When creating a course, instructors may want to start from a template. This saves them time and ensures consistency if courses have common activities or resources. For example, if all of your instructor-led courses have a face-to-face activity, it's best when creating these courses to use a template course that already has a face-to-face activity in it. This saves you from having to add a Face-to-face activity after the fact and configure it. The same comment goes for a courses that leverage a Certificate of Completion. Rather than installing a certificate of completion from an .MBZ file after the fact, you can leverage a course template that already has a certificate configured.
It's important to understand that any course can be used as a template. In other words, when defining a template in the learning environment, you are adding it exactly as you would any other course. This is why some organizations add a special course category called "Templates" or even prefix the name of their courses with the word "Template" (e.g. Template - Instructor-led Courses) to identify their templates.
There are two methods for creating courses from a template:
- By duplicating a course, which is better when adding a single course at a time
- By specifying the template in a separate column in a CSV file, which is better when uploading your courses in bulk.
Step-by-step Guide
To duplicate a course (when adding a single course)
- Go to Site Administration > Courses > Manage Courses and Categories
- Find the course in question
- Click on the "Duplicate" icon next to the course
- Fill out the form to give the course a unique name
- Click on the "Copy & View" button at the bottom of the form
The course and all of its settings and activities will be copied into a new course under the new name.