Creating and archiving courses
How to create a course (empty or as a copy of another), where to find earlier years' courses, and how to archive, restore or delete a course.
A course is one subject for one school year. One or more groups take it: adding a group to a course makes all its members students of the course. There is no need to copy a course for each class: one course serves every group, and topic schedules can differ by group.
Who can create courses
Section titled “Who can create courses”In an organisation, courses can be created by:
- the organisation’s admins and teachers (an organisation admin gives the teacher role);
- owners and teachers of any course of that organisation;
- system admins.
Everyone else sees “You can’t create courses. An organisation admin can make you a teacher.”
New course
Section titled “New course”Open the new course dialog in one of three ways:
- select ＋ next to the Courses heading in the sidebar;
- choose New course… in search (Ctrl K);
- organisation admins: under Administration → Courses.
staff/teaching/new-course- Enter the Title (up to 200 characters), for example “Programming basics”.
- Choose the Academic year: next year, the current one (the default) and the previous one are offered. A new school year starts on 1 September.
- If you can create courses in several organisations, choose the Organisation.
- Under Content, choose Empty course or Copy of a course. For a copy, choose the Course to copy: the list holds courses where you are an owner or teacher (any year, archived ones too). If you have not entered a title yet, the copied course’s title is used.
- Select Next: groups.
- In Who takes this course?, tick the groups. You can search by group name, parent group or teacher; each group shows its number of members. The footer shows how many groups are chosen and how many students will be enrolled (members of a subgroup whose parent is also chosen are counted once).
- Select Create course.
You become the course’s owner, and the app opens the new course’s Problems page. Choosing groups is optional: you can add them later. People added to a group later join the course by themselves.
What a copy takes
Section titled “What a copy takes”| Copied | Not copied |
|---|---|
| The current topics with their problems, in order, with their mode and late credit | Dates: topics are created without a schedule |
| Languages, attempts per day | Students, groups and the other course staff |
| Starter code | Submissions, messages, announcements, individual tasks |
| Quizzes | |
| Archived topics and topics without problems (the dialog says how many are left out) |
The copy’s topics use the same problem lists as the original. The first time you change such a list, the app asks whether to change it only in this course or everywhere; see Topics.
An empty course gets every programming language enabled in the system and unlimited attempts. You can change both in the course settings.
Courses in the sidebar
Section titled “Courses in the sidebar”The sidebar’s Courses list shows the courses where you are an owner, teacher, assistant or group admin. Organisation admins also see every course of the organisations they administer there, archived ones only where they are staff themselves. Your own courses come first, then the organisation’s other courses, each by title.
- The first six courses of the current (or a later) school year and courses without a year show as rows.
- The other courses, including earlier years’ and archived ones, are behind the ⋯ More row, which shows how many there are. It opens a menu grouped by school year: newest first, courses without a year last. An archived course carries an archive box. Choose a course to open its overview.
- When more than eight courses are behind More, the menu starts with a Filter courses field. Type part of a title or a year; capitals and Lithuanian letters don’t matter (so “sakn” finds “Šaknys”). ↓ / ↑ move through the list, Enter opens the first match and Esc closes the menu.
- The course whose page you are on always shows as a row, even when it would otherwise be behind More.
To change a course’s school year, open the course settings (General → Academic year).
Archiving a course
Section titled “Archiving a course”Archive a finished course: nothing is deleted, but the course becomes read-only history. Course owners, organisation admins and system admins can archive.
- Open the course’s Settings.
- Under Danger zone, select Archive course.
- Read what changes and confirm.
Organisation admins can also archive several courses at once under Administration → Courses.
After archiving:
- students lose access to the course;
- the course’s owners, teachers and assistants and organisation admins can open it, but nothing can be changed;
- group admins who are not course staff no longer see the course;
- submissions, results and messages stay;
- every page of the course shows a strip “Archived on (date)” and “Read-only: students don’t see it and nothing can be changed.”;
- the course is no longer part of Activity.
Restoring a course
Section titled “Restoring a course”Select Restore in the archived course’s strip, or Settings → Danger zone → Restore course. Students see the course again, with its topics, dates and enrolments as they were.
The same people who can archive a course can restore it: its owners, admins of its organisation and system admins. Teachers and assistants can open an archived course but can’t restore it: the strip shows them no Restore button and says “Its owners and organisation admins can restore it.” Admins of an archived organisation can’t restore its courses either.
Deleting a course
Section titled “Deleting a course”A course can only be deleted while nothing has happened in it: no submissions, quiz attempts, marks, messages or individual tasks. Then Danger zone → Delete course removes the course, its topics, its group links and its enrolments for good (the problems stay in the problem archive). Afterwards the start page opens.
When the course has history, the button is disabled and the hint says what blocks it (for example “This course has history (submissions, messages), so it can only be archived.”).