How to Build a Course
Get Started:
1a) From your Get Started page, click the ‘Build your first Text Course’ Icon:
1b) Or you can click My Courses and select the blue ‘Create New’ in the top right corner of the page:
Course Details:
This is where you can view/add/edit the basic information of your course, including your first message to your new Learners!
2a) On the Course Details page, you can view/add:
Course Name: This is the name that will display to your Learners when they sign up for the course, and it will be used to categorize your course on our analytics page. So make sure it is clear and unique.
Description: Provide a brief overview of your course, its goals, and its content. This will be seen by potential Learners, so clear messaging will lead to increased engagement
Author: This is for your internal team to know who created the course. This will not display to Learners.
Course Activation Message: This is the first message that new Learners will receive after enrolling in your course. This is where you can introduce yourself, the course, and provide context for your Learners. Your first impression is important! Check out our Writing Guide if you get need some inspiration!
Course Cover Image: This image will display at the top of your Activation Message. For Image size, we recommend a 16:9 ratio at no larger than 720px for best display across devices.
Preview: This will give you a preview of how your Activation Message will display on mobile devices.
2b) After working through this page, Click 'Save Changes' and then 'Create Lessons' in the bottom right corner of the screen to move on!
Create Lessons - View and Edit Course Content:
The content editor is where you take your course from the draft/outline stage to launch-ready. Each day of your course can be broken down into a Module. Each module contains one image, some course content, and a follow-up question or two for your Learners. This basic formula is expanded on in our Writing Guide if you're not sure where to start.
Below we will go over each component of the Create Lessons page.
Lessons:
Lessons: A Lesson equates to 1 day of your course, for example, a 7-day-long course should have 7 Lessons. 5-10 is the avg.
Clicking 'Add Lesson' will create a new Lesson, and clicking the Trash Can Icon will delete it.
Each Lesson consists of an Image, Name, Body, Questions, and Responses.
Below we will go over each of these parts.
Image:
This is the image that displays at the top of your text message. Each module can have its own unique image. We recommend images that are attention-grabbing, informative, fun, or all 3!
For Image size, we recommend a 1:1 ratio at no larger than 720px for best display across devices. We support .jpeg, .png, .gif, and .bmp files. To upload an image, select 'Click to Upload' and upload from your device.
Lesson Name:
The Lesson Name displays at the top of your course content in each text. It is there to briefly remind the Learner what course they are taking, the day of the course, or what content they are receiving that day. For internal teams with multiple editors, it is important to keep Lesson names clear so everyone knows what they are working on or editing.
Body:
This is where the bulk of your daily course content should reside. There is a 1,200-character limit, so brevity is key! We recommend clear and direct language with Emojis to highlight important information. If you want to learn more about best practices for your content, feel free to check out our Writing Guide.
You can type your Body Text into the text window and click the '+Emoji' icon in the bottom left of the text editor to add Emojis as needed.
Some things to consider when writing out your Body Text:
Goal: What is the point of this module? What can the learner do when it's complete?
Potential Content: What types of things do I want to talk about here?
When you complete the body of your module, you're now ready to add your follow-up questions.
Questions:
Each Module should have 1-3 follow-up questions. The purpose of these questions is to keep Learners engaged in the course. You can measure response rates, and gain insight into how well your Learners are absorbing your content!
Questions can be open-ended, when someone has a preset response and can respond anything, or multiple choice, where we can give a specific answer based on A, B, C, or D.
Choose 'Add Free Response' or 'Add Multiple Choice'. To the right, you can delete questions by clicking the trash icon, or open the question edit window by clicking the down arrow. **
In the Question Edit Window, you can add/edit your Question Prompt and your Response message as needed.
For Multiple Choice Questions you can add/edit each Answer Choice, customize your Responses, and designate the correct answer. You can add new Answer Choices by clicking the 'Add Answer' button in the bottom left, or delete and answer choices by clicking the 'Trash Can' icon in the top right.
Be sure to 'Save Changes' regularly throughout the course creation process. Once you've completed all the Lessons for your course, you can click 'Create Distribution' in the bottom right corner to move on to Distribution Settings and Launch your course!
Distribution Settings - Scheduling and Sharing your Course:
Once your course content is completed, you can choose who will receive it, when they will receive it, and how they can access your new course!
Distribution Settings:
A learner enrolls in a course through a distribution which governs the schedule (days/times) messages will be sent. This is the name of the distribution for your new course. After your course is live, you can view this distribution in the Distributions section of the platform. This name will be used in analytics and can help organize courses and learner pool.
Enabled Toggle:
Here you can enable your course for the users in your Distribution. Moving the Toggle to "Enabled" allows users to sign up for your course and become part of your Distribution group. If you are ready to launch your course please make sure this toggle is set to "Enabled" and the switch turns orange.
Scheduling:
In this section, you can choose the days and times your course will be delivered. You can also decide what to do if people are not engaging with your course content.
Select Days: Simply click the days you want your course content to be sent, they will be highlighted in blue, and days in white will not be included. For example, if you only want course content sent on weekdays, click Monday through Friday so they are highlighted blue and leave Saturday and Sunday white.
Allow Messages to Deliver Between: This sets the time window when messages can be sent. You can lengthen or shorten this time window as needed. Or you can simply deliver all messages at the same time each day using the next feature below.
Or Deliver at: Set a single time for each active day when messages will be sent to Learners. ****This will take priority over the time window option above.
Timezone: Select the Timezone for this distribution. The precedence order is user timezone > distribution timezone > organization timezone.
If A User Doesn't Respond to a Module that Requires an Answer:
This determines how you want to handle situations where there is no response from a learner. In most cases, we recommend continuing to send modules regardless of engagement (option 1), but we provided several options based on less common requirements. It's important to focus on delivering content, gauging its performance, and iterating for the next enrollment.
Create Enrollments:
Clicking 'Create Enrollments' after determining your basic settings will take you to the Enrollment Option Page.
In this section, you can decide how you want to share your course with Learners. The most common way is to copy and share the Website link. You can also click the checkbox to add the course to your classroom page. The Classroom Homepage will show all your courses with this option engaged. This is useful for sharing a suite of courses with your learners.
We cover more course Enrollment options in the Delivery and Learners sections of our help guides.