Course Studio - Building Your First Course 

Table of Contents:

1. Create a New Course and Select Studio Course

2. Enter Basic Course Information

3. Choose How to Start Building

4. Build out your Pages

5. Add an Assessment

6. Set Completion Criteria

Administrative Rights 

The table below shows the administrative rights pertaining to Course Studio.

Role	Can View	Can Edit Drafts	Can Submit for Review	Can Approve/Reject	Can Publish	Can delete	Can manage templates & styling
Reviewer	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌
Developer (Author)	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	Drafts only	❌
Editor	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Global Admin	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	✅ (Not the studio version)	❌
Microsite Admin	✅ (own domain)	✅ (own domain)	✅ (own domain)	✅	✅	✅(own domain)	❌

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1. Create a New Course and Select Studio Course 

To get started, navigate to the Courses section of your admin panel and select the option to create a new course. You will be prompted to choose a course type. Select Studio Course to build your content directly within the platform using Course Studio. 

Studio Courses are built and managed entirely within your LMS, there's no external authoring tool or file upload required.* 

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2. Enter Basic Course Information 

Once you have selected Studio Course, you will be taken to the LMS course setup screen. Here you will fill in the foundational details about your course, including: 

• Course Title(s) - The name Learners will see in the catalog and on their dashboard. 
  • The Admin Title, Friendly URL, and Learner Title will all default to whatever is entered in the Admin Title, and can be different
• Description - A summary of what the course covers. This appears on the course detail page and helps Learners understand what to expect.
• Tags - Keywords that improve searchability within the platform.
• Duration - In minutes, how long the course is.

You will need to enter a course title, at a minimum, before you can proceed. You can always come back and update this information later, so do not feel the need to have everything finalized before moving forward. 

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3. Choose How to Start Building 

After saving your course details, you will be brought into Course Studio, the authoring environment where your course content lives. Before you start adding pages, you will choose how you want to structure your course. 

There are three options: 

• Base the course on a Template

• Create a course outline from Scratch

• Import a File (PowerPoint or PDF) as the basis for the course 

Start with a Template 

Templates give you a pre-built course outline to work from, so you are not starting with a completely blank slate. A template includes a suggested structure of sections and pages. For example, a standard eLearning template might include an Introduction section, several content modules, and a Final Assessment. When you apply a template, all of those sections and pages are created for you automatically, and you simply fill in the content. 

Templates are a great choice when you want to maintain a consistent structure across multiple courses, or when you want a starting point that follows instructional design best practices. Once a template is applied, your course is completely independent, editing your course will not affect the template, and any future changes to the template will not affect your course. 

Here's the Standard Course Template:

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Start from Scratch

Choosing to start from scratch opens an empty course outline, giving you full control over the structure from the ground up. The outline is the backbone of your course, it is a tree-like view of all the sections and pages that make up your content. Sections act as chapters or groupings, while pages are where the actual content lives.

To begin, add your first section by clicking the Add Section button, then add pages within it. You can nest pages inside sections, drag and drop to reorder items, and build out as many levels as your course requires. Do not worry about getting the structure perfect right away, you can always reorganize later.

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Start with a File 

If you already have a PowerPoint presentation or a PDF that covers your course content, you can upload it directly and Studio will use it to build your course structure automatically. Course Studio reads your slide deck and creates sections and pages based on your slides; text, images, and media are all carried over. Slides that use a section header layout become sections in your course outline, while content slides become individual pages. 

You will be able to edit the content that Studio generates, so don’t worry if the source documents don’t exactly match what you want in the final course. They can just be a starting point. 

During import, each slide is also rendered as a full image, giving you the option to use the original slide design as the visual for that page if you prefer. Once the import is complete, you can edit, reorganize, and add to the course just as you would with any other Studio Course. 

• Supported file type: .pptx (PowerPoint) 

• Maximum file size: 200 MB 

• Embedded images, audio, and video are automatically imported and linked to their respective pages 

 

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4. Build Out Your Pages 

Once your outline is set up, you can start adding content to each page. Click on any page in the outline to open it in the page editor. The sections below cover the main ways you will build and enrich your pages. 

Using the Editor 

The page editor is a visual, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) environment, meaning what you build in the editor closely mirrors what Learners will see when they take the course. Pages are laid out using a grid of rows and columns, and within each column you can add content elements like headings, text, images, buttons, callout boxes, and more. 

