Create a new course

A Course is a collection of lessons and assessments. Once a course is created, you can upload content and add practice quizzes and exam in a structured format for learners to consume the course content through the web portal or mobile application.

During course creation, the course administrator will have complete control over configuration options like course description, enrollment and certification.

In this article, you will learn more about how to create single and multiple course(s) on the platform in the respective sections:

Permissions Level

The Microsoft Community Training management portal provides role-based administration and depending upon the type of access level the administrators can perform an action on the portal.

The table below shows administrative role which are allowed to create courses in the portal:

Option 1 - Create a single course in a category

In this topic, you will learn simple steps to create a single course in the Microsoft Community Training platform. Before executing the below steps, switch to administrator view on the training portal:

1. Click on or More (...) icon on the category list pane to create course under a category.
   

2. Click or tap New Course. Skip this step if you choose option in step1.
   

3. Enter the Course Name. The course name is the course title that learners would see on the web portal and mobile app. For example: AI for Agriculture.

4. Enter the Course Description. The course description is a short summary which informs a learner about course content at the time of registration. For example: Farming in Agriculture.

5. Choose Enable certificate. This option enables the administrator to award certificate to learners after the course completion.

6. Choose Restrict lesson ordering. This option enables the administrator to restrict the learners to consume the lessons in sequence. Learners will NOT be allowed to skip lessons within a course if this option is enabled.

7. The administrator can configure the Learner Enrollment type for the course. We have three enrollment types available for the online courses that can be uploaded to the portal:

• Automatically enroll all learners: This option ensures that all the registered learners are automatically registered to a course when logged in and it enables the administrator to mandate some of the courses to the learners.

• Self-enroll (Allow users to enroll on their own): This option allows the administrator to create courses that allow the learners to search and self-register to the course.

• Only admin can enroll learners: This option allows the administrator to keep the content private while the content is still being prepared. Administrators reserve the right to register learners and to make the courses available for a wider audience. Admin only courses are not shown in the course library.

8. Click or tap Upload to upload option to open file picker and select an image file as Course Thumbnail.

9. Click or tap Create button to create the course.

Next> Once a course is created, the administrator can start uploading the content for the course

Option 2 - Create multiple courses in a category

The easiest way to create courses and upload content in the learning portal is to leverage the Bulk Upload Courses feature. Administrators can save time by creating multiple courses and uploading content at once using the Bulk Upload Courses functionality.

In this topic, we will learn the simple steps to create multiple courses under a category in the management portal. Before executing the below steps, swtich to administrator view on the learning portal:

Prerequisite for using Bulk Upload Courses feature

Before you start doing the bulk upload of courses under a category, you need to make sure the course content is structured correctly and available in the required file format (Sample bulk upload course file) on your local machine. The steps below provide information on how to get your content ready for bulk upload courses:

1. Create a folder on your local machine with the course name you want to create on the portal.

2. Copy the content you want to add as lessons to the course inside the folder created in Step 1.

3. If required, repeat #1 and #2 above to create and upload multiple courses together .

4. Ensure that there are no sub-folders inside any folder with course names. Folders with course names should only contain lessons file as shown in the image below:
   

5. Select all the folders you want to upload and compress them into a ZIP file. Right click > Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.

6. Once the ZIP file is created, your content is ready for bulk upload. You can rename the ZIP file if required.

Steps for bulk upload courses to the portal

1. Click or tap More (...) icon on the category list pane to bulk upload the courses under a category.
   

2. Click or tap Bulk Upload Course (Preview) from the drop-down menu.

3. Using the file picker, select the ZIP file which contains course content for bulk upload.
   

4. Wait for file upload operation to be completed. Do not close the browser window at this point.
   

5. After upload, you will see the following message on the top-right corner which indicates that content file was successfully uploaded to the portal for processing.
   

6. On the course details page, progress status will be updated at regular interval. Refresh (Press F5) the page in case you don't see the newly uploaded courses on the portal.

7. Once the content is processed, you can add course description, change enrollment type, enable certificate, etc. as per your requirement. By default, course details are set to following:

   a.	Course Name – Folder Name 
   b.	Lesson Name – File Name
   c.	Course Description – Null
   d.	Course Thumbnail - Null 
   e.	Enable certificate – unchecked 
   f.   Restrict lesson ordering - unchecked
   g.	Enrollment type – Self enrollment.
   

Next> Once the course is uploaded, you can add assessments or publish the course for learners to consume the content via the web portal or mobile application.

Alternatively, you can check the step by step video tutorial for bulk upload content: