Courses

A course is an online class run on the hub. It holds lectures, videos, wiki pages, homework, quizzes and exams, tracks how far each student has got, and can hand out a certificate or a badge at the end. Courses are at /courses on the hub.

Hubs use them for the teaching that sits alongside the research: a summer school that has to run for people in four time zones, the simulation training a lab makes every new graduate student do, a semester course whose students need the hub's tools anyway. The point of running it here rather than emailing PDFs around is that the hub marks the quizzes, keeps the score, and knows when somebody has finished.

The student half of this page follows one course the whole way through: Introduction to Molecular Dynamics, eight units, one released each week, with a quiz at the end of most of them and an exam at the end.

How a course is put together

Four levels sit inside each other. You meet all of them in the URL of a course page.

Level	What it is
Course	The catalogue entry: title, short description, tags, a long description, instructors and any extra overview pages
Offering	One run of the course. A course that changes significantly gets a new offering rather than an edit
Section	One cohort inside an offering. Sections decide who may enrol, when material becomes available, and whether a certificate is offered
Unit	A week or module of an offering, holding asset groups — Lectures, Homework, Exam — and the assets in them

Students enrol in a section. Most hubs run a single default section per offering, so enrolling looks like enrolling in the course itself.

The two views of a course

The course overview at /courses/{alias} is public. It shows the title, the short description, the long description under an Overview tab, the instructors, how long the course takes and how much effort it needs, an Offerings tab, and any extra pages the instructor has added. A Go to Course button takes you in.

Inside the course, tabs come from the courses plugins the hub has enabled: Getting Started, Outline, Progress, Announcements, Discussions, Notes, Pages, and, for instructors, Dashboard. The Outline tab is where the material is.

What to read next

• Student features — enrolling, working through the outline, tracking your progress, and claiming a certificate or badge.
• Course manager features — what an instructor can do from the course pages themselves.
• The Courses chapter in the Hub managers book covers everything an administrator does in the back end, including sections, coupon codes, certificates and roles.

Student features

Finding a course, enrolling in it, working through it, and seeing how far you have got. If you were sent a link by an instructor, start at Enrolling.

Finding a course

1. Go to https://yourhub.org/courses.
2. Search from the box on that page, or select Browse the catalog for the full list.
3. The catalog sorts by Title, Alias or Popularity, and narrows to one tag at a time. Each entry shows the course number, its short description and its instructors.
4. Select a course title to open its overview.

Enrolling

Enrolling is what turns a catalogue entry into your course. Until you do it the hub is not tracking you: no progress, no grades, no certificate, and no access to anything but the overview page.

The course overview is public. The long description, the instructors, the course length and the estimated effort are all readable before you enrol. Everything under Go to Course — the outline, discussions, your progress — needs enrolment.

To enrol, select Go to Course on the course overview. What happens next depends on how the section is set up:

Setting	What you see
Open	You are enrolled and dropped straight into the course. There is no confirmation message; the outline simply appears
Restricted	A Redeem Coupon Code form. Type the code you were given into Coupon Code and select Redeem
Closed	Course enrollment is closed. with links to the support form and the course catalog

Our molecular dynamics student was sent a code by the summer school organisers, so she gets the middle row: one field, one button, and she is in. A code is tied to a section, so it also decides which cohort she joins.

A course may also be sold through the hub's store. When an offering has a price, the button reads Enroll for only $30.00! rather than Enroll for free!, and it takes you to the cart instead of enrolling you.

Where a course runs more than one offering, or you belong to more than one section, the button opens a list so you can pick which one to enter.

Looking before you enrol

Worth knowing before you commit to eight weeks of somebody's course.

An instructor can turn on a preview, so the outline can be read without enrolling. There are two kinds: a full preview, and a preview of the first unit only. While previewing, a banner reads You're currently viewing this course in preview mode. Some features may be disabled.

