Set up Courses

Courses turns your website into an online school. You make courses with lessons, quizzes and homework, run classes with a teacher and a schedule, and your students learn on your website. Summit Ridge Roofing uses it for two things: a homeowner course for customers and safety training for its own crews.

Only Administrators can change the settings. Teachers and school coordinators never see them.

The Get started list

Go to School → Courses. The Overview shows a Get started list with the eight steps that open your school, in order. Each step is a link to the screen where you do it, and gets a tick when it's done.

1. Name your school (1): the name on emails, login cards and certificates.
2. Create a term (2): a school period such as "Fall 2026". Optional for self-paced courses.
3. Add a course (3), then its lessons. See Add a course.
4. Add a teacher, Create a class and Schedule its sessions. See Classes and schedules.
5. Add students. See Add students.

The tabs across the top group every Courses screen: Home, To do, Teaching, People, Results, Payments and Settings. Click a tab to see its pages in the second row. A red number on a tab means something is waiting for you, such as work to grade.

Name your school and choose the currency

1. Go to School → Courses and click the Settings tab.
2. Under School, type the School name (1), for example Summit Ridge Roofing Academy. Leave it empty to use your website's name.
3. Choose the Currency for fees (2). New courses use it.
4. Decide whether to tick Let visitors sign up for free and paid-offline courses from the course page (3). Leave it off if students should only join when you add them, import them or give them a class code.
5. If you'll take payments yourself (bank transfer, check, cash), write How to pay (for paid-offline courses) (4). Students see it on their payment page.
6. Click Save settings (5).

Add a term

A term groups classes by school year, semester, quarter or batch, so last year's classes don't crowd this year's.

1. Click People → Terms, then Add term (1).
2. Type a Name, for example Fall 2026, and the Starts and Ends dates if you like.
3. Tick This is the current term (new classes use it).
4. Click Add term.

The current term is marked Current (2). When a term is over, click Archive so its classes stop showing in the everyday lists. Their records stay.

Grades, emails and the other settings

The Settings tab has more cards. You can come back to them any time.

In the Grades card, set the Passing mark (%) (1), the weights for Quizzes (%), Homework (%) and Attendance (%) (2), which add up to 100, and, if you like, Grade descriptors (3), one per line, such as 90 Outstanding.

Who can do what

Courses adds three ready-made roles. See Teachers and roles and Roles and permissions.