Getting Started: Steps 1, 2, 3 and more...

Often we're asked the question:  "What do I do first?"    

Each client of Coursettra tends to have different uses of the system.   However, the steps outlined below hopefully offers a high-level overview of the tasks that should be completed in general order.    Keep in mind, there is no right-or-wrong, so you may choose to take a different route, which is perfectly acceptable.    Various articles throughout the Solutions area of our Help Desk offer details on how each of these items can be created and used.    This is not intended to be a detailed explanation of each item.

STEP 1:  Establish your Training Course

First:   Begin with the details, and build up.    Start by load the content you have available that you intend to use in your training.   Create New Items:

• Create new item: Resources
• Create new item: Learning Objectives
• Create new item: Exam/Evaluation Questions

Second:   Create your first course.    Courses come in two parts:  The Overview, and the Course.   

• Create new item:  Course Overview
• Create new item:  Course (each copy of a course links back to its original overview)

Third:   Establish your "Course Schedule".  This is the schedule, or task list of items your students must follow.   It is the "meat and potato's" of the course.   Just like your work calendar, the course schedule is represented by a series of events.   Events can have any combination of Learning Objectives, Resources, and Assessments that you want your students to interact with.  Events allow you to create a "module-like" feeling within your course.... grouping the items that go together.

• Edit the Course > Schedule section
• From the left-side, select the icons that match the items you would like to add to your course schedule.  Example:  the orange resource icon will slide out a list of your available resources. 
• Drag the item onto the gray box at the top of your Course Schedule in order to create your first event. 
• Drag additional items either onto existing events or create additional events by dragging them onto the gray area at the top of your schedule.

Fourth:  Once you are ready to launch your course, make sure you have published it to an "Approved" state. The state of all items can be found looking at the top-corner of the General Information section.

STEP 2:   Build your Certification Tracks, and assign your courses to the correct Certifications

First:   Establish your Course Usage Tags.  Course Usage Tags are used to identify the qualification that a course fulfills.   Realtors, for example, have to complete a Law course, an Ethics course, an Appraisal course, and a Finance course.    In this case, 4 Course Usage tags would be established to tag all course offerings as either:  Law, Ethics, Appraisal, or Finance.   To setup course usage tags:

• Create new item:  Tag Category (under the Administration option)
• Choose category type:   Course Usage
• Enter a tag for each classification of course you want to establish.  (Example:  Law, Ethics, Appraisal, Finance)

Second:  Tag each Course Overview with the Course Usage tag it fulfills.     Whereas your Course Usage Tags represents all of the qualifications or categories of courses a student must complete, you can now edit each Course Overview and select the Course Usage tag that it represents.    

NOTE:  At the time you add your Course Usage tag to your Course Overview, double check the number of Credit that are entered in the General Information section.    By default, credits are set to "0".   This means, the courses attached to this Course Overview won't count for any credit, they can simply be taken for informational purposes. If you want the student to receive credit for this course, set the credits to 1.     

Third:  Create your Certification Tracks.    Certification Tracks are a way to organize a grouping of courses that a student must complete.    Assigning Course Usage Tags to your track establishes which courses must be completed in order to fulfill the requirements of the track you have defined.    Given the real estate example, a real estate license could be grouped into two tracks:   A "Real Estate Money" track that would including the Appraisal and finance tag,  and a second track called "Real Estate Basics" that includes the Laws and the Ethics tag.    There is no right-or-wrong way to group your tracks.   If you know that there is no reason to ever separate those 4 real estate classes, they could all be assigned to 1 Real Estate track.   However, dividing them the way we outlined above, provides opportunity for offering a Real Estate Money track in isolation from a separate offering of a Real Estate Basics track.   

Fourth:  Create your Certifications.    As part of the certification, indicate all of the Certification Tracks that must be completed in order for someone to complete the Certification. For simpler set-ups, you may find your certification only has 1 track.

STEP 3:   Review your clients settings to establish your system configurations and specifications

Your Client page can be found under the Administration menu.    Peruse through your client page to establish some system-wide settings including

• Your Logo and branding colors
• Your self-registration preferences: individuals create their own user accounts and register into your Coursettra training site.   If so, what default role should those individuals be assigned? 

STEP 4:   Release your training to students

Now that your training has been established, you can make some decisions on how you want to offer your training to your students.

• Manually assign student to your certification and courses by editing the student section and adding individuals to those items.
• Enable "Self Registration" within each items General Information section to allow students to find the items on their own by selecting the "Register Now" button located on their Home Page.
• Establish Seminars that students can sign-up for.... which automatically adds them to the courses and certifications you have added to each seminar.