To add a new row to a page, click the Add Row button at the bottom of the page. Once a row is added, you can choose a column layout (single column, two columns, and so on) and then insert content elements into each column using the element toolbar. The editor automatically saves your work every few seconds, so you do not need to manually save as you go. 

You can also copy and move entire rows or individual content elements between pages within the same course, which is useful when you want to reuse a standard element, such as a recurring callout or a consistent footer, without rebuilding it on every page. 

Manipulating Rows

Adding a Row & Layout Options

Applying Layout Templates 

If you want a quick starting point for a page's visual layout, you can apply a page layout template. Layout templates are pre-built page structures, sets of rows and columns arranged in a particular way that you can drop onto a blank page and then fill in with your own content. They are different from course templates in that they only apply to a single page, not the whole course structure. 

To apply a layout template, open the page you want to format and select the layout template option from the page toolbar. Choose a layout that fits the type of content you are building, and the rows and columns will be added to your page automatically. From there, simply click into each section and replace the placeholder content with your own. 

Adding Images 

To add an image to a page, insert an Image element into any column using the element toolbar. From there, you can upload an image file directly from your computer. Images are stored and delivered through the platform automatically, you do not need to manage hosting separately. 

Once an image is placed, you can resize and reposition it within the column as needed. For best results, use images that are appropriately sized for web viewing and avoid overly large file sizes, which can slow down page load times for Learners. 

Adding Audio 

Audio can be attached to a content page to supplement your written material. for example, a narration track that walks Learners through the page content. To add audio, open the page settings for the relevant page and look for the audio configuration option. You can upload an audio file, and it will be linked to that page and available to Learners when they view it. 

 

Adding Video 

For pages that are centered around video content, consider using the dedicated Video page type rather than embedding a video within a standard content page. Video pages include a full-featured player that supports YouTube links, Vimeo links, and directly uploaded video files. You can also configure how completion is tracked for a video page. For example, requiring Learners to watch a certain percentage of the video before the page is marked complete. 

To add a Video page, go to your course outline and add a new page, selecting Video as the page type. You will not be able to change the page type after it has been created, so make sure to select the right type upfront. 

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5. Add an Assessment 

Assessments in a Studio Course are added as a special page much like Videos. Identical to video pages, Assessment pages are added through the course outline; click to add a new page and select Assessment as the page type. Assessment pages integrate directly with the Knowledge Anywhere assessment feature, so questions are managed within the same system you use for other course types. 

Select the appropriate  method to create your assessment in order to fully create the assessment page:

Once your Assessment page is in place, you can configure assessment settings directly from the page editor, including: 

• Passing score - The minimum percentage a Learner must achieve to pass. 

• Time limit - Optionally restrict how long a Learner has to complete the assessment. 

• Attempt limit - Control how many times a Learner can attempt the assessment. 

• Navigation style - Choose whether Learners can move freely between questions or must answer them in order. 
• Answer display - Decide whether correct answers are shown to Learners after they submit. 

You can place an assessment page anywhere within your course outline — at the end of a module to check comprehension, or at the very end as a final assessment. If you mark an assessment page as the Final Assessment, it will be treated as the primary graded component of the course. 

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6. Set Completion Criteria 

Before publishing your course, you will want to define what it means for a Learner to have completed it. Completion criteria are configured in the course settings and determine when the LMS marks a course as complete on a Learner's record. For Studio Courses, common completion options include: 

• Launch Only - As soon as the course is opened, it is marked as complete.
• Page Percentage-  The Learner must complete a certain percentage of pages in order to be marked as complete.  
  •  For example PDFs are a single page, but if you don't view all pages of the pdf you wouldn't be marked complete for the page 

• Pass the final assessment - Completion is tied to passing the Assessment page marked as the final assessment. 

• Minimum time - A learner must spend a minimum X minutes in the course.
• Combination - String Completion types together.

Choose the criteria that best match the goals of your course. For compliance training, you may want to require both full page view and a passing assessment score. For a lighter informational course, viewing all pages may be sufficient. 

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After completing the creation of your course, select "Submit for Review" which will put the course in review mode. Provided the course gets approved, the course will become live for your learners. For more information on the approval process, click here.

Congratulations, you've just created your first course using the Knowledge Anywhere Course Studio! 

If you have questions about Course Studio, please reach out to your Knowledge Anywhere Account Manager, or email us at support@knowledgeanywhere.com.