Course Studio - Managing Your Studio Courses

This is the article you reach for when you already have a course (or twenty) and need to address and manage them. For the initial how-to-build, see  Course Studio - Building Your First Course  

The Course Lifecycle in One Picture

Every course version moves through the same lifecycle:

   Draft ──submit──▶ In Review ──approve & publish──▶ Published ──superseded──▶ Archived
     ▲                   │                                                             ▲
     │                     │                                                              │
     └────reject───────────┘                                                             │
                                                                                              │
   (a new version is created from the Published one, edited, then publishes here) ───────┘

Three things worth remembering:

• Only one Draft and one Published per language at a time. You can't have two parallel Drafts of the same course in the same language.
• Versions don't go backwards. Once Published, a version can never become a Draft again. To make changes, you create a new
• Each language has its own lifecycle. English Draft, French Published, Spanish In Review — totally normal. They don't affect each other.

What You Can Do at Each State

This is the part you'll keep coming back to. Bookmark it.

¹ After approval
² Requires the right delete permission level. Most "Developer" roles can delete drafts and in-review versions, but not anything that's been live.

"Why is this read-only?"

If you can't edit something you expected to be able to edit, the read-only banner's color tells you why:

The cyan one catches authors out a lot. Submitting for review locks the version for everyone, including the person who submitted it. The fix is straightforward: any reviewer (Editor, Global Admin, or anyone with REVIEW permission) can reject the version back to Draft. Nothing's lost — content and comments are all preserved.

Updating a Course That's Already Live

You can't edit a Published version directly. To change a live course, you create a new version from it.

The pattern is:

1. Find the Published version in Studio → Courses and click Copy (or "Create New Version From This").
2. The system clones it into a new Draft. The Published version stays live to learners while you work.
3. Edit the Draft. Submit for review. Get it approved.
4. The previously Published version automatically archives at this moment.

What carries over to the new version: all content, all settings, the works. What doesn't carry over: comments (those belong to the version they were left on), learner data, and edit history. The new version starts clean on those.

When not to make a new version

Just because you can republish doesn't mean you should. Republishing has real consequences for in-progress learners (more on that below), so it's worth pausing first:

• Is this change worth disrupting in-progress learners?
• Could it wait until the next planned update?
• Is the change actually for learners, or is it for an internal preference?

The general rule: republish for changes that affect what learners see, learn, or get tested on. Don't republish for cosmetic fixes nobody will notice.

Getting It Published (Without Surprises)

When you click Publish, the system runs a validation check first. It's looking for configuration mistakes that would create a broken experience for learners.

The most common problems it catches:

If validation fails, you get a clear error message. Fix it, click Publish again — your reviewer's approval still counts. You don't have to redo the review.

Tip. Run a self-publish-check before you submit for review. If you'd fail validation now, you'll fail it later — and you'll have wasted your reviewer's time. Catching empty sections and missing Final Assessment marks early saves everyone hassle.

Publishing isn't reversible

There's no "unpublish" button. If you publish something and immediately spot a mistake, your only options are to republish a fix (going through the full cycle again) or get a Global Admin to intervene. So click through the course as a learner would before you publish. Five minutes of preview saves a lot of cleanup.

What Happens to Learners When You Republish

This is the most important practical consequence of publishing a new version over an existing one. Each learner sees one of these outcomes:

This is intentional, it stops learners from finishing a half-old, half-new course where the test doesn't match what they were taught.

The reset runs in the background, so you don't have to wait for it. Learners may see the new version a few seconds before the notification catches up to them; that's fine.

Three rules for Republishing

Don't republish for trivial changes. A typo or a swapped image isn't worth resetting hundreds of learners. Batch small fixes into the next planned update.

Time it thoughtfully. If you've got predictable cohorts, republish when the fewest learners are mid-course. For continuously-available courses, off-hours are quieter.

Communicate proactively for big changes. If you're substantially restructuring a course — new modules, different assessment, changed completion rules — tell your learners through your platform's normal channels. The "Course Updated" notice is functional but minimal; an admin announcement explains why.

Multi-Language Courses

Each language version of a course is fully independent. Its own draft, its own review, its own publish, its own learners. You can republish English without touching French.

This is usually convenient, but it can be a trap: if your courses must stay synchronized across languages (compliance reasons, for instance), the system won't enforce that for you. You'd need to coordinate the republishes manually and track which languages are up-to-date.

When you add a new language, you create a fresh course version in that language. Template placeholder content arrives pre-translated, but anything you've added yourself isn't translated automatically — that will still need to be addressed

Everyday Best Practices

A grab-bag of habits that pay off over time:

Don't let drafts pile up. A Draft that's been sitting for six months is just clutter. Every quarter or so, look through them: finish, archive, or delete.

Name versions meaningfully. "Q1 2025 Compliance Update" is far more useful in the version grid than "Version 4." Use the name field on creation if your platform offers one.

Resolve comments as you address them. Long lists of unresolved comments stop being useful fast. Mark them resolved the moment the underlying issue is fixed.

Decide your team's policy on unresolved comments at approval. The system doesn't enforce a rule — reviewers can approve a version with unresolved comments. Your team needs to decide what's expected.

Keep your archive. Archived versions are part of your audit trail. If a learner ever asks "what was in the course when I took it last year?", the archived version is your answer. Don't delete them lightly.

Audit edit access regularly. People change roles or leave. An accumulated list of "everyone who ever needed edit access" creates risk. Check it quarterly.

Use the Reviewer role deliberately. If you want separation between authoring and approval, give reviewers the Reviewer role specifically — not Editor. Editors can do everything; that defeats the purpose.

Keep collaborator lists current. They control who gets notified when versions are submitted, approved, or rejected. An out-of-date list means notifications go to the wrong people, or no one.

Common Pitfalls (And How to Dodge Them)

Quick Reference

When you need a fast answer:

• "Can I edit this Draft?" Probably yes. If you can't, it's because the version is actually In Review (cyan banner), you don't have permission (yellow banner), or it's been published (green banner / no longer Draft).
• "How do I update a published course?" Copy it into a new Draft. Edit. Review. Publish.
• "What happens to learners when I republish?" In-progress learners are reset and notified. Completed learners are unaffected. Learners who haven't started are unaffected.
• "How do I retire a course?" Archive the latest published version. There's no "delete a course" workflow — courses are typically retired through archiving.
• "Can I publish without a reviewer?" If you have all three permissions (SUBMIT, REVIEW, PUBLISH) and your platform isn't enforcing review, yes. Otherwise, no.
• "My publish failed validation — do I need to re-review?" Fix the issue and click Publish again. The approval still stands.
• "Can I have two Drafts of the same course?" Not in the same language. You can have a Draft in English and a separate Draft in French.
• "How do I test a draft?" Drafts are never visible to learners. Use the preview feature in the builder.