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Editing and republishing course content
Editing and republishing course content

Authors can edit and update content for current learners.

Caitlin Foran avatar
Written by Caitlin Foran
Updated over a week ago

If your course uses legacy activities and assessment, check out Editing and republishing a course with legacy activities instead.

As an author, you can make edits to content, republish and get those changes out to learners. This is great to be able to update information, add more content, or fix any mistakes that were not picked up before publishing (we're all human, after all!).

The short story is:

  • You can easily make small changes and fixes to content. When you republish, those changes will flow out to all scheduled, current, and past class activations based on that content.

  • Changes to class attributes (overview, study plan, trailer video etc.) rather than content within pages, don't flow out to activations. This is because they can be changed when you set up a class activation, and we don't want to override that. To update these sections check out how to update an active class activation.

  • Remember any changes you make will immediately be visible to learners and could impact their learning experience. Therefore you should be careful and think through implications when making larger changes e.g.
    - changes to assessed tasks,
    - removing in-page discussions,
    - removing an entire element (text, task, video), and
    - removing an entire page.

There's a lot more detail needed to really explain this process, so authors can make informed decisions. The rest of this article covers the above in greater detail.

Some clarification of terms:

  • Content - This includes the pages of content but also extra data like the overview, glossary, cover photo etc.

  • Class activation - Essentially a live class of learners. The same content can have multiple class activations (Note: only published content can have class activations).

  • Published content - At some point, your content will be ready for learners. Publishing your content makes it visible to the people in iQualify who manage activations (managers). A new Content id will be created.

  • Under construction content - When you first create your content, it's under construction, and is called a draft. When you publish this content it becomes ‘published’. If you edit content that is published, it immediately goes back under construction, and you'll see a new Draft id on the card.

  • Root content id - Is the ID that sticks with the content even when it is republished. The Root content id is what automated things will use. It allows us (or your integration team) to point to the same "root" content, even as authors are making changes and creating new published Content id.

Screenshot showing the content IDs for published content on the Create dashboard.

Which class activations see changes when you republish?

On the content row of published content, you can see how many class activations there are. If you select the kebab menu in the row (three dots), and then select Activations from the drop down menu, you can see how many scheduled, current, and past classes there are.

Current, scheduled and past activations all see the changes

When you make changes to published content and republish it, those changes are rolled out to all the current class activations, as well as scheduled and past activations.

What changes do not flow through to activations?

Certain course attributes are set up to give managers control over details that may change from activation to activation, though the body of the course may not change.

Course attributes can be edited in Create by an author, but will not be updated in any activations. These include:

  • Name

  • Trailer video

  • Cover photo

  • Overview

  • Study plan file

These sections are identified in Create when editing published content.

If you're wanting to update any of these sections for an existing offering see How to update an active activation.

What happens to tasks and learner responses to tasks?

When you update a task in your content and republish it, changes made will be visible to all learners who have not yet seen or started the current task. Learners who have already viewed, made a submission or saved a draft, will continue to see the previous version of this task.

When a task with variations is changed, the author gets to choose whether to replace the task for ALL learners, OR only those who have not yet seen or started the current task. Authors will get the following popup:

Pop up for a task with variations warning that learners are currently studying the course, and two choices as outlined above.

If you choose to replace it only for learners who have not yet seen or started the current task then any existing submission will be saved for current learners. If you choose to replace it for all, any existing submissions for learners will be removed.

Note: If your task does not have variations then you will not see this option.

What happens to learners' comments and notes?

Discussions

Making changes to the text of an in-page discussion won't remove any of the comments. But if you delete/disable an in-page discussion and publish, it won't be visible for activations.

Note: The conversation isn't lost as such, just hidden. So, if you re-enable the discussion and publish again, the conversation will reappear.

Private study notes and social notes

Notes are "attached" to an element within a page (textbox, video, task etc.). If you delete the element notes were attached to, the notes disappear (and cannot be brought back). So, where possible, instead of deleting the entire element, try to change the stuff within the element.

Summary

When republished, all changes to content will flow through to scheduled, current, and past class activations. Course attributes (overview etc.) are not updated. Be careful when making larger changes (assessed tasks, removing entire elements etc. as it may impact learners who are currently studying, especially those online when you hit publish!). If the changes are larger, you can make them and not republish until the current class activations have closed, or consider duplicating the content instead.

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