Create and publish a course

New to teaching on Discentik? Start with Start teaching on Discentik for the whole journey in five steps.

Open the instructor workspace and select My Courses. Choose an existing course, or
select Create course beside the sorting control or from the final tile in the course
grid. The course workspace keeps the outline, content, testing, settings, and publication
steps together.

When you start a new course, enter a Course name in the dialog and select
Create course. The name can be up to 160 characters. You can change it later in
the course's Settings. Choosing Cancel closes the dialog without creating a
draft. The same naming step applies when you create an organisation-owned course.

In Settings > General, edit Course title and select Confirm to save it.
Leaving the field or pressing Enter does not save the title. Select Cancel or
press Escape in the field to restore the previous title. Leaving General without
confirming discards the unconfirmed title edit. If saving fails, your typed title
stays available so you can retry. Learners receive title changes after the next
approved publication.

The Instructor workspace is available only to personal accounts. If your account is
linked to an organisation, an Admin must grant you Content Author access. You then
create organisation-owned courses from Organisation > Courses; those courses are
never published as personal courses. Read
Understand Organisation account boundaries
for details.

If you have a personal learner account and Instructor is not enabled yet, select
Instructor in the top navigation. The platform opens Profile > Workspaces and
focuses the Instructor setup action. After you enable it, use the Learning and
Instructor workspace chooser to move between taking and creating courses.

Creating courses during early access

Creating, testing and publishing courses requires adult eligibility, current admission
and the appropriate personal Instructor or organisation authoring permissions. When
public registration is enabled, eligible people can create a personal account without
a beta invitation. Under the invitation-only staged policy, a current personal
invitation is also required, including for existing accounts. Organisation membership,
processing approval and authoring permissions remain separate checks.

Published courses follow their normal catalogue visibility, review, enrolment and
purchase rules. Learners still need an eligible purchase, free enrolment or assignment,
and AI use draws on the applicable AI balance. Creating or publishing a course does not
start a seller account or guarantee earnings; seller availability and commercial terms
are separate from registration.
Paid publication and checkout also require the applicable commercial, tax and provider
readiness checks; opening registration does not approve them.

Plan the learning path

Start with the outcome learners should achieve. Divide the course into stages that
explain a concept, demonstrate a task, provide practice, or check understanding. Give
each stage a clear title so learners can understand their progress.

Add stages and activities

Build your course directly in the visual editor and its settings. Links, tables,
formatted text, and Canvas starter documents use built-in editing tools. Course
authoring does not have a Code mode, and manual editing does not use AI balance.

Open the content navigation menu in the editor header. Add module stays at the
top of the Modules panel while you scroll, and a newly added module is brought
into view. Expand a module to add or arrange its stages.

Use the course outline to add and arrange stages. Depending on the activity, you can
add written guidance, guided prompts, evaluation criteria, walkthrough steps, or
document-writing instructions.

For a graded Chat or Canvas activity, list the criteria under What learners
must do. Learners see each criterion's label in their feedback, and the AI grader
marks it met, partly met or missing with a quote from their work. Write one observable
requirement per criterion, in the learner's terms, and use How the grader checks
this to say exactly what must appear. The editor shows a hint beside any criterion
that is vague, checks more than one thing, is written as "The learner…" or describes
an action the grader cannot see, such as copying or revising.

Write instructions directly to the learner. Explain what they need to do, what a good
result looks like, and what they should do next. For AI activities, describe the
learning goal and the assistance the AI should provide. Do not include secrets or
customer-specific information in course content or prompts.

Save your changes before moving to another section.

Use section controls to arrange supporting sections and choose whether they can
collapse and start expanded. The required first Problem section stays first.
Activity settings also let you choose which supported learner tools are available;
file uploads still follow the activity's upload settings and allowed file types.

For a Chat activity, the heading at the top of the instruction panel is the
activity title. This is the heading learners see in the player too. The text below
it contains the learner-facing task instructions. Criterion labels are shown to
learners in their feedback; only How the grader checks this and the additional
instructions stay internal. Canvas activities keep a separate editable problem heading.
Changing either a title or the instructions updates your draft; learners already
taking a published release keep that release until an approved update is available
and they switch versions.

Ask the AI Assistant

Open the course assistant at the bottom right and describe what you want. It chooses
whether to answer, research, or edit, and selects the narrowest appropriate target.
There are no Ask/Edit modes or required tool selectors. Include any limits in your
message, such as “only improve this stage” or “explain without editing or searching
the web”. It asks for clarification when the target or request is unclear.

Use this Assistant for AI improvements; sections no longer have separate
Enhance with AI buttons. Review its changes in the visual editor and select
Save when ready. The Assistant does not save or publish for you. All built-in
editing tools remain usable without AI balance.

AI balance, usage and safe chat

The reminder below the message box explains that chatting uses AI balance and links
to this guidance in a new tab, so your course workspace stays open.

Assistant questions and edits use AI, so they draw on the Instructor balance shown
under Profile > AI usage. Reviewing what the assistant produced is still your
responsibility: check its wording and any factual claim before learners see it.
The wallet icon beside the Usage & safety note opens a compact label. Hover over
or focus it to see the amount left, rounded to two decimal places. View usage opens
your usage history in a new tab.
When the balance is exhausted, Add AI balance opens the available
personal top-up packages in a new tab. An in-progress reservation is not shown
as a charge; the display refreshes when the request finishes.

Do not share personal or sensitive data in the chat. AI can make mistakes: review
its responses and proposed course changes before saving or sharing them.

Test as a learner

In Content, select Test in the course header beside Save.
On mobile, use the flask icon for Test.

Complete the course as a learner would. Check that instructions are clear, stages
appear in the intended order, navigation works, and evaluations give useful feedback.
Test both successful and unsuccessful responses where appropriate.