Quizzes and exams can never be previewed. Opening one without being enrolled gives You must be enrolled to utilize this asset.

Inside the course

The Outline tab is the course. Everything else is support: somewhere to ask a question, somewhere to keep notes, somewhere to read the syllabus.

Tabs run across the top. Which ones appear depends on the plugins the hub has enabled:

Tab	What it holds
Getting Started	How the course works
Outline	The units, lectures, files, videos, wiki pages, homework, quizzes and exams. This is where most of the work happens
Progress	Your own progress and grades
Announcements	Notices from the instructor
Discussions	Threads for the course. Depending on the section, you see threads from your own section only or from all of them; sticky threads always show everywhere
Notes	Your own notes, taken against the material
Pages	Syllabus, errata, and anything else the instructor has written

What a week looks like

A course is not a folder of files you can work through at your own speed unless the instructor built it that way. Material becomes available on the dates set for your section, and an item with a prerequisite stays shut until you have finished the item it requires.

That produces a rhythm you can plan around, and it looks like this on the Outline tab. Every unit in the course is listed from day one, including the ones you cannot open yet, so you can see the whole eight weeks in advance and read the unit titles. A unit that has not opened is marked and carries its date in place of its contents:

Content for this unit will be available starting July 14, 2026, 9:00 am EDT.

When that moment passes, the unit opens by itself. Nobody has to do anything and there is no announcement unless the instructor writes one. Our student opens the course on the Monday, finds Unit 3 has unfolded, works through the lecture and the reading, and takes the quiz at the end. Then Unit 3 closes again if the instructor set an end date — Content for this unit expired on and the date — so the work is not there to come back to indefinitely. Within an open unit, the same applies to individual items: an item is a plain heading rather than a link when it is not yet available.

Prerequisites work differently. They are not about the calendar but about you: an item stays shut until you have completed whatever it depends on, and it says so.

This unit has prerequisites that have not yet been met. Begin by completing: Unit 2

The Progress timeline moves along with all of this. Unit 3 of 8 at the top of that tab means the third unit is the one currently open to you, not the one you have reached.

Tracking your progress

The Progress tab answers two questions a student actually has: am I passing, and how much is left. It is worth opening once a week rather than once at the end, because the score it shows is the same one the certificate test uses.

Open the Progress tab. If you are not enrolled you get You must be enrolled to utilize the progress feature. instead.

The timeline runs across the top: a walking figure moves along a bar divided into one segment per unit, from a start marker to a finish marker. A segment fills in as you work through that unit's material. The heading above reads Course begins and a date, Course currently in progress, or Course ended and a date; the line beneath says which unit you are on — Unit 3 of 8.

Four tiles sit below it:

Tile	What it counts
Your current score	Your grade as a percentage, marked passing or failing
Quizzes taken	Out of the total number in the course
Homeworks submitted	Out of the total number in the course
Exams taken	Out of the total number in the course

The three counters are the ones to watch, because they are the certificate test in visible form: an item counts as taken once you have submitted it, or once an instructor has entered a score for you by hand. Quizzes taken 5 out of 8 means three quizzes are outstanding, and three outstanding quizzes mean no certificate however good the five were.

A grading policy link beside the score explains how it is worked out, and the policy's own description is printed under the tiles. Read it early. It says what counts and for how much — and, as the Certificates section below explains, a category worth nothing in the policy is a category you do not have to finish. The grading policy is set per section, by the course's instructors rather than by the hub administrators.

The breakdown below lists every unit with its percentage. Open a unit and you get a table of Assignment, Score and Date taken for each graded item in it. A score you were expecting to see may read Not yet open, Not yet available, Not taken or Withheld — the last means the item has closed and the instructor chose not to show results for it, not that you scored zero.

Certificates

A certificate is what you have to show for the course afterwards: a PDF carrying your name, login, email address, the course, the offering, the section and the date. Not every course has one, and a course that does may offer it on some sections and not others, so check before you count on it.

