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Courses overview

What a course is made of, how courses get built, and what changes if you're working in the Classic builder.

A course is a piece of interactive training that someone works through and completes, made up of screens. You build each screen from blocks, arranged on a six column grid, and group your screens into sections. There's no limit on how many courses you can build.

What's in a course?

Every course opens with a Start screen and ends with a Finish screen. Your content screens sit in between, grouped into sections that learners move through as chapters.

Each screen is built from blocks, and any block can go on any screen. That means a single screen can carry an explanation, something interactive and a knowledge check together, rather than holding one kind of content at a time. Blocks cover:

  • Text and structure: headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and buttons.
  • Media: images, video, audio and slideshows.
  • Interactive: accordions, checklists, process steps and flashcards.
  • Documents and embeds: an embedded document, or third-party content from another site.
  • Questions: seven question types, used as a knowledge check on an ordinary screen.

Every screen is mobile responsive, and you can control how blocks stack on a narrow screen or hide one from mobile entirely.

Where does assessment sit?

Two places, and the difference matters. A knowledge check is a single question block on an ordinary screen, unscored, for checking understanding as learners go. A scored quiz is its own section, numbered alongside your content sections. It holds questions only, opens with a cover screen and a Start quiz button, gives each question its own screen, and returns a result.

With scoring turned on, a learner has to reach the passing grade you set to complete the course, and the number of retries decides how many attempts they get.

How are courses built?

Most courses start with Create with agent. You describe what you want or upload a document or SCORM package, answer a few questions about your audience and outcomes, and the agent builds a structured course you then refine.

The agent stays with you after the build. You can ask it to rewrite a screen, restructure a section, generate a quiz, add narration or translations, or change the theme, so a course that came out longer or drier than you wanted is a conversation away from being fixed. The in-builder agent is available on all current plans, but not on the legacy Flow and Hub plans.

You can also build it yourself, screen by screen. Each new screen starts from a layout, which gives you a pre-arranged set of blocks you can change however you like.

If you have an existing SCORM package, you can host it as it is, or convert it into an editable Coassemble course.

Whichever route you take, the builder autosaves as you work.

How do courses work in the Classic builder?

In the Classic builder you choose from 11 fixed screen types when you add a screen, and your content goes into the shape that type provides. There are no blocks and no grid, so a screen holds what its type allows. A quiz is one of those screen types rather than a section of its own.

Courses built this way carry a Classic badge in your course library, and they keep working exactly as they do today. The Classic group in the New course menu still holds the earlier creation methods.

Designing effective courses

Keep each screen to one clear idea and let the length of a course follow the content. Sections give a long course a shape learners can handle, so a big topic can be chaptered rather than split up. Keep videos to roughly 6 minutes, and split a topic across several courses grouped into a collection when the parts stand alone.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a limit on how many courses I can build?

No. You can build unlimited courses.

Are certificates available?

Not at this stage. Coassemble doesn't currently issue certificates.

Can I download a course as a file?

No. Courses are interactive, cloud-based experiences, so they can't be exported as a static PDF. If you want to give learners reference material to download, add a Document block with the file attached.

Can I still use hotspots?

Hotspot isn't currently available as a block. Hotspot screens in courses you built in Classic are unaffected and keep working as they do today.

Does my work save automatically?

Yes. Coassemble autosaves as you build, so you won't lose progress.