This topic describes how to set details about your course in Studio. The details you set determine the information that learners see about the course on their dashboards and on the course About page. For more information, see Exploring Your Dashboard, Settings, and Profile.
For courses running on edX Edge, you configure these course details in Studio. For courses running on edx.org, you work directly with your partner manager to configure some of these course details.
For information about setting important dates for the course, see Setting Start and End Dates.
For information about setting the licensing for the course, see Licensing a Course.
After a learner enrolls in a course, the course is listed on that learner’s dashboard. From the dashboard, a learner can open a course that has started. If the course has not started, or has already ended, the dashboard shows the start or end date.
For more information, see View Start and End Dates as a Learner.
The course About page, sometimes called the course summary page, provides information about your course to learners. In addition to the course start and end dates and an overview of course objectives, the About page can include information such as a course description with course prerequisites, requirements, and team biographies. Learners can see the About page before they enroll in the course, and might decide to enroll based on the content of the page.
For courses running on edX Edge, you configure the contents of this page in Studio, as described in this topic. For courses running on edx.org, you work directly with your partner manager to configure the contents of this page.
Learners see the description of your course on the course About page. For example, the course description is circled in the following course About page.
Note
For courses running on edx.org, you must communicate the course description to your edX partner manager to ensure that the information on the course About page is accurate.
Given the diversity of online learners, be sure to review your course description to ensure that it clearly communicates the target audience, level, and prerequisites for your course. Use concrete, unambiguous phrasing, such as a prerequisite of “understand eigenvalue decomposition” rather than “intermediate linear algebra”.
To provide a description for your course, follow these steps.
From the Settings menu, select Schedule & Details.
Scroll down to the Introducing Your Course section, then locate the Course Overview field.
Overwrite the content as needed for your course, following the directions in the boilerplate text. Do not edit HTML tags. For a template that includes these placeholders, see the Course Overview Template.
To test how the description will appear to learners, from the text that follows the Course Overview field select your course summary page.
Select Save Changes.
The course image that you add in Studio appears on the About page for the course and on the learner dashboard. It must be a minimum of 378 pixels in width by 225 pixels in height, and in .jpg or .png format. Make sure the image that you upload maintains the aspect ratio of those dimensions so that the image appears correctly on the dashboard.
An example of a course on the dashboard with a course image follows.
To add a course image, follow these steps.
From the Settings menu, select Schedule & Details.
In the Course Image section, select Upload Course Image, and then follow the prompts to find and upload your image. To specify an image that has already been added to the course, select files & uploads.
When you make changes on this page, a panel with options to save or cancel your work appears.
Select Save Changes.
View your dashboard to test how the image will appear to learners.
Note
For courses running on edx.org, the course image that you add in Studio is used on the learner dashboard, but does not automatically appear on the course About page. Work directly with your edX partner manager to set up the About page assets and course image.
The course “about” video should excite and entice potential learners to enroll, and reveal some of the personality that the course team brings to the course.
This video should answer these key questions.
This video should deliver your message as concisely as possible and have a run time of less than 2 minutes.
Before you upload a course about video, make sure that it follows the same Recommended Compression Specifications and Supported Video Formats guidelines as your course content videos.
Note
To upload a course about video for the edX Edge website only, follow these steps.
Upload the video file to YouTube. Make note of the code that appears between watch?v= and &feature in the URL. This code appears in the green box below.
From the Settings menu, select Schedule & Details.
Scroll down to the Course Introduction Video section.
In the field below the video box, enter the YouTube video ID (the code you copied in step 1). When you add the code, the video automatically loads in the video box.
When you make changes, a Save Changes option appears at the bottom right of the page. Select Save Changes after you add the course video.
View your course About page to test how the video will appear to learners.
To add an about video for a course that is running on edx.org only, follow these steps.
Locate the video file on your computer. For example, if you use a Mac® computer, open Finder and go to the directory that contains the video file.
In your browser, go to the edX/Veda video upload page at http://veda.edx.org/upload/.
Enter a title for the video that includes the course number and name. For
example, edx101: Creating an edX Course
.
You can abbreviate the full name of the course. However, the information that you enter should clearly identify your course.
Enter the Studio URL for the course. For example,
https://studio.edx.org/course/course-v1:edX+edX101x+2015
.
If you are adding an about video for an XSeries, or to any other page that does not have a Studio URL, see Add an XSeries About Video to edx.org.
Select Submit.
Drag the video file from the local directory into the Drop files here to upload field. You can also click inside this field to browse to the file.
The file upload process begins immediately.
Important
Do not close the browser tab or window, or use it to go to another URL while the file is uploading. When the upload process is complete, the message “File Upload Complete” appears.
To add an about video for an XSeries that is running on edx.org only, follow these steps.
Locate the video file on your computer. For example, if you use a Mac computer, open Finder and go to the directory that contains the video file.
In your browser, go to the edX/Veda video upload page at http://veda.edx.org/upload/.
Enter a title for the video that includes the XSeries name. For
example, edx VideoX XSeries: Creating Video for the edX Platform
.
You can abbreviate the full name of the XSeries. However, the information that you enter should clearly identify the XSeries.
In the edX Studio Course URL field, add identifying information
about the XSeries to the Studio URL that is provided. For example,
https://studio.edx.org/course/XSeries_edX_VideoX
.
The value that you enter in this field does not need to resolve to an
actual URL, but it must begin with https://studio.edx.org/course/
.
Select Submit.
Drag the video file from the local directory into the Drop files here to upload field. You can also click inside this field to browse to the file.
The file upload process begins immediately.
Important
Do not close the browser tab or window, or use it to go to another URL while the file is uploading. When the upload process is complete, the message “File Upload Complete” appears.
The estimated effort that the course requires appears in the course About page.
To set the hours and minutes a week estimate in Studio, follow these steps.
From the Settings menu, select Schedule & Details.
In the Requirements section, locate the Hours of Effort per Week field.
Enter the number of hours you expect learners to work on this course each week.
When you make changes on this page, a panel with options to save or cancel your work appears.
Select Save Changes.
View your course About page to test how the requirements will appear to learners.
Replace the placeholders in the following template with information for your course.
<section class="about">
<h2>About This Course</h2>
<p>Include your long course description here. The long course description
should contain 150-400 words.</p>
<p>This is paragraph 2 of the long course description. Add more paragraphs
as needed. Make sure to enclose them in paragraph tags.</p>
</section>
<section class="prerequisites">
<h2>Requirements</h2>
<p>Add information about the skills and knowledge students need to take
this course.</p>
</section>
<section class="course-staff">
<h2>Course Team</h2>
<article class="teacher">
<div class="teacher-image">
<img src="/static/images/placeholder-faculty.png" align="left"
style="margin:0 20 px 0" alt="Course Team Image #1">
</div>
<h3>Team Member #1</h3>
<p>Biography of course team member #1</p>
</article>
<article class="teacher">
<div class="teacher-image">
<img src="/static/images/placeholder-faculty.png" align="left"
style="margin:0 20 px 0" alt="Course Team Image #2">
</div>
<h3>Team Member #2</h3>
<p>Biography of course team member #2</p>
</article>
</section>
<section class="faq">
<section class="responses">
<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<article class="response">
<h3>Do I need to buy a textbook?</h3>
<p>No, a free online version of Chemistry: Principles, Patterns, and
Applications, First Edition by Bruce Averill and Patricia Eldredge
will be available, though you can purchase a printed version (
published by FlatWorld Knowledge) if you’d like.</p>
</article>
<article class="response">
<h3>Question #2</h3>
<p>Your answer would be displayed here.</p>
</article>
</section>
</section>