Three things all have to be true before you can claim one. The course has a certificate, your section offers it, and you are eligible: you have taken every graded exam, quiz and homework that the grading policy gives a weight to, and your score is a pass. When they are, a panel appears at the top of your Progress tab, headed Congratulations!, with a Download your certificate! link. The PDF is generated the first time you ask for it and downloaded as an attachment.

The eligibility test is worth reading twice, because it is stricter than "pass the course" and it catches people out. Passing is only the second half of it. The first half is completeness: for each of the three categories — exams, quizzes, homework — that the grading policy gives any weight at all, you must have taken every graded item in that category. Not most of them, and not enough of them to pass. Our student who skipped the week 5 quiz because she was already on 88% has a passing score and no certificate, and nothing on the page tells her why until she looks at Quizzes taken 7 out of 8 on her own Progress tab.

The one relief is the other side of the same rule. A category the grading policy weights at zero is ignored entirely, so on a course whose homework counts for nothing, unsubmitted homework does not block the certificate. An instructor entering a score for you by hand also counts as having taken the item.

Where the course has a certificate that some section offers, the course overview's summary table says Certificate: Available before you enrol.

Badges

A badge is the shareable version of the same thing: a credential issued through the hub's badge provider that lives in a backpack you can point employers at, rather than a PDF in your downloads folder. A section can offer a badge, a certificate, both, or neither.

It uses exactly the same eligibility test as the certificate, so everything in the section above applies unchanged. When you qualify, a panel appears on your Progress tab:

• Congratulations! You've earned the badge...and you deserve it! with a Claim your badge! link — or, where the provider gives no claim URL, a note to watch your email.
• After claiming: Congratulations! You've got the badge! with View your badges!
• If you turned it down: Congratulations! You earned the badge! with View denied badges, and you can go back and claim it later.

Course manager features

What an instructor does from the course pages themselves, without going near the administrator interface. Everything in this section happens on the site.

Read it if you are the one running the course. Building the material — writing the outline, dropping in lectures and videos, turning a PDF into a quiz the hub marks — is all here, and none of it needs an administrator. What does need one is anything about the shape of the run rather than its content: the dates, the cohorts, the certificate. The table below is the dividing line, and it is the first thing to check when a control you are looking for is not on the screen.

What is on the site and what is not

The front end is where you write the course and build its material. The back end is where the hub's shape is set: sections, who may enrol, when material becomes available, certificates, badges, coupon codes and roles.

Task	Where
Course title, short description, tags	Course overview page
Long description	Overview tab
Extra overview pages	Course overview page and the Pages tab
Instructors and managers	Course overview page
Creating an offering	Course overview page and the Offerings tab
Publishing a draft course	Course overview page
Building the outline: units, asset groups, assets	Outline tab
Quizzes and exams, and their deployment settings	Outline tab
Prerequisites	Outline tab
Gradebook and grading policy	Progress tab
Editing an offering's title, dates or state	Administrator only
Sections, enrolment setting, coupon codes	Administrator only
Availability dates for units and assets	Administrator only
Certificates and badges	Administrator only
Course roles	Administrator only

The administrator side is covered in the Courses chapter of the Hub managers book.

Creating a course

If the hub lets you create courses, a Create Course button appears at the top right of /courses and /courses/browse.

1. Select Create Course.
2. Fill in Alias — alphanumeric, and it becomes part of the course URL. The field checks as you type whether the alias is free.
3. Fill in Title.
4. Add a Short description. This is the text that appears in the course catalog.
5. Add Categories (tags), separated by commas.
6. Decide whether to tick Allow forks (derivatives) of this course?. When ticked, another hub user may copy your course as a starting point for their own, and their copy keeps a link back to yours.
7. Select Save.

A new course is created in Draft state and you become its manager. Only course managers can see a draft course, so you can build it before anyone arrives. When it is ready, select Publish in the banner at the top of the course overview.

