Courses

Courses are the hub's teaching component. A course holds a syllabus and a set of overview pages; an offering is one run of that course; a section is one cohort within an offering; and a section's content is a tree of units, asset groups and assets. Students enrol in a section.

A hub needs this if it teaches: a summer school that runs every July, a training course new users have to take before they get a tool allowance, a semester class using the hub's simulation tools. If nothing on your hub has enrolment, a syllabus and a start date, you do not need the component and can stop here.

It is not a place to put a set of lecture notes — a resource or a wiki page does that with none of this structure. What Courses adds is the machinery around teaching: cohorts, dates that differ per cohort, graded work, progress, and a certificate at the end. If nobody is enrolling and nothing is graded, the structure is overhead.

Most of that machinery is only here, in the administrator interface. Units, asset groups, assets, offerings, sections, coupon codes, roles and certificates have no front-end equivalent, so setting up a course is back-office work that an instructor cannot do for themselves unless you give them administrator access. Budget for that: a hub running several courses will have someone in these screens every term.

Go to Components → Courses. The submenu holds Courses, Pages, Students, Roles, and a Plugins link that jumps to the courses plugin group under Extensions → Plugins. Everything else — offerings, sections, units, asset groups, coupon codes, certificates — is reached by drilling down from the course list.

Every screen needs core.manage on com_courses.

The hierarchy

Get this right before you build anything, because moving content between levels afterwards means recreating it. The rule of thumb: a course is the thing that has a name in a prospectus, an offering is a year of it, and a section is a group of students who get their own dates. A course run once, for everyone, still needs all three — one offering and one section — because the enrolment setting and the dates live on the section.

Level	Reached from	Holds
Course	Components → Courses	Title, description, managers, a logo, overview pages, one certificate
Offering	the Offerings count on a course row	A run of the course: start and end dates, units, its own pages
Section	the Sections count on an offering row	A cohort: enrolment setting, dates, students, coupon codes
Unit	the Units count on an offering row	A week or module
Asset group	the Asset groups count on a unit row	Lectures, Homework, Exam — whatever the Default Asset Groups option names
Asset	inside a unit or asset group's edit form	One lecture, file, video, quiz or tool

Counts in the list are links. A count of zero shows a [ + ] or Add link instead, which goes straight to the new-item form at that level.

The course list

Draft is the state to know about here: it makes a course visible to its managers and to nobody else, so a course can be built over a month without anyone stumbling into a half-finished syllabus.

Columns: ID, Title, Alias, State, Cert., Managers, Offerings, and Pages. Filters above the table are a Search box and a State drop-down (All States, Unpublished, Published, Draft, Trashed).

The toolbar carries Duplicate, New, Edit, Delete, and — for core.admin — Options.

The State cell is a button: clicking a published course unpublishes it, clicking anything else publishes it. The Cert. cell goes to the certificate screen for that course, and says Certificate set or No certificate set.

Creating a course

The scenario for the rest of this chapter: the group wants to run a three-day summer school in July, open only to the twenty people they invite, with a certificate for anyone who passes the exam. That is one course, one offering, one section with restricted enrolment, three units, and a certificate.

Start with the course itself.

1. Press New.
2. Fill in the Details fieldset.
3. Set State under Publishing.
4. Press Save. Managers and the logo cannot be added until the course exists — the form says so.
5. Add managers in the Managers panel.
6. Drop an image into the Logo panel.
7. Press Save & Close.

Set State to Draft at step 3 while you build the rest. A draft course is visible to its managers and to nobody else, so nothing you do next is visible to students until you publish it.

Then work down the hierarchy, using the counts in each list as links:

1. On the course row, click the Offerings count and press New. Call it 2026 and give it the July start and end dates.
2. On the offering row, click the Sections count. A default section already exists; open it, set Enrollment to Restricted (coupon code is required), and save.
3. On the section row, click the Codes cell, press Generate, ask for 20 codes and set an expiry date. Send those out with the invitations.
4. On the offering row, click the Units count and create one unit per day. Each unit gets the asset groups named by the Default Asset Groups option — Lectures, Homework, Exam by default.
5. Open a unit and add its content in the Assets panel.
6. Back on the course list, click the No certificate set icon in the Cert. column and follow Creating a certificate.
7. On the section's Recognition/Rewards tab, set the certificate offer to Yes.
8. Publish the course.

Read Who can claim one before step 7. If any of your lecture-day quizzes are marked graded and the grading policy gives quizzes a weight, every one of them becomes compulsory for the certificate.