In Test, feedback marks any criterion that was graded differently across grading runs.
Reword it to be more specific, then test again. Learners never see this mark.

AI interactions in Test mode use your workspace balance. Opening
Test, reading content, and moving between stages do not use AI balance.

Testing does not publish the course or change a learner's real progress.

Check the course details

Before publishing, review the title, summary, audience, category, cover image, and
other course details. Make sure the description accurately explains what learners
will achieve and who the course is for.

Presentation supports Markdown headings, lists, emphasis, code examples, tables, and
HTTPS links (plus links within Discentik). Inline images, raw HTML, embedded forms,
and unsafe link schemes are not supported. Upload the image through the course cover
control instead. Each formatted presentation section must stay under 200,000
characters. Unsupported formatting is rejected when you submit, even if it was
saved through a different editor. Previews and learner pages hide unsupported
embedded media and controls in older content.

The presentation and cover are part of the submitted course revision. A reviewer
checks them alongside the lessons. Changing your draft presentation does not change
the approved learner version; even a small presentation update needs a new reviewed
release. Linked websites can change independently, so use trustworthy destinations.

For a paid course, the Presentation preview also shows the current course price,
purchase action and buyer trust indicators. These use the same presentation components
as the public course page so you can review how the offer appears before submission.

An older published course may still display a cover linked from another website.
Before submitting its next revision, replace that linked cover using the course
cover upload so it can be screened and stored with your course. This does not change
the version learners currently see.

Cover images are first resized in your browser to reduce the upload. The trusted
platform server then validates, decodes, and re-encodes every accepted cover as
compressed WebP, discarding embedded source metadata before sending the server-made
bytes to OpenAI for automated content-safety screening and public storage. A modified
client cannot bypass this server step. If validation, server compression, or OpenAI
safety screening is unavailable, the cover is not uploaded; try again rather than
bypassing the check. Animated images are stored as a static optimized image.

Upload attempts are protected before the platform reads the image: an account can
start up to 20 attempts in 10 minutes and 100 in a rolling 24-hour period. Shared
network limits are 60 attempts in 10 minutes and 300 in 24 hours. An account can
have at most four uploads, totalling 20 MB, in progress at once. If a limit is
reached, the message tells you to wait; the denied image is not screened or stored.
Interrupted and rejected uploads are removed automatically from their exact reserved
storage location.

Choose promotion preferences

For a paid course, open Settings → Commerce → Discentik promotions. Promotions
are allowed by default. You can opt the course out or set the largest campaign
discount Discentik may apply in 5% increments, up to 90%. The workspace shows the
published list price and the lowest permitted campaign price once protected costs
are available. Platform Admin staff create and audit campaigns; instructors do not
create sale dates or coupon codes. Your published list price does not change.

Submit and publish

Resolve any validation messages shown in the workspace. When the course is ready,
follow the publication action shown for your account. If review is required, the
course remains unpublished until the review is complete.

In My Courses, each card shows its current review state once: Draft, In
review, Approved, or Changes requested. Open the course for the detailed
publication history and any reviewer feedback.

For an existing learner release, Published identifies the version learners see
now. Use Submit public update or Submit private update to send your latest
draft for approval. The published version remains available while the update is
reviewed and is replaced automatically only after approval. Use Unpublish course
to stop discovery and new purchases. Learners who already purchased the course
keep access to their approved release; other new access is unavailable.

Upload course videos and downloadable resources through this course workspace. A
review submission accepts only protected media belonging to the course owner or its
organisation; a copied storage path from another account is rejected and is never
opened by a reviewer.

Resource and video links must use HTTP/HTTPS or a link within Discentik. Script,
data, caller-created blob and ambiguous redirect-style URLs are not supported.

Resource uploads support PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, DOC, XLS,
PPT, TXT and CSV. Video uploads support MP4, M4V, MOV, WebM, OGG and OGV.
Unsupported formats are rejected before upload. GIFs, SVGs and animated resource
images cannot pass approval; export a static PNG, JPG or WebP instead. For an
unsupported video or document, export it in a supported format—changing the filename
extension alone does not convert the file. Approval also checks the stored file and
its content; choosing a supported extension is not a safety approval.

If an older draft or imported course contains an unsupported resource or video,
remove that attachment from the draft and upload a supported replacement before
submitting for approval. This does not alter the release learners already use.

Media paths must match the uploaded file exactly, with no leading or trailing
whitespace. If a pasted or imported reference is rejected, reattach that cover,
video, or resource using the workspace upload controls before submitting.

After changing a published course, use Test to check the affected stages again
before submitting the update. Keep learner-facing instructions and course details
accurate as the course evolves.

Keep course and authoring balances separate

The included learner AI balance belongs to the course purchase or assignment.
Instructor preview and workspace-assistant activity use the separate monthly
Instructor authoring balance. Changing the learner balance or course price does
not increase the monthly authoring balance. AI balances fund AI usage and cannot
be withdrawn as money.

Review course learning results

Your personal Instructor > Overview shows a small learning summary under each
recent course. Completed compares completed runs with learners who started the
current published version; learners who only received access are not counted as started.
First-try pass rate shows how often the first evaluated attempt at a stage passed.
Its sample counts each learner and stage pair once, so it is not a count of unique learners.

These summaries include personal learners with analytics enabled and exclude
organisation learning, practice attempts and other published versions. Carried-forward
progress can contribute to completion, but does not create an evaluation attempt.
Publishing a new version can therefore start with no results. No recorded attempts
means no rate is available; it does not mean the course is easy or difficult.

Use the results to spot instructions worth reviewing, then test an improvement before
submitting an update. They do not establish learner ability or workplace performance.
Course management remains available if learning results cannot be loaded.