Guided Course Builder
Create a well-structured course in 6 steps with built-in instructional design best practices
The Guided Course Builder is the recommended way to create a new course. If you prefer a blank canvas, you can still use the classic Creating Courses flow.
What is the Guided Course Builder?
The Guided Course Builder walks you through designing an effective course in 6 steps, applying instructional design principles (Backward Design) behind the scenes. Instead of starting with a blank page, you answer a few questions about your course and the builder creates a structured draft with modules, lessons, and learning objectives already in place.
Use the Guided Builder when:
- You are creating a course from scratch
- You want a structured starting point with recommended module/lesson layouts
- You want to define learning objectives using Bloom's Taxonomy
Use the classic "+ New Course" when:
- You already know your exact curriculum structure
- You are importing content from another platform
- You prefer full manual control from the start
The 6 Steps
Step 1 -- Basics (about 30 seconds)
Enter your course title, description, category, level, and language. Then pick a template to scaffold your course structure:
| Template | What it creates | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Blank | 1 empty module | Power users who just want the wizard plumbing |
| 5-week skill course | 5 modules (Week 1--5) with video, reading, and quiz lessons | Skill-building courses with weekly cadence |
| Onboarding microlearning | 3 modules with short videos and quizzes | Employee or student onboarding (about 30 min total) |
| Exam prep | 4 topic modules with concept, worked example, practice quiz, and mini-mock | K-12 or competitive exam prep |
Step 2 -- Audience and Goal (about 1 minute)
Describe who the course is for and what students will be able to do after completing it. These fields are optional but strongly recommended -- they help you stay focused and are shown on the public course page.
Step 3 -- Learning Objectives (about 2 minutes)
Add 3--8 learning objectives. Each objective has a Bloom's Taxonomy level (see below) and suggested action verbs to help you write measurable objectives.
Bloom's Taxonomy levels
Bloom's Taxonomy is a widely-used framework that classifies learning objectives by cognitive complexity:
| Level | What it means | Example verbs |
|---|---|---|
| Remember | Recall facts and concepts | list, define, identify, name |
| Understand | Explain ideas and concepts | describe, explain, summarize |
| Apply | Use information in new situations | calculate, demonstrate, use |
| Analyze | Draw connections among ideas | compare, contrast, examine |
| Evaluate | Justify a decision or course of action | judge, critique, evaluate |
| Create | Produce new or original work | design, construct, develop |
You do not need to be an expert in Bloom's Taxonomy. The builder provides verb suggestions for each level so you can write clear, actionable objectives. A good course typically has objectives across multiple levels.
Step 4 -- Outline (about 3 minutes)
This is the heart of the builder. The left panel shows your modules and lessons (pre-filled from your chosen template). You can:
- Drag to reorder modules and lessons
- Add, rename, or remove modules and lessons
- Change lesson types (video, text, PDF, quiz, assignment, etc.)
The right panel shows context-sensitive tips for the selected item.
Step 5 -- Assessments (about 1 minute)
Configure your assessment strategy:
- Whether the course offers a certificate of completion
- Passing requirements (percentage of lessons completed, or pass all quizzes)
- Default passing score for quizzes (70% by default)
Step 6 -- Review (about 30 seconds)
Review your entire course scaffold. You have three options:
- Create course -- creates the course as a Draft and takes you to the course overview
- Save and continue later -- saves your progress so you can return to the wizard
- Back -- go back to make changes
The Setup Checklist
After creating your course, the course overview page shows a Setup Guide card at the top. This checklist tracks what you still need to do before publishing:
- Add a course thumbnail -- auto-checks when you upload a thumbnail
- Write the full description -- auto-checks when description exceeds 50 characters
- Add content to the first lesson -- auto-checks when the first lesson has real content (not just placeholder text)
- Add at least one quiz question -- auto-checks when any quiz has at least one question (skipped if no quiz lessons)
- Set learning objectives -- auto-checks if you added objectives in Step 3
- Walk through curriculum end-to-end -- manual checkbox, check it after reviewing your curriculum
- Submit for review -- manual checkbox, submits the course for review
Items with a link icon take you directly to the relevant editing page.
When all items are complete, the checklist shows a celebration message with a Publish now button.
You can dismiss the checklist by clicking the X icon. A small "Setup Guide" link appears in the course toolbar so you can reopen it anytime.
AI Features (Coming Soon)
A future update will add optional AI-powered suggestions:
- Suggest objectives -- AI proposes learning objectives based on your topic and audience
- Suggest outline -- AI generates a module and lesson structure
These features will be off by default and can be enabled per institution in LMS Settings. Your inputs are sent to the Claude API (Anthropic) and are not used to train models.
Related guides
- Creating Courses -- the classic manual course creation flow
- Building Quizzes -- detailed quiz builder documentation
- Publishing Workflow -- course states and publishing rules