Content and media checklist

What to have ready before building a course. Preparing it first turns course creation into assembly rather than authoring.

The course

• [ ] Title — what students will see in every list and page.
• [ ] Description — what the course teaches, who it is for, what it assumes, how long it takes.
• [ ] Featured image — used on the course page and in the student's account area.
• [ ] Section names — three to six, in the order students will work through them.
• [ ] The access model, decided.
• [ ] The no-access message, drafted.

Each lesson

• [ ] Title — short enough to read in the outline.
• [ ] Content — the written material.
• [ ] Video URL, where there is one, already published and embeddable.
• [ ] Estimated time — students use it to plan a session.
• [ ] Section it belongs to.
• [ ] Order within the course.
• [ ] Whether it is a preview.

Video preparation

Videos are the part most likely to cause rework:

• Publish them first. A lesson pointing at an unlisted or unpublished video shows nothing.
• Check embedding is allowed. Some hosting settings forbid embedding on other domains, and the lesson then shows an empty player.
• Use one provider across the course. Consistency matters more than the provider.
• Check the thumbnail. Lessons show a poster frame before playback.
• Test one on a phone before producing thirty.

YouTube and Vimeo URLs are detected automatically. Other URLs are embedded directly, which works but is worth testing per source.

Written content

• [ ] Each lesson stands as a page: an introduction, the material, a closing point.
• [ ] Lessons do not depend on being read in an order the outline does not enforce.
• [ ] Nothing references the previous video if the order might change.
• [ ] Downloads and files are uploaded and linked.
• [ ] Links to other lessons are correct — remember lesson addresses depend on the URL structure.

Images

• [ ] The course has a featured image.
• [ ] Lessons have images if the layout settings display them.
• [ ] Images are uploaded at the size they will be shown; nothing is resized for you.
• [ ] Images are consistent in style across the course.

Estimated time

The field is a short text shown beside each lesson in the outline. Two rules:

• Use one format across the whole course. A course mixing 12:30 and about 15 minutes reads as unfinished.
• Be honest. Students plan sessions around it, and a course that consistently takes twice as long as stated loses them.

Naming

Decide before writing thirty titles:

• Do lesson titles carry numbers? If the order might change, numbers in titles become wrong.
• Do sections carry numbers? The outline already numbers them.
• Are titles verbs — Making a starter — or nouns — The starter? Pick one.

Before you build

• [ ] The plan is written: course, sections, lessons in order.
• [ ] Videos are published and embeddable.
• [ ] Written content is drafted.
• [ ] Images are ready.
• [ ] Access model chosen, and any rule or product exists.
• [ ] Test accounts created.
• [ ] URL structure decided and saved.

With that in place, building the course is data entry — and the first course tutorial takes half an hour.