Get Started

This first lesson will prepare you to begin an interactive course on our eLearning platform. We will demonstrate how to create your account and author profile, how to start your first course and introduce you to some of the common terms and expressions we use at Educative.

Create an account

If you haven’t created an Educative account, you’ll need to do so before you can create an author profile or begin a course.

Your author profile

The Author Profile page is dedicated to you and provides an opportunity for you to share information about yourself with the Educative community of learners.

All courses you author or co-author are presented here alongside any Edpresso Shots you’ve authored. We encourage you to provide an author biography and a profile photo or logo, as well as links to your social media and your personal or business website.

View profile

When View Profile is clicked, you are presented with your profile page. This is a page dedicated to you and provides an opportunity for you to share information about yourself with the Educative community of learners.

All courses you author or co-author are presented on your author profile page alongside any Edpresso Shots you’ve authored. We encourage you to provide links to your social media and your personal or business website, as well as an author biography and a profile photo or logo.

Edit profile

Click on Edit Profile in the top menu bar to make any changes. The Save button (located at the top right) saves the changes you have made and makes them visible on the platform, whereas the Discard button reverts any changes you may have made.

Create a course

Begin by clicking on the + Create icon on the bottom left of every Educative page. Then select “Course” to load the Teach page. You’ll need to choose between creating a Full course or a Mini course.

Let’s quickly look get an idea of the difference between these two types of courses.

Full course is available to subscribers as well as for individual purchase. Mini-course is only available to subscribers.

In the spirit of quick starts, we’re going to demonstrate how to create a Full Course.

The collection editor

Clicking on the Create New Course button will bring you to the ‘Collection Editor’ page. It looks like the screenshot below:

All of these fields are important to take full advantage of the Educative eLearning platform’s capabilities, but we’re going to focus on the essential ones to start your first course. These are:

1. Comment Notifications: Enabling this toggle sends a topical email to each author, reviewer, and collaborator whenever a comment is made in the course.

2. Title: The title is an essential marketing component and so should be creative. It should also convey the necessity of the subject of the course. It’s perfectly fine to begin your course with a draft title. Our team will work with you to perfect the wording later in the course creation process.

3. Skills: These are the skills that users can learn in your course. You must select skills from a predefined dropdown menu. They must match with the concepts you have tested in the course’s assessments. More on assessments later.

4. Collaborators: An author can add collaborators to a specific course by entering the email address each collaborator has registered in their Educative account*. Collaborators have edit access and can save changes to lessons, but only the primary author can update the course so that these changes are reflected in the published version.

*Access Rights:
Authors, Collaborators, Co-Authors, and Reviewers are all access privileges granted to Educative user accounts for a specific course. Therefore, authors, collaborators, and reviewers must sign in with this user account to access a course with the corresponding privileges. When a privileged user signs into Educative, they can access any and all courses they are assigned as an author, collaborator, or reviewer.
To view the courses in which you have been added as a collaborator, click the Collaborations tab on the Teach page.

5. Co-Authors: You can add co-authorsco-authors do not have edit access to the course unless they are also added as collaborators. to your course by entering the email address each co-author has registered in their Educative account*. The co-author’s name is displayed next to the author’s on the course page with individual links to each author’s profile page.

6. Reviewers: Authors can add reviewers to a specific course by entering the email address each reviewer has registered in their Educative account*. Reviewers can add and review comments within lessons and widgets.

7. Summary: The summary is what potential buyers will see when previewing your course. It’s perfectly fine to begin your course with a draft summary. Our team will work with you to perfect the wording later in the course creation process.

8. Learning Objectives: Add a couple of draft course learning objectives. What are the key takeaways a learner will get out of this course? It’s perfectly fine to begin your course with draft objectives. Our team will work with you to perfect the wording later in the course creation process.

9. Price: We recommend setting the course price to $0 just to get started. Our marketing team will be in touch as the course draws to completion to evaluate the market and work with you to set a competitive price for your course.

10. Feedback Email: Enter the email address(es) where you’d like to receive course feedback.

11. Categories: You can think of these as chapters. Categories become the headers in your course’s table of contents and help organize the lessons.

12. Lessons: Lessons contain the actual content of the course. This content is incorporated in the course through markdown and other widgets.

Create button

Once you have filled the all the required information for your course, click on the create button to create your course.

You’ll learn more about lessons and widgets as you continue through this course.