Details

Field	Notes
Group	An existing hub group to tie the course to, or None
Alias	Alphanumeric. Generated from the title when left empty. Becomes part of the URL
Title	Required
Blurb	A sentence or two for the course catalogue
Course length	Free text, e.g. 4 weeks
Estimated Effort	Free text, e.g. 5 - 8 hours per week
Description	The long description
Tags	A comma-separated list of keywords

Publishing

State offers Unpublished, Published, Draft, and Trashed.

• Published — anyone can find the course.
• Draft — only course managers can see it, so a course can be built before students arrive.
• Unpublished — off the site.
• Trashed — off the site and out of the default list view.

The right-hand column also shows read-only ID, created date and creator, and a Parameters fieldset for each courses plugin that offers course-level settings.

Managers

The Managers panel is an embedded list of the course's managers. Add a person by name, and set their role. Roles come from the Roles screen.

Course overview pages

A page is a tab on the course or offering overview. Reach them from the Pages count on a course row, from the same count on an offering row, or from Components → Courses → Pages.

The list shows ID, Title, State and Ordering.

A page's edit form has:

Field	Notes
Title	Required
Alias	The URL segment. Generated from the title when empty
Content	The page body, in the rich-text editor
Active	Yes puts the tab on the overview; No hides it

The read-only panel says the page's Type — Course page, Offering page, or User Guide — depending on whether it is attached to a course, an offering, or neither.

Offerings

The Offerings count on a course row opens the offering list: Ordering, ID, Title, Starts, Ends, State, Sections, Enrollment, Units, and Pages. The toolbar carries Duplicate, New, Edit and Delete.

An offering's edit form has:

• Details — Title (required) and Alias.
• Publishing — State (Unpublished, Published, Trashed), Starts and Ends.
• Logo — an image for the offering.
• Parameters — Progress Calculation, plus a fieldset for each courses plugin that offers offering-level settings.

Progress Calculation decides which assets count towards a student's progress bar:

Option	Meaning
Inherit from courses defaults	Use the component's Progress calculation based on: option
All published assets	Every published asset
All published, graded assets	Only graded assets
All published, video assets	Only videos
All published, manually selected assets	Only assets marked by the instructor

Sections

The section is where enrolment is decided, which makes it the screen you will come back to. A course open to the world and a course open to twelve named people differ only in the section's Enrollment setting and whether you have generated coupon codes.

The Sections count on an offering row opens the section list: ID, Title, Alias, Default, State, Starts, Ends, Enrolled, and Codes. Enrolled links to the students for that section; Codes links to its coupon codes.

A section's edit form has four tabs.

Details

Field	Notes
Offering	Which offering the section belongs to
Alias	Alphanumeric. Generated from the title when empty
Title	Required
Default section	Yes or No. The default section supplies the dates every other section inherits
Enrollment	See below
State	Unpublished, Draft, Published, Trashed

Enrollment has three settings:

• Open (anyone can join) — any hub user can enrol.
• Restricted (coupon code is required) — only someone with a code from the section's Codes screen can enrol.
• Closed (no new enrollment) — nobody new can enrol.

The default for a new section comes from the component's Default Enrollment option.

Publishing on the same tab carries Publish start, Section starts, Section finishes and Publish down.

Parameters, also on this tab, carries:

• Progress Calculation — the same list as the offering, except the first option reads Inherit from offering settings.
• Preview mode — No preview offered, Yes, offer a full preview, or Yes, offer a preview of the first unit. This is how you let people look at a course before enrolling.
• A fieldset for each courses plugin with section-level settings. The Discussions plugin puts Show threads from here — All sections or This section only. Sticky threads show across all sections whatever this says.

Managers

The section's own instructors and assistants, added the same way as course managers.

Dates/Times

A tree of every asset in the section with a From and a To date. Dates are inherited from the default section for the offering, and a value set at one level is inherited by everything below it. Set a date here to change when a lecture, homework or exam becomes available in this section only.

Recognition/Rewards

Turning this on is not enough on its own — see Certificates for what a student has to do to earn one.

• Offer a certificate for this seciton? — Yes or No. This only does anything when the course has a certificate.
• A Badge fieldset with the badge's enabled flag, image, provider and criteria.

Students

The Enrollment count on an offering row, the Enrolled count on a section row, and Components → Courses → Students all reach the same screen. Columns: ID, Name, Email, Course : Offering, Section, Cert., and Enrolled. Filters are a Search box, an Offering drop-down, and a Section drop-down.

New opens a form asking for a User, an Offering, a Section, and an Enrolled date. Delete unenrols the selected students.

Coupon codes

Codes are how you run a closed course without maintaining a list of usernames: generate fifty, send them out, and anyone with one can enrol themselves. Each code is single-use — the list shows when it was redeemed and by whom — so a code that leaks admits one extra person, not everyone.

The Codes cell on a section row opens the coupon codes for that section: ID, Code, Created, Expires, Redeemed, and Redeemed by.

