So, you’ve created your course script and uploaded the assets, and built it in ECB. How do you see what it’s going to look like for your learners, and make tweaks before you take the plunge and make it live? Good question! Here’s exactly how:
From your course list, underneath the course title, select the blue text Deploy.
Then choose Preview Course on Staging.
Now select Back to main menu, top left of the course list, and from the main dashboard, choose Your courses.
This is the course roadmap view the learner will see, select the course and QA it.
You can open the Easy Course Builder in a new tab, so you can toggle between the course and the build tool to make tweaks. (Remember to update your script too!)
Repeat the Deploy, Preview Course on Staging steps to see the amends.
When you’re happy with the course, it’s been thoroughly checked, and you’re ready to release it to your learners - select Deploy again under the course title, but this time select Deploy Course to Live.
One thing that’s a useful part of the preview and editing process is incorporating peer reviewing. If you’ve spent all this time creating and building a course, you may not be able to spot any errors or information that doesn’t quite make sense. A fresh pair of eyes is always great! And this is why peer reviewing courses on the staging platform is an important part of the course creation process. People who may be seeing the course for the first time will be able to point out if sections need elaborating on or if information is missing. And when the preview and editing stage is complete, you’re ready to deploy the course to your learners!
Please note that simply deploying your course is not the same thing as "giving that course to people".
There are a few things you need to do to ensure your learners actually have access to a new course:
Assign to a learning profile – People tend to be assigned a learning profile that has courses relevant to them and their roles linked to the profile. So, if you’re deploying a brand new course, it needs to be assigned to a profile so that the people who need to complete the course will have it available to them on their course roadmap. You can do this by going to Courses … Assign Courses, then Group courses into learning profiles, followed by Assign courses to user profile. You might find this guide useful: Grouping courses into learning profiles
Assign to a location or personal attribute – Your new course might not apply to everyone equally so you’ll need to assign this course in a different way. You might find this guide useful: Assigning attributes to courses
Assign to a course type – You'll also want to assign your new course to the relevant course type, as all courses need to be assigned to a course type or they’ll appear on the learning platform as blanks. You can do this by going to Courses … Group & Sort Courses, then Manage course types. You might find this guide useful: Managing course types effectively
Communicate it - After spending so much time and effort on creating a new course, you want people to know it exists! So, make sure you tell people, especially your learners, about the new course.
Here’s a checklist that you can go through to double check your course is ready for your learners:
Have you included a version number for your course (or updated if you’re making a change to an existing course)? - A version number is important for courses because they will be incredibly helpful down the line when you’re reporting or going through due diligence and want to see what changes were made when.
Is the course code unique and ideally in line with your other courses? - Each course needs a unique reference on the platform, so make sure you’ve included this when creating a new course. Course codes cannot be amended once created, so having a system in place for your course codes is useful.
Have you got a course roadmap image? - This is the small image that appears on the list of your courses next to the course title. You cannot create a course without this, so make sure you have one and it’s the one you want!
Have you double checked your course script for any errors or gaps? - This one is pretty straightforward, and it’s what we were talking about earlier in the guide regarding peer reviewing your courses on the staging platform before you make it live.
Are the modules and quiz in the order you want them to be in? - As well as checking your course script, you also want to check your course structure. Is the information in the order you want the learners to see it in? Or perhaps a module is missing? This one is important as making changes to your course structure after live deployment cannot be done by you or your colleagues, and requires you to contact our team to make the changes for you.
After course deployment, have you assigned the course to a learning profile? - Without this step, learners may not be able to view or access the new course, which is exactly what you don’t want!
And have you also assigned it to a course type? - This is essential as courses without an assigned course type will come up as blanks on the learning platform.
Have you communicated your new course to your learners? – And finally, you need to tell people that there’s a new course to complete, otherwise they may not know to complete it!
The next guide in this section is Why won’t my ECB course load?
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