Editing the course overview page

Go to /courses/{alias}. Where you can change something, a small Edit button appears next to a label saying what it changes.

Title & Short description — opens a form with Title, Short description, Categories (tags) and the Allow forks checkbox. Select Save.

Time & Effort — the panel on the right. Opens Course length and Estimated Effort, both free text (4 weeks, 5 - 8 hours per week). Whatever you type appears in the summary table beside the enrolment button.

Long description — on the Overview tab. Opens the rich-text editor on the course's long description.

Page contents — on each extra page tab you have added. Gives you Edit and Delete for that page.

Logo — drop an image onto the panel on the right, or use the file field beneath it. It appears beside the course title.

Adding an overview page

An overview page is an extra tab on the course overview.

1. Select the Add page tab at the end of the tab strip.
2. Fill in Title, and an Alias if you want to control the URL. Leave the alias empty and it is made from the title.
3. Write the page in the editor.
4. Select Save.

Instructors and managers

The Manage button beside Instructors/Managers in the right-hand column opens a pop-up.

1. In Enter comma-separated usernames or IDs, type the people to add. The field takes several at once.
2. Pick a role from Select role. Roles that belong to a single offering are grouped under that offering's name.
3. Select Add. Changes saved appears and the person is listed below.
4. To change somebody's role, pick a different one from the drop-down beside their name. It saves as soon as you change it.
5. To remove somebody, tick the box beside their name and select Remove.

Creating an offering

An offering is one run of the course. Create a new offering when the material changes significantly, rather than editing the old one.

• On a course with no offerings, a panel says This course needs an offering! with a Create an offering button.
• On a course that has one, use the New button on the Offerings tab.

Either way the form asks for an Alias and a Title; only the title is required. Select Save.

The Offerings tab lists each offering with the number Enrolled and its Enrollment status — Accepting, Restricted or Closed — and a button reading Access Course or Enroll in Course.

Copying and forking

Copy appears at the top right for a manager of the course, and makes a duplicate you own. Fork appears instead for anyone else when the course has Allow forks turned on, and makes a copy that keeps an attribution back to the original. Both ask you for a new alias.

Building the outline

The outline is the course. A unit is a week, an asset group is a kind of thing inside that week, and an asset is one lecture, file, video or quiz. If you get the units right the rest is filling them.

1. Select Go to Course on the course overview to enter the offering.
2. Open the Outline tab and select Edit outline.

The builder is a single page that saves as you go. Done at the top right returns to the outline; Deleted Assets opens the tray of removed items.

Units

Select Add a new unit at the bottom of the list. To rename one, select edit beside its title, change Title:, and select Save.

Each new unit comes with the hub's default asset groups, which an administrator sets under the component's Default Asset Groups option — normally Lectures, Homework and Exam.

Asset groups

Select edit on an asset group's title to open its form:

Field	Notes
Title:	What the group is called
Published:	Yes or No
Short Description:	One or two sentences

Inside each group, Add a new lecture (or homework, or exam — the label is the group's title in the singular) creates a place to put material.

Adding material

Each place you have added carries a drop zone reading Drag files here to upload, and beneath it a row of buttons:

Button	What it does
Attach a link	Paste one or more URLs into the box and select Add
Embed a Kaltura or YouTube Video	Paste the video's embed code
Include a wiki page	Write a wiki page in place, with references
Include a tool	Attach one of your hub tools. Only appears when the hub has a tool directory configured
Browse for files	Pick files from your computer

All of them take several items at once. Once a file lands, the hub works out what kind of asset it is from the extension. Where more than one kind is possible you are asked What do you want to do with these files? and given the choice — a PDF, for example, can become Post notes or slides (i.e. a downloadable file) or Create a quiz/exam.

Each asset in the list carries icons for preview, edit and delete, and a checkbox reading Mark as reviewed and publish?. Tick it and the label changes to Published. Selecting the asset's title lets you rename it in place.

