Hello Support Team!
As you may already know, the new courseware Edit Custom Course feature will be released this weekend and available to our educators this upcoming Monday 3/21/22. Please make sure to review the information provided in this email so we can be ready to assist our customers!
Which User Types have access to the ‘Edit Custom Course’ feature?
By default, only Account Administrators can edit published custom courses
Granular, individual permissions can be given to Program Admins and Instructors from the Admin Center page
Permission to build custom courses (within programs user already has access to)
Permission to edit published custom courses
Permission to upgrade sections
Note: There is NO support for managing user permissions via batch, Clever, or ClassLink
What will the ‘Edit Custom Course’ feature allow Admins to do?
Make quick yet necessary changes to custom courses
Upgrade current sections to the latest course versions without having to recreate a custom course
Allow Admins to grant editing permissions to individual instructors to increase collaboration
Use Courseware course content available in their program or create and use their own content
When is it best to use ‘Edit Custom Course’ -vs- creating a NEW custom course?
‘Edit Custom Course’ should not be used to make radical changes to the course -- the better option is still to build a new custom course
This feature is perfect for small updates such as fixing typos, re-ordering content, or swapping out a few activities
‘Upgrade Section’ Feature & Caveats
Once a custom course has been edited and re-published, educators then have the option to ‘Upgrade Sections’ to the most recent version of the custom course
Sections can be upgraded en masse from the course menu on the published courses tab
or they can be upgraded individually from the section details page
Upgrades should be done at low/no usage times as not to disrupt students and other educators
Student grades and progress WILL be affected by upgrading a course, which is why we advise ‘Completing’ any student who has finished the course prior to upgrading sections
Completed students will not pick up any changes made to the section
Their progress and grades are "frozen" in time
If they are set back to active, they will pick up all changes
IF a section upgrade fails to process and finalize, a message will pop up notifying the customer
Failures are not expected, but if they occur, educators should try again later at a lower usage time before contacting Support
Also not expected, but after the upgrade if a student's progress/pace hasn't updated, it will when roll up is triggered
Educators should check their gradebook categories after publishing a new version and after upgrading in-flight sections
New categories will be weighted at zero rather than Edmentum guessing at how to redistribute the weightings
Conversely, categories that no longer have any contributing activities will remain in the gradebook with the original weighting until the educator edits the weight to zero
Integration Caveats for ‘Edit Custom Course’ feature
Editing custom courses will work for Clever, Classlink, and LTI customers
Educator Permissions are managed in ELF
They can edit custom courses and create new sections
Upgrading sections is only available/recommended for some integrations
Clever/Classlink/Full Access LTI customers can upgrade sections (it will not be overridden with the next sync)
LTI customers will not upgrade sections; LTI customers would need to export a new Common Cartridge
Other API customers can upgrade sections, but we do not recommend it as it requires extra steps and is not automatic
Additional Notes & Caveats
‘Edit Custom Course’ feature will show as an option to ‘Create New Version’ within custom course builder
Course version tags will show throughout the platform including on reports
Original, unedited custom courses will not have a tag
Once edited, the version tags will start at v2
Educators cannot remove the version tag
Only edit the course name before starting a draft or after publish (the name change doesn't "stick" while there is a pending version)
Once published, all new sections will be created on the latest version of the custom course
There is no going back & no way to create sections on an older version of the course
Editing a published custom course edits it for the entire account, regardless of who created it initially or which programs are using it
Students cannot be transferred from a section of an older version of a custom course to a section of a newer version of the course (or vice versa); transfer considers different versions as different courses
Instead, they could upgrade the section or use export/import progress
Sections that are still on v1 gradebooks (from 2017 & older) cannot be upgraded
Educators must first update the gradebook (purple button in the section gradebook), then they can come back and upgrade the section
To quickly see which educators have permissions, the Account Admin can
Use the Permissions filter on the Manage Users page
Or download the Export users report on that same page
Customer-Facing Resources
Click here to go to the Custom Course Builder page within Courseware Learn & Support
Click here to go to the Complete a Student page within Courseware Learn & Support
The following NEW pages have been added to Courseware’s in-app help center (3/18/22):
Under Custom Course Builder section
Under Create and Manage Your Account’s Users section
Edit Permissions > Permissions to Upgrade Sections
Internal-ONLY Resources
Playbook: Courseware Release Timeline
Document: Editing Custom Courses: Gradebook Categories & Weights
Document: Transfer & Custom Course Versions – Internal Resource
If you have any questions or if you need to set aside time to further review this information, please reach out to management and let them know!
Kind regards,
Vanessa Kenney
Customer Experience Specialist