Once you’ve created your brand new course, you need to select it from the Course List, then Create new module. Add the title, then Submit.
Courses are made up of modules, containing a maximum of seven items and one tracked quiz. Within those items are pages – which can be text, reveal, video, or an untracked quiz. We’ll find out more about these later in the guide!
You can have multiple modules in a course, which you can easily drag and drop to rearrange the order they appear in.
To keep courses a manageable length, and to avoid your learners switching off halfway through, the maximum we recommend is two modules per course (one is better), with two or three items in each and three to five pages for each item.
Why will breaking the structure up into bite-sized chunks make my course more effective? The quicker a learner can get to information, summarise and prove their learning via a quiz, the better. This tests their knowledge at regular intervals, and gives learners a sense of achievement and motivation to continue properly engaging with the course content. In the end, people can only concentrate for so long, and if they’re having to read through masses of text then you’ve probably lost them!
So, to define the module structure, select the module title then drag the items and pages over to the left underneath it as required.
The page types in Easy Course Builder are:
Text – add and format text, include an image or animation and link to external documents (PDFs). Always use plain English and write with the learner in mind. Pose questions to help with their learning.
Video – full screen video to add visual interest and increase engagement. It’s easy to add introduction and summary text before and after the video if you want to as well.
Reveal – if you have a lot of text and want to break it up into selectable sections on one screen, with associated images, this page type is for you. This avoids the need for the learner to just continue through lots of separate text pages. An example of a good use is to introduce the topic, for example SMART objectives, then have a reveal section for each of the letters to explain them and give examples.
Untracked Quiz – an untracked quiz is one where the score is not logged to the learner’s training record. It means learners can be tested in a ‘mock’ environment to check they have been understanding the content so far, and not just whizzing through!
To enter item names, select the blue pen icon then Submit. Drag and drop the different items/pages if you need to change the order. Use the X to delete anything.
One tracked quiz item is available per module. This is the quiz that will log a learner’s score and progress. It should ideally appear at the end, and if you have survey set to ‘Yes’ in the course set up, that will appear after the quiz. You can rename it from just Quiz if you want to, using the blue pen icon and changing the Page Title, something like ‘What did you learn?’ is a nice alternative.
Once a course is live, learners will see the module titles on their course list and then once in the module, at the very top of the screen, with the item and page title after it. Item titles are also listed in the Menu button, where learners can select them to move about easily.
Note: if you do choose to have a large number of modules then this might take a long time to deploy, ECB isn’t broken – it’s just working hard, so why not help it out, and your learners, by having fewer modules!
When you’re editing in Easy Course Builder, you can move about quickly by selecting the module, item or page at the top of the Edit screens.
And now that you have your structure, you’re ready to build the content.
The next guide in this section is Building a text page in ECB
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