The Edit Asset dialog

The edit icon opens a dialog with:

Field	Notes
Title:
URL:	Hidden for quizzes and exams
Type:	Video, File, Form, Text, URL
Subtype:	Video, Embedded, File, Exam, Quiz, Homework, Note, Wiki, Link, Tool
Attach to:	Move the asset to a different asset group
Create a gradebook entry for this item?	Makes it gradable
Include this item in the progress calculation?	Counts it towards the student's progress bar
Launch a tool with this file?	Only when the hub has tools and the asset is a file or a tool URL
Prerequisites:	See below

Select Submit to save, Cancel to close.

Quizzes and exams

This is the part that pays for running the course on the hub rather than by email: you draw boxes over a PDF of your existing exam paper, say which answer is right, and the hub marks every submission and puts the score in the gradebook. Note the limit before you plan around it.

Only a PDF can become a quiz or exam the hub marks for itself. Any asset can be given a gradebook column with Create a gradebook entry for this item? in the Edit Asset dialog, but you enter those scores by hand from the Progress tab.

1. Drop the PDF onto an asset group.
2. Answer What do you want to do with these files? with Create a quiz/exam.
3. Fill in Title:.
4. For each question, drag a box around the question and all of its answers. A pale yellow marker appears around it.
5. Click beside each possible answer to drop a radio button there.
6. Select the radio button next to the correct answer.
7. Repeat for every question, then select Save and Close.

Deployment settings

Tick the publish checkbox on the finished quiz and the deployment form opens.

Times

• Time limit: in minutes. A timed form shows the student a landing page first, so the countdown does not start before they are ready.
• Attempts: how many tries are allowed. The default is 1.

Results

Two sets of radio buttons, one for While the form is open, show users: and one for After the form is closed, show users:. Both offer:

• only confirmation that their submission was accepted
• their score
• a complete comparison of their answers to the correct answers

Select Create deployment.

You can reopen the deployment later with the edit deployment icon beside the asset, and the question layout with the edit layout icon.

Prerequisites

A prerequisite must be completed before the item that requires it can be opened. Units require units; assets require assets.

On a unit: in the outline builder, select edit beside the unit title. Under Prerequisites:, pick a unit from the add prerequisite… drop-down.

On an asset: open the asset's Edit Asset dialog and use the Prerequisites: section the same way.

Either way the prerequisite is saved as soon as you pick it, and appears in a list above the drop-down with an x to take it off again. You can set more than one. Only published assets are offered as asset prerequisites.

Restoring deleted material

Deleting an asset in the builder moves it to a tray rather than destroying it.

1. In the outline builder, select Deleted Assets at the top.
2. Find the item and select Restore.

The button is hidden when the tray is empty.

The gradebook

The Progress tab shows students their own progress. For an instructor it shows the whole class, with three views selected from the buttons at the top left: progress view, gradebook view and reports view. Alongside them:

Button	What it does
edit grade policy	Set how the course grade is worked out. Hidden when the hub has turned off Can section owners edit grading policy? and you are not a course manager
add a new entry	Add a gradebook column by hand. Course managers only
export to csv	Download the gradebook
refresh gradebook view	Reload the grid
download selected detailed results	Download the individual responses to a form

A Search students box and a pager sit below.

Putting an image in a page

The Pages tab inside a course offering — not the overview pages on the course — has a file uploader beside the editor, so an image can be uploaded and then referenced from the page body.

1. Open the Pages tab and select Add page, or the Edit icon on an existing page.
2. Drop an image onto the Click or drop file area on the right.
3. Copy the URL that appears under the uploaded file.
4. Put the cursor where the image should go, then use your editor's image button and paste the URL into its URL field. In CKEditor that is the Image button and the Image Info tab; other editors differ, because the hub chooses which editor to load.
5. Select Save.

The page form also has Page appears for section:, which restricts the page to one section of the offering, or - All sections -.