Setting Up a Course
When you open a course, you are bought to the Course Structure workflow. There are a lot of fields and settings to play with here, but this guide will stick to the basics you need to get a course running and functional.
4.5 As you can see, Menu Editor was renamed to Course structure! You can locate where you’re at using the breadcrumb at the top of any page!
This workflow is the heart of an Adapt course where you will define your page structure, navigation and all the settings for your course and the project. We’ll follow an order in this guide that provided the most trouble-free method of beginning a course. Once you’re familiar with creating courses, feel free to go your own way.
In the sidebar, click the link Theme picker. This simple workflow allows you to choose a theme.
Each of the themes we’ve created have a title that should give you a rough idea of the colors and graphical elements used within the theme. This user’s guide also contains a detailed list of every theme along with example colors and swatches used for each.
The Vanilla theme is a built-in, default theme. While it looks perfectly fine, it does not contain many of the customizations required by CPM’s extensions, like Parallax. If you have issues using this theme, please choose another.
Choose the “Velvet” theme from the drop-down, then click Save to return to the Menu Editor.
Next we need to choose a menu for your course. In the sidebar, click the link Menu picker.
There are only a few different menus to choose from, some more complex than others. For now, choose the List Menu and click Save.
The Box Menu is the built-in menu in Adapt. Like the Vanilla theme, it looks perfectly fine, but does not contain many of the customizations required by CPM’s extensions, like Graphic Headers. If you have issues using this menu, please choose another.
Finally, we need to add a few extensions to the course. The extensions we’ll choose in this guide are what we consider the minimum extensions required for the minimum viable course that can be used in an LMS.
Click Manage extensions in the sidebar. This workflow will list all of the possible extensions that can be added to your course, as well as any extensions already added.
By default, the following extensions are added to your course when it’s created:
Extension | Purpose |
---|---|
Tutor | Provides feedback dialogs for all of the question components. |
Bookmarking | Allows the user to return to their previous location in a course between sessions. |
Course Complete | Displays messaging at various locations in the course, informing the user whether the page or course is complete. |
Page Level Progress | Displays the completion status to the user for each interactive element on a particular page. |
Spoor | Allows communication with the LMS via SCORM. |
If you’d like to add another extension, click the Add button to the right of the extension you’d like to add. The extension will be removed from the Available extensions listing and appear in the Enabled extensions at the top of the page.
With that done, simply click Back to menu and return to the Course Structure.
The Result
Back on Course Structure page, locate the large button in the sidebar labeled Preview Course and click it!
This will open a new tab where you can preview your course. In Adapt, you can preview your course at almost any time while you’re working. Even better, this preview can be shared with anyone else that has an Adapt login. The preview is perfect for taking to a beta review or having one of your teammates look over your work.
This might take a minute to display, as the system is building your course from the settings you provided. You’ll see an Adapt logo with animated dots first as the course builds, then a circular loading icon as the assets are loaded.
Be patient: There’s some seriously heavy lifting going on behind the scenes.
When working on a course, leave the preview tab open. The reason is fairly technical, but the end result is that launching preview a second time will be faster. Sometimes much faster.
Before we start adding content, there’s one last setting we should explore.
Return to the Adapt Authoring tab in your browser, and click Project settings. This is the list of settings that were displayed while we were creating the course. In this screen, locate the checkbox labeled Share with all users. This checkbox controls whether your course appears in the Shared Courses listing on the Dashboard for all users.
4.5 You can also select another user from the dropdown labeled Share with specific users if only want to share with a friend.
You don’t need to change any of these settings now. But it is important you remember where this setting is located. If you ever get stuck and need a hand solving an issue, the development team will require that you share your course. Unless your course is shared, there’s no way for them to help you other than to speculate wildly (which they do enjoy, but is less helpful than it is entertaining).
For now, locate the Cancel button in the sidebar and click it to return to the Menu Editor so we can begin adding content.