Introduction
Course management is going to involve maintaining your live courses.This is where you will edit your courses, schedule live lessons, add video lessons, assignments and quizzes and grade them.
My Courses
Clicking on My Courses on the Left will bring up a list of your published courses. Here you can view or edit a course. To edit a course ( add lessons, Assignments etc) enter the course in edit mode by clicking on the pencil icon that shows up when hovering your mouse next to the price or the three dots. Note: Simply