What Is a Course?
Understand how Courses organize playbooks, students, and schedules into structured learning experiences in Authura
Written By Maya
Last updated 11 days ago
What You’ll Learn
A Course in Authura is a time-based structure that organizes Playbooks, students, and schedules into a guided learning experience.
Courses help educators manage pacing, enrollment, and learner progress over time while giving students a clear structure for participating in learning activities.
What This Is
A Course is the framework that delivers learning in Authura. It defines when learning happens, who participates, and how progress is organized across a group of learners.
Courses are different from Playbooks. A Playbook contains the actual learning content and activities, while a Course manages the learning experience around that content. This includes scheduling, enrollment, visibility, and progress tracking.
An Authura Course can include details such as:
Linked Playbook content
Course title and description
Subject and education level
Registration and start/end dates
Enrollment limits
Visibility settings
Courses also allow educators and collaborators, such as teaching assistants, to view learner analytics generated as students work through a Playbook. This includes insights like engagement trends, mastery scores, and learner progress over time.
Note: A Course does not contain learning content itself. The content lives inside a Playbook, while the Course manages scheduling, enrollment, learner access, and progress tracking around that Playbook.
Because of this, Courses act as both a delivery structure and a data-sharing agreement between learners and educators during a defined learning period.
Users sometimes expect Courses to contain lessons or activities directly. In Authura, the content lives inside a Playbook. A Course organizes and delivers that Playbook within a scheduled learning experience.
How It Works
Courses define delivery, not content.
Before a Course can exist, a Playbook must already be created. The Course then links to that Playbook and organizes how learners interact with it over time.
A Course can:
Schedule learning around semesters, units, or date ranges
Manage student registration and enrollment
Control when learners can access learning experiences
Group students into a shared learning experience
Allow educators and collaborators to monitor learner progress and trends
Restrict educator access to learner analytics within the Course timeframe
Courses also move through different statuses during their lifecycle, such as draft, active, completed, or archived states. These statuses help organize how Courses are managed and accessed over time.
Unlike Playbooks, Courses do not require approval by Authura administrators and are not standalone products.
Courses are always private by default and work similarly to an unlisted video link. Students need the specific Course URL to register and participate.
When to Use
Use Courses when you want to organize learning over time and manage a group learning experience.
Courses are useful for:
Semester-based classes
Guided learning programs
Cohort-based instruction
Scheduled assignments or pacing
Tracking learner progress across multiple students
If you only need to create learning content, you would create a Playbook.
If you need to organize students, schedules, enrollment, and progress tracking around that content, you would use a Course alongside the Playbook.
What’s Next
Learn how to enroll for a Course using an invitation link and access it from your Courses list.
Create, schedule, and publish a Course by completing course details, linking a Playbook, and setting course dates.
Understand how Playbooks organize learning content, quests, and progress tracking in Authura.