Your course’s homepage

Adding course images and a theme colour

Adding course images

Go to the Administration block on the left-hand side of the screen and click on Settings.

All OpenLearn Create courses require two images to be added: a Course image and a Course banner. These can be the same image, but each one has different requirements for the size and proportions:

• The image you upload in Course image appears as a 'thumbnail' when your course appears in the free course listing. The image you upload here should be 670 pixels wide and 500 pixels high.
• The image in Course banner is what appears on the course homepage. You should upload an image that is 785 pixels wide and 350 pixels high. 

In both fields you can add images in either of two ways:

• You can drag an image saved on your computer into the area indicated. After that:
  • click on the image and update the Author details – these default to your name, which might not be correct
  • select the correct licence in the Licence chooser field
  • click on Update to confirm.
• You can click on the Add... button at the top of the box. After that:
  • click on the Choose File button and navigate to where the image you want to use is saved on your computer
  • update the Author details, if necessary
  • select the correct licence in the Choose licence field
  • click on Upload this file to confirm.

If you change your mind about your course image you can return to Edit course settings, click on the images, click the Delete button and replace them with the images you'd prefer to use.

Adding a theme colour

You can also choose to change the colour scheme of the OpenLearn Create header and footer to match the colour scheme of the images you use in your course.

The colour scheme is listed as Theme options in the Settings form. The colours that are available, along with their hex colour codes, are as follows:

• Default (red), #ae2241
• Red, #a20b1e
• Orange, #be550d
• Purple ,#6e1b6e
• Teal, #006064
• Green, #317a41
• Pink, #c90959
• Dark blue, #2a4d7f
• Blue, #0f72c6
• Grey, #776a5e
• Bright blue, #005792
• Bright orange, #fb5c47
• Bright green, #00991e
• White, #FFFFFF
• OU dark blue (OU use only), #24285C
• OU mid blue (OU use only), #1F55A5
• Royal blue,#0580FC
• Light grey, #CFD8DB
• Skye blue, #00A9FF
• Light blue, #A0E9FF
• Light pink, #FFBDF7
• Mint green, #A1EEBD
• Pale orange, #FFC3A1
• Dark purple, #1C1678
• Deep purple, #480048
• Bright lilac, #9933FF
• Lilac, #9195F6
• Tea, #C7B7A3
• Brown, #8B322C
• Bright purple, #920075.

Adding a course description

You will need a course description to welcome people to your course and explain what it is all about. Your course description needs to provide information about who has written the course and its purpose.

First, delete the section of text with the heading 'Getting started'. Click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the box and select the Delete option. Now you have a blank space to start building your course.

Just above where the Getting started box was you should see three dots on the right-hand side of the screen. Click on the three dots to reveal a box with three options: View, Edit settings and Permalink.

Click on Edit settings.

This will take you to a new page, Edit section settings.

The text you add here will be the first piece of text in your course that your learners will see. It will appear at the start of course's homepage, just below the course image.

Your course will need an introduction, so it's a good idea to add it here.

• In Section name, add a suitable heading: it could be 'Welcome to the course' or 'Hello!'.
• In Description, add some text that goes into a little more detail about what the course covers. Perhaps you could add some background about the topic. It should be longer than the course summary you previously created when you set up your course. 

Then click on Save changes.

Adding a video or image to the course description

You may also want to add a video or an image (such as a logo) to your course description. You add this in the course description or in a label.

Adding a video to the course description

For storage reasons, videos should be embedded from a host site such as YouTube or Vimeo rather than directly uploaded to your course’s homepage.

To embed a video, place the cursor at the point in the course content where you want to add a video and click on the Embed media icon.

This will open a new pop-up window with the heading Content properties.

Copy and paste the URL of a video into the Enter URL: field.

Assuming the URL is valid, if you click on another field in this form it should automatically populate with the title of the video in the Describe this content (optional): field and dimensions will appear in the Size fields. You can adjust this information as preferred.

Click on Save content.

It is good accessibility practice to provide a transcript of video and audio material in your course. Many learners find transcripts helpful, even if the audio or video file is fully accessible to them.

There are two ways of adding a transcript.

The first method is to click on the Source code Pro icon and scroll down to where you embedded the video. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard to create a blank line in the code.

Copy the following code and paste it onto the blank line:

<details>
<summary><strong>Transcript</strong></summary>
<br>
<p>This is the first paragraph of the transcript.</p>
<p>This is the second paragraph of the transcript.</p>
<p>This is the third paragraph of the transcript.</p>
<hr>
</details>

Then you’ll need to add the transcript itself. As you can see, we’ve added three paragraphs with placeholder text at the end of the code. This is where your transcript will go.

• If you have a transcript and it’s already arranged into paragraphs you just need to add ‘<p>’ and ‘</p>’ to the beginning and end of each paragraph and paste them over the placeholder text.
• If you’re relying on an automatically generated transcript (from YouTube, for example), note that you will probably need to carefully edit it to make sure that the text is accurate and makes sense. It needs to be easy to read: several lines from an automatically generated transcript should be combined into one paragraph and you will need to make sure that the timing codes are removed. 

Once you’re happy that your video and transcript are in place, click on the Save button and confirm that they’ve been added to the course correctly.

An alternative method of adding a transcript is to place the cursor at the point in the course content where you want to add it (e.g. under a video or audio file) and click on the HTML Transcript icon.

Give your transcript a Title, which you have the option of showing or hiding.

Add the transcript text in the Content field.

Click on Save.

Adding an image to the course description

To add an image, click in the Description field in the position where you want the image to appear. Go to Insert/Image in the text editor’s menu or click on the Image icon.

This will open a new pop-up window with the heading Image.

Click on the Browse repositories button.

Click on the Upload a file link, click on the Choose File button and navigate to the image you want to add. Ideally, the image should be no wider than 600 pixels.

Add the name of whoever created or owns the image in the Author box and select the appropriate licence in Choose licence. If the image is yours, is a logo or belongs to a company or organisation, choose All rights reserved. If it’s an image from a photo stock website, select whichever Creative Commons licence is attached to the image.

Click on Upload this file to open the Image details window.

If it’s a figure, describe the image in the How would you describe this image to someone who can’t see it? box. There’s a limit of 750 characters.

If it’s a decorative image, tick the box next to This image is decorative only.

Click on Save.

Adding sections

You may want to divide your course into sections. You may want to separate your course content into Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, etc.; alternatively, you may want to put your course content in one section and additional resources (PDFs, Word templates, etc.) in another.

To create a new section, click on the + Add a section button.

This will create a new section for you to add content to:

Click on the pencil icon next to the 'New section' heading and change it to something more appropriate. You could start with 'Section 1:', followed by the topic that's addressed in the first learning outcome.

Press the Enter key to confirm the heading you want to use.

Any sections you create will appear as drop-down tabs in the Course content tab on your course homepage.