The toolbar carries Generate, Export codes to a CSV file., New, Edit and Delete. Generate opens a pop-up asking for a Number of codes (5 by default) and an expiry date, then creates that many codes at once.

Codes only matter for a section whose Enrollment is Restricted.

Units, asset groups and assets

The Units count on an offering row opens the unit list: ID, Title, Alias, State, Ordering, Asset groups, and Assets. The toolbar carries Duplicate, New, Edit and Delete.

The Asset groups count opens that unit's asset groups: ID, Title, Alias, State, Ordering, and Assets. Its toolbar adds Duplicate Assets to Existing Groups, which copies a group's assets into other groups.

Assets themselves are edited inside the unit's or asset group's edit form, in an embedded Assets panel. There you can Attach asset — pick an existing one — or Create asset, which opens the asset editor in an overlay. The panel lists each asset's ID, Title, Type, State and Ordering.

To delete content:

1. Go to Components → Courses, and click the course's Offerings count.
2. Click the offering's Units count.
3. To remove a whole asset group, click the unit's Asset groups count, tick the group, and press Delete. Confirm Are you sure you want to remove these items?
4. To remove one asset, open the unit or asset group for editing and delete the asset from the Assets panel.

Deleting an asset group deletes the assets in it.

Certificates

A certificate is the thing students ask about, and the thing that generates support mail when it does not appear. Set one up only if you intend the course to be assessed, because a certificate nobody can earn is worse than no certificate at all.

A course has at most one certificate: a PDF with placeholders the hub fills in when a student claims it.

Who can claim one

Three things must all be true before the download link appears on a student's progress page:

1. The course has a certificate.
2. The student's section says Yes on its Recognition/Rewards tab.
3. The student is eligible for recognition, which is a stricter test than most people expect.

Eligibility is decided in gradebook.php:758. The section's grading policy gives each of the three grade categories — exam, quiz, homework — a weight. For every category with a weight above zero, the student must have a score or an override on every published, graded asset in that category. And their overall score must be at or above the policy's pass threshold. Categories weighted zero are ignored completely.

The practical consequence: a single graded item in a weighted category that a student never opened blocks the certificate permanently, however well they did on everything else. It does not matter whether the item was worth anything, whether the instructor meant it to count, or whether the student scored a hundred on the rest. Nothing on any screen explains this to the student or to the instructor; the link simply does not appear.

The shipped grading policy weights exams at 100%, quizzes and homework at zero, and sets the pass threshold at 70%. On a hub that has not changed it, that means: every graded exam asset attempted, and 70% overall. If your instructors want homework to count, they change the weights in the grading policy interface on the course pages on the site — and the moment homework carries a weight, every graded homework asset becomes compulsory for the certificate.

Creating a certificate

To create one:

1. On the course list, click the No certificate set icon in the course's Cert. column.
2. The upload form appears. Choose a PDF and press Upload.
3. The certificate opens in a placement canvas showing the PDF. Drag the placeholder buttons onto it and resize them: Login, Name, Date, Email, Course, Offering, Section. Clear All removes them all.
4. Preview in the toolbar renders the certificate as a student would see it.
5. Press Save & Close.

To remove one, open the certificate the same way — the Cert. column will read Certificate set — and press Delete in the toolbar.

A section only offers the certificate when its Recognition/Rewards tab says Yes, offer a certificate. That switch decides whether the certificate is on offer; Who can claim one decides whether any given student gets it.

Roles

Components → Courses → Roles lists the roles a manager can hold: ID, Alias, Title, Offering, and Total — how many people hold the role. A role belongs to one offering, or to None for a role available everywhere.

A role's edit form asks for an Offering, a Title and an Alias.

Options

Press Options in the toolbar of the course list. core.admin is required. The full list is in the generated parameter reference. The ones worth knowing:

Option	Default	Effect
Upload path	/site/courses	Where course pictures and files are stored
Default Asset Groups	Lectures, Homework, Exam	The groups created with a new unit
Default Enrollment	Open (anyone can join)	The enrolment setting a new section starts with
Can section owners edit grading policy?	Yes	When No, only course instructors see the grading policy interface
Progress calculation based on:	—	The hub-wide default that offerings inherit
Auto Approve Courses?	Yes	When No, an administrator must approve each new course
Show Enrollment Numbers	No	Show enrolment numbers and stats on each course

To show enrolment numbers on the course pages, set Show Enrollment Numbers to Yes on the Basic tab and save.

Presentations

The old version of this page ended with a section on HUB Presenter, the slide-and-video presentation format. That belongs to Resources, not to Courses: a presentation is a resource of an online-presentation type, whose files are assembled on the hub's file system and described by a presentation.json manifest. Nothing about it is configured in the Courses component.