This article will walk you through how to make a course in the LMS
There are two ways to create a course within the LMS:
- Clicking the quick link on your admin dashboard.
- Going to the content screen and clicking the “Create New Course” button.
Either option will then take you to the screen below:
Name the course title and reference code as you see fit, the description will be visible by administrators and learners when they click on the course.When the screen states “active” with a checkbox, if this is ticked then the course is active, and learners are able to be set this learning.
You may want to leave this unticked if you are aiming to work on this course before setting it out to learners (just ensure it is activated when complete).Once “save” is clicked, there will be a blank course with the following tabs.
Keep reading this article to delve into each of them.
Content:
From this section, we can add in new/existing modules to the course.
To add in new modules click on the “Add Modules” button and will be given three options:
Upload: Uploading allows you to add in premade content/SCORM files saved on your local system (see the module section below for more details).
Create: Creating a new module within the system from the course screen tends to be the easiest way to make new learning materials (see the module article for more details).
Browse: Allows you to add in any already made modules within the system that exist. You can use the search bar to search by name of module.
You can also use the arrow on the left of the search bar to filter the content by module type.
Boosts:
Boosts are essentially follow-up questions that you can set for those who have completed this course, you can either create a new boost question (see below for details). Your other choice is to click the “options” button and be given the two choices:
Copy Assessments:
With the “Copy Assessments” button, it will allow you to reuse any multiple-choice questions from assessments within this course.
Send Sample Boost:
With the “Send Sample Boost” choice, you can see a sample of what your learners will receive if they complete the course (settings regarding how many/how frequently the boosts will be sent are in the “Settings” tab of the course further down).
Making a boost question from scratch:
When creating a new boost on the system, you can create them outside of assessment questions.
Boost Question Title:
This section is where we give the question a name that admins can search for.
Boost Question:
Within this area, we create the question that users will be able to see and will need to answer.
After that we can see a series of different answers, you can have it set to have multiple correct answers. You can do this by toggling the “incorrect” tag to “correct”.
You can add more answer boxes by clicking on the “add new answer” button. Any answer boxes left blank will disappear once saved.
Below the available answers, there are two boxes “Correct answer response” and “Incorrect answer response”.These are essentially what your learner is going to see if they get the answer correct/ incorrect.
Usually we would have the responses,“Correct answer response”: Well done, you got this boost correct!“Incorrect answer response”: Not quite right I’m afraid, the answer was….
People:
Within the people section of a course, we can see who has been assigned on this course, when they were assigned it, their active/inactive status as well as if they have “Not Started”, “Started”, “Completed” or are “Compliant”.
What we can do for a user that may have completed this course previously or you need to test it, click on the “Edit result” tab to change which of the modules/ how much of the course has been previously completed.
Assigning out on an adhoc basis:
From this section we can add new people to the course by clicking on, “Assign to existing people”.
Bulk Actions:
By checking the box next to a learner’s name or checking the box at the top of the People list, then the following bulk actions:
- Reset course results:
Choosing this will reset the course results/progress for the ticked users.
- Set status as Complete:
Choosing this will set all ticked users to have this course to be set as “complete”
- Reset Learners Compliance:
Use this option if compliance lengths are changed, it will cause the system to recheck the learner’s compliance status.
- Unassign people:
Choosing this will unassign users from this course.
- Send course invitation e-mail:
Choosing this will resend out the course invitation e-mail (the template for which is found in the Account Settings area of the system).
Compliance percentage:
We can also easily see how many of those assigned to the course have completed the course with the handy percentage bar on the right. A similar bar will also appear if the course has a compliancy attached to it.
Learning Paths:
From this section we can see if this course has been placed into any Learning Paths (explained under the Learning Paths article).
Teams:
This screen allows you to see if any Teams have been assigned this course, we can see their names, as well as the % of the team that has completed their assigned learning course. By clicking on the “Assign to teams” button we can add in as many or as few teams as you would want to.
Proficient Instructors:
This screen is in relation to ILT sessions (instructor led training, see module types/ Litmos features). If someone is set as a “Proficient Instructor”, it means that they can be used to run/ be seen as a leader for the ILT sessions (They will first need to be set as an instructor within the system within the Litmos Features area).
Noticeboard:
Essentially a news board for your Course. By clicking “Add a note”, you can put a piece of news on the Course for them. Only Administrators or Account Owners can add to the notice board, however everyone can read and see notices posted.
Additional Resources:
This section allows you upload any new documents from your local system. Supported file types are shown when you click on the “Add a document button”.
Ratings:
If enabled, this screen will show any ratings that your learners (who have completed the path) have left. Ratings need to be enabled within the Litmos Features area in Account.
History:
This screen shows the interactions between users and this course, showing if new modules have been added or settings have been changed.
Settings:
From this section we can change the Course Title, Description and Reference Code.
In the “Display” section, we can change whether people can sign-up to the course via it being actively in their content library.
We can also set which languages that the course constitutes via the “Course Languages” section.
As well as to set if modules need to be completed in order. If these are not in order, then learners can complete an assessment before they complete the learning.
Topics/Subtopics can be set through this screen as well as tagging these courses so that similar courses can be tagged together.
Course image can be changed here.
“Prerequisites” are essentially a need to do list before they can access this course. Can be set as either a different course or Learning Path.
Setting Compliance:
“Course Access Expiration” would be a date by which the system would remove it from content libraries.
This could be used on compliance courses e.g. Health and Safety or Firewarden courses that need to be updated consistently.
“Competencies” are skills that a learner will gain after completing this course or could be assigned this course if they are looking for that specific skill/competency (These can be made within the Litmos Features section of the system).
“Certificate templates”, this allows learners to download a premade certificate as a proof that they had completed the training (more than a module completed e-mail). These certificates can be filled with merge fields that will pull information from the system. An example would be:
When uploaded in the .docx format, it will fill the merge fields for the learner.
“Boosts” is where we can set how many boost questions will be sent and how often they would be sent for a month after the learner completed that course. If for example you have 20 boost questions banked and set it so that 5 questions are sent every 4 days, it will pick 5 random questions from the 20 each time.