Get started with Courses

A course in Courses is a list of modules in order, and each module holds lessons in order. A lesson is one of four kinds: a lesson (video or audio, text and files), a quiz, an assignment that students submit for review, or a live session at a set time. A course belongs to Personal or to one team.

Published courses are on your school, the team's public pages for its courses, at an address such as magpie.diy/learn/dana-studio. Students enrol, buy or are added there, and take the lessons there.

Courses is in preview and open to Magpie's site administrators. Until it opens to everyone, only their schools are public.

Make your first course

1. In Courses, choose New course, type a title and choose Create course. The course will be made as a draft with one module, Module 1, and its outline will open.
2. Choose Add lesson to Module 1. Type the lesson's title, choose its kind and choose Add lesson. The lesson will be added as a draft and its editor will open.
3. Write the lesson. The editor saves as you type. Choose Publish lesson when students should see it.
4. Go back to the course and choose Publish course. The first time Personal or a team publishes a course, Magpie asks for the school's address, which cannot change afterwards.

Instead of a title, New course also takes a whole course pasted as JSON, such as one an assistant wrote: see Create a course by pasting JSON.

The outline, the course page and publishing are in Build and publish a course; writing lessons and adding videos is in Write lessons and add videos.

Drafts, published and archived courses

The Courses page lists the courses of Personal or the selected team, newest change first. All, Published, Drafts and Archived narrow the list, and the search finds a course by its title or subtitle.

• A draft is seen only by the members of Personal or the team.
• A published course has a course page at its address. It is listed in your school's catalogue unless it is Unlisted in its details, when only people with the address find it.
• An archived course takes no new students and leaves the catalogue. Students who have access keep it. Restore course publishes it again.

Who can do what

In a team:

• Members who can edit in the team make, change, publish, archive and duplicate courses. They also add students, see students' progress, answers and submissions, review assignments and look after the discussion.
• View-only members see the courses, their outlines and their lessons. A lesson opens for them as students see it. They never see students' names, email addresses, answers or submissions.
• Setting a price or a payment plan also needs Store's products permission (Who can work in Store).
• The school's settings, in Courses settings, are for team admins. Every member sets their own course notifications on the same page.

Each course has instructors and teaching assistants, chosen from the team's members in the course's Settings, up to 20 a course. The member who made the course is its first instructor. Instructors are shown on the course page; teaching assistants do the same work and are not shown.

Students are not members of the team. Each student takes courses with their own Magpie account, and access to a course opens nothing else in the team.

Free plan limits

On the free plan, Personal or a team can have 1 published course and 50 students with access across its courses. A student with access to several of its courses counts once. An archived course does not count as published, but its students count while they have access.

At the student limit, free enrolment, approving an application and adding a student are refused until a student's access ends or the plan is upgraded. A paid order is never refused because of the limit. Paid plans have no limit on published courses or students (Plans, limits, and billing).

Move a course to Trash

More → Move to Trash is offered only for a course that has never had a student. The course moves at once, the message offers Undo, and it can be restored from Trash for 30 days. While it is in Trash, its pages on your school are not found, and its address is kept for it. A published course comes back published, if the plan has room for it.

A course that has had students cannot go to Trash, so their progress, answers and certificates stay: archive it instead. A paid course whose Store product is on sale goes to Trash once the product is taken out of the Store.

Where students take a course

Students open a course from its address or your school's catalogue, and sign in with a Magpie account to take it; an account is made for a new student when they enrol, buy or are added. Their courses are listed under Your courses: in their account for every school, and in each school's catalogue for that school. What students see is in Take a course. To see it yourself without enrolling, choose Preview as student on the course.

If a course cannot be published and its outline names nothing missing, Contact support.