Outline Builder is here to streamline the process of defining your course structure. By providing some information such as the course title, objective, key topics for your course, and selecting a content type that best describes those topics, you will be able to generate an outline for your course, making the overall course creation process easier and more efficient for you.
You can find the Outline Builder by clicking the +New course button in the course dashboard -> Use Outline Builder. You can also have the opportunity to access it when you choose the Empty course option or from the Templates:
How does it work?
Once you click on the Use Outline Builder button from any of the above options, you will find a brief overview, with the option to even watch a video tutorial on how it works. To start with the course structure creation process, you can click on the Next button located at the bottom of the page, or simply use the Navigation bar to go through the steps.
After that, you need to follow these 3 simple and easy steps:
Step 1: Define the purpose
In this step, you will determine the context and specify the topics of your course.
To set the context, you need to add the objective of the course, which will be the introduction to it, and set the course title in the corresponding boxes. Once you’re done, click on Next.
Note: The course objective (introduction) has a limit of 350 characters and the course title of 255. If you want to add a larger text in the introduction, you can add more details once you are in the course editor.
Then, specify the topics that your learners need to review in order to accomplish the course objective you set in the previous step. Each topic will be reflected as a section title on your course.
Note: You need to provide at least 2 key topics in order to generate the course structure in the last step.
If you want to create more topics for your course sections, simply click on the Add topic button, or if you want to delete a topic, hover over it and click on the delete icon next to it:
Once you finish setting the topics, click on Next.
Step 2: Create a structure
In this step, you will structurize the key topics you set in the previous step by selecting one of the three content types to share the information with your learners.
For each topic, you can select if you want to present the information in One-pager (text block), Step-by-step process (How-to), or in a Checklist. To do so, click on the option that suits the best to share the knowledge and repeat with every topic/section.
The selected content type will become a separate content page within each section, and you can add more content and question pages to your course after generating the course structure in the course editor.
In this step, you will also be able to edit the course and section titles, add a new topic, change the order, duplicate and/or delete a section as shown in the gif below:
Once you’re done, click on Next.
Step 3: Generate and preview
In this last step, you will be able to review the inputs you entered in the previous steps to generate the course outline: Course objective (introduction), course title and topics (sections), and the option chosen to describe them.
Note: In this step, you cannot edit the course structure. Therefore, if you would like to make some changes, please use the navigation menu on the left side to go to the previous steps:
Once you are satisfied with the outline, click on the Generate course structure to be redirected to the course editor and continue editing your e-learning as needed.
Important:
If you wish to go back to review any of the previous steps, you can simply do that using the Navigation menu on the left side.
It is mandatory to fill all the blocks in the steps to generate the course structure.
If you happen to refresh the page by mistake, the progress and information will be saved, so the content is not lost.
It is not possible to press enter or go to the next line in any textboxes throughout the Outline Builder.
You can close the Outline Builder at any time by clicking on the Close outline builder button located in the lower-left corner of the page. If you have filled in any content, please keep in mind that if you confirm to close it, the information will be lost and cannot be restored.