Authoring courses, modules, and lessons

Overview

The Course Builder is where you construct a course's curriculum: the ordered tree of modules and the lessons inside them. This article covers creating and editing each layer and the fields that shape how content appears.

Create a course

1. From the StretchCode Overview, choose New course.
2. Enter a title. StretchCode generates a URL slug automatically; you can override it, but keep it lowercase words separated by hyphens (for example, intro-to-sales). Slugs are made unique automatically — if intro-to-sales exists, you'll get intro-to-sales-2.
3. Set the level and add a card summary (the short line shown on the catalog card).
4. Save. The course is created in draft so nothing is public yet.

Course details you'll want to fill in

• Summary and description — the longer copy on the course page.
• Learning outcomes — a bulleted list of what learners will be able to do.
• Cover image and hero image — the catalog thumbnail and the large banner on the course page.
• Topic tags and skill tags — used for search, filtering, and discovery.
• Instructor name, catalog badge (a short label like "New" or "Popular"), and estimated minutes.

Add modules

1. Open the course in the Course Builder.
2. Choose Add module and give it a title (for example, Foundations).
3. Set the sort order to control where the module sits relative to others. Modules render in ascending order.
4. New modules start in draft; publish a module when its lessons are ready.

Module slugs must be unique within a course. If you reuse a slug, StretchCode returns a clear "module slug already exists" message so you can pick another.

Add lessons

1. Inside a module, choose Add lesson.
2. Enter a title and write the body. Choose the content format — Markdown (recommended for most text) or HTML for richer layouts.
3. Pick a lesson type: lesson, video, exercise, or reading.
4. Set an estimated duration in minutes and a sort order within the module.
5. Toggle Free preview on for any lesson you want anonymous visitors to read without enrolling.
6. Save. Set the lesson to published when it's ready for learners.

A realistic example

You're building Customer Success 101. You create three modules — Onboarding, Adoption, Renewal — with sort orders 1, 2, 3. In Onboarding you add four lessons: a Markdown reading ("Why onboarding matters", marked free preview), two standard lessons, and one exercise ("Draft your welcome email"). You publish the module and its lessons, leaving Renewal in draft until next week.

Editing and reordering

• Edit any course, module, or lesson field at any time; changes to published content go live immediately.
• Change sort order values to reorder modules or lessons. The learner's outline and "Continue" position follow this order.
• Changing a slug re-generates a unique one if there's a conflict, so existing links stay valid within the course.

Archiving

To retire content, archive the course, module, or lesson. Archiving removes it from the catalog and the active builder list but preserves data and any certificates already earned — it is not a hard delete.

Tips

• Write lesson bodies in Markdown for clean, consistent formatting; reserve HTML for lessons that genuinely need custom markup.
• Give every course at least one free-preview lesson — it's your best conversion tool for public courses.
• Use consistent, descriptive topic tags; they feed catalog search and help learners find related courses.
• Keep module and lesson sort orders spaced (10, 20, 30) so you can insert items later without renumbering everything.

Troubleshooting

"A module/lesson with that slug already exists." Slugs must be unique within a course. Change the slug or let StretchCode auto-generate one.

My edits aren't visible to a learner. Confirm the item's status is published. Draft modules and lessons are hidden even inside a published course.