Create a space for your open course

1. Sign in and create a course

Sign in

Before you can create a course space you will need to be signed into OpenLearn Create. You will need your username and password to sign in (if you don't have an OU account you can register for free). The sign in button is located in the top right-hand corner of OpenLearn Create.

Create a course

Once you are signed in, click on Create a course.

Click on 'Create a resource'

The 'Course metadata form' will appear.

2. Create a course and the Course metadata form

Complete the 'course metadata form', as outlined below to create your space.

• Type of resource
  Select 'course' from the drop-down list (which also has materials, handbook, guide and competition as options).  'Course' is the default option.
  
• Course full name (Title)
  Ideally create a title that describes your course. The title should not be too long and keywords should appear near the beginning of the title if it is long, otherwise it will not display well on the Free courses listing.
  Please note: If your course title consists of a random collection of characters, does not make sense or is very long, we will treat it as spam.
  
• Course summary
  Ideally your summary will give a short overview of the course. The purpose of the course summary is to attract interest in the course, and it should only be about a sentence long. The course summary will not appear in the learner view of the course; it will appear in the courses listing and will be truncated if it is too long. The course description which you add after the course space is created will be where you can expand on the summary.
• Primary subject
  Choose the primary subject for your course
  
• Other subjects
  This is optional to have your course associated with other subject areas (you can choose more than one from the list)
  
• Primary skill
  Choose the primary skill for your course
  
• Other skills
  This is optional to have your course associated with other skill areas (you can choose more than one from the list)
  
• Provider
  This is optional and usually relates to an organisation providing several courses
  
• Course identifier
  This is optional - the ID number of a course is only used when matching the course against external systems and is not displayed anywhere on the site. If the course has an official code name it may be entered, otherwise the field can be left blank.
• Educational level
  Please choose the level that is most appropriate for your content - options are
  
  • Level 0 Beginner – equivalent of up to high school level
  • Level 1 Introductory – equivalent to advanced high school or early University undergraduate study
  • Level 2 Intermediate – equivalent to University undergraduate level study
  • Level 3 Advanced – equivalent to post graduate university study
• Copyright
  

  Choose from several different license types:
  
  OER licences

  • Public domain
  • Attribution: CC BY 
    others can distribute, remix, tweak and build on your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for original creation. The most open licence available.
  • Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA 
    others can distribute, remix, tweak and build on your work, even commercially, if they credit you for original creation and licence their new creations under identical terms.
  • Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC 
    others can remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially, their new works must acknowledge you and be non-commercial but they don’t have to use the same licence terms for derivative works
  • Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 
    others can remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially if they credit you and licence their new creations under the identical terms.

  Not OER licences

  • Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND 
    others can redistribute unchanged and attributed to you, commercially and non-commercially.
  • Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND 
    others can only download and share if they credit you, but they cannot change it or use it commercially
• Duration
  Please advise learners how long you might expect them to spend studying the materials.  Enter duration in whole hours.
• Teaching language
  Please select the language in which your course will be taught. For example if the primary language of your course is Spanish, then please select Spanish. If you are teaching a language (for example German) but the language used for explaining and teaching is the first language of the learners for whom your course is intended (for example English), then select the first language (English) rather than the language you are teaching (German). 
  Please note: this field is used for the site taxonomy filters - it does not provide an automatic translation of all menus and front-end display. To translate the menus and front-end display, you will need to apply a language pack (please see the Course metadata guidance page - the language pack is set in the Appearance section under 'force language'). 
  For more information about the language packs on OpenLearn Create see Can I change the language of my course navigation menus to the language of my choice? 
  
• Show enrol button for this course
  The enrol button enables users to participate in various aspects of a course like quizzes and forums. Disabling it is only suitable for courses that do not contain social or interactive tools.
  
• Course collection
  

  Collections have the parent category of 'Collections'. Private collections have the parent category of 'Private collections'. There are other types of categories in OpenLearn Create which are only created or amended by OpenLearn Create Managers, for example the taxonomy categories of subjects, skills and providers.

  All courses are by default "OER" and there will be no other choice listed here unless the course creator has asked, via the mailbox, for an OpenLearn Create manager to set up a Collection for the course creator's courses.
  

Click Save changes to continue.

3. Your course space - edit settings metadata about your space

Once you have clicked Save Changes your course space should appear, and you can start to add content and resources. A default "get started" label will appear in the course content area - you can edit this or delete it.

Edit settings metadata about your space

Under the Administration menu on the left click on "Edit settings"

The "Edit course settings" form will appear.  The form will already be populated with some of the information you entered when you created the space, you can update it and add other information on this form. 

You might want to update the following settings:

• Course short name
  This will be created by the system when your course was set up, in the format "PUB_1234_1.0".  It is also used in the subject line of course email messages (it is no longer used in the breadcrumb trail).   You will not be able to change this short name unless you have 'course manager' permissions for your course so if you have a very good reason for changing it to something else, you will need to email openlearncreate@open.ac.uk with the short name you would prefer and the reason for the change.
  
• Description - Course summary
  You can update the course summary which will be displayed in the list of courses on the site. A course search searches course summary text in addition to course names.
• Description - Course image file
  Course summary files, such as images, are displayed in the list of courses together with the summary. The ideal ratio for this image is 1.34 : 1 (Width x Height), i.e. a 7 x 5 photo.
  

When you have updated the settings, click on 'save changes'.