Quick-start guide

This quick-start guide takes you through the simplest route to build a course on OpenLearn Create and features a series of checklists of what you need to include. There are also links to the platform's more complex features. 

1. Introduction to the quick-start guide

What is a course? 

There's no easy answer. A course could be a piece of workplace training that lasts half an hour or a degree that's completed over several years. 

However long it is, an engaging course draws a learner in and keeps them interested, challenged and enthusiastic about what they're learning.

If it's a well-integrated course, the learning outcomes – a list of what your learners are going to learn – will be met by the activities and learning material in the course itself. Your learners will then be able to demonstrate what they've learnt in the course in an assessment.

The purpose of this quick-start guide is to give you a simple pathway for creating a course on OpenLearn Create. 

If you follow this guide, you will: 

  • plan and build a course
  • create a quiz (and a statement of participation for when your learners pass it)
  • know what you need to check before it can go live
  • submit your course to the OpenLearn Create team for publication.

At the bottom of most of the pages in this guide you'll see the following box:

Before you move on
  • This box will be a checklist of things that you have to do.
  • It might be a setting that you need to check has been set or something about your course content.
  • On the page about adding images, for instance, there'll be a reminder about accessibility asking you to make sure you've added text to describe any of the figures that you've added.
  • If you make sure you've done everything listed here, it'll also help to speed up the QA process to get your course live!