be visible to your students.

Outline

Start by organizing your course into categories or modules, including lessons, subcategories, and assessments. 

Adding lessons is the core of your content creation, allowing you to include text, images, audio files, and files. You can also adjust settings such as each lesson's title, category, and visibility, ensuring that only published lessons are accessible to students. 

You can also upload a video or lesson thumbnail, which serves as a preview of the content it represents. Its main purpose is to attract viewers and provide them with a quick, visually engaging idea of what to expect.

When uploading video or audio, you have the option to either click or drag a file from your device or insert a downloadable media link. The system automatically validates the linked files to ensure that only supported audio and video formats are accepted.

Drag and Drop

The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to rearrange modules and lessons, helping you to manage extensive content with ease. Click the three horizontal lines to the left of the content you wish to rearrange, then drag and drop it to the correct position.

Assessments

Incorporate assessments into your product to gauge how well learners comprehend the material, providing insight into their knowledge and skills. You can select either a Quiz or an Assignment as the type of assessment. Ensure that you include a title for each!

Add Certificate

New courses include a default course completion certificate. For existing courses, a banner will prompt you to add one. 

In the popup, you can choose and attach default or custom templates directly within the course builder.

Actions Menu

In the Actions menu, you have several options for managing your lessons, subcategories, and assessments:

• Draft Mode: Your product remains unpublished and editable in Draft Mode. Make any necessary changes until you are ready to go live.
• Published: When editing is complete, switch to Published mode to make your product live.
• Locked: For products with multiple categories, use the Locked mode to require visitors to complete previous categories before accessing subsequent ones. Click the "Locked" icon and select the prerequisite post that must be marked as complete to unlock the next category.
• Drip Mode: Set access limits for each category based on the number of days after purchase. Specify the time frame for visitor access to each category.

Collapse/Expand

Adjust the display of each category by clicking the up-down arrow next to the visibility mode menu.

Preview

Click the Preview button in the upper right corner of the Outline page to view your content.

More Actions

Click the three-dot menu next to the Preview button to clone, share, or delete your product. 

Details

In the “Details” section, you can edit the title, description, thumbnail, and instructor information. You also have the option to add custom code and adjust other core aspects of the course.

The recommended dimensions are as follows:

• Product Thumbnail: 1280x720
• Instructor headshot: 300x300
• Logo: 640x64
• Favicon: 32x32.

Customize

In the "Customize" section, you can personalize the appearance of your course page by selecting colors and background images and adjusting sections and lessons to align with your branding. You can also save these themes for future use. These can be managed in the “My Templates” section.

Offers

The "Offers" tab allows you to manage course-related offers linked to the product, including titles, prices, and checkout options. 

Checkout Page

Once you connect an offer to the course from the Membership > Offers section, you can view and edit the checkout page.

The Checkout page consists of:

• Offer Details: You can edit the offer banner, video, poster image, Logo image, and checkout copy.
• Extra Contact Info: You can enable the Collect Address and phone number.
• Service Agreement: Enable or disable the Service Agreement as a requirement. You can also customize your agreement text.

Comments

The "Comments" area is where you can monitor and respond to student interactions in your lessons and assessments.

Certificates

The "Certificates" section lets you manage certificates for course completions.

Community Groups

In the Community Groups section, you can view all the groups a product is part of in one convenient tab. The CRM table provides enhanced search and pagination for quicker navigation. You can preview groups directly from the product page and filter them by Active or Inactive status for better visibility and management.

After setting up your course, you can manage all your course offerings from the "Your Products" page, where you can preview, edit, clone, and share courses by hovering over the course and clicking on the three-dot action dropdown. This central hub makes course management straightforward and organized.

By following this structured approach, you can create a well-designed and engaging course that meets your students' needs. This process not only allows you to deliver valuable content but also provides you with the tools to effectively manage and enhance your course offerings within the CRM, ensuring a seamless educational experience for your audience.

Important Info

In the assessment section of the course, Quiz Explanations allow students to learn from their mistakes with answer details, while Single Choice vs. MCQ Clarity ensures questions are clearly labeled. 

You can track your learning using the new Course Progress Bar and distinct markers highlight Locked and Drip Lessons for better visibility. The Auto-Complete Button automatically updates after tasks are completed, and improved Start Pages and Status Pages make accessing and reviewing quizzes and assignments effortless. Your learners can also benefit from a detailed Full Quiz Review, faster navigation between questions, and easy management of downloads with Download Control.

Features like Image Previews provide a better viewing experience, while modern Shimmers improve the look and feel of loading pages. Behind the scenes, optimized performance ensures faster, smoother interactions for both instructors and students.

Troubleshooting Tips

• Preview Your Course: Regularly preview your course to ensure it looks and functions as intended. 
• Check Visibility Setting: If a lesson does not appear in the preview of your course, ensure it’s set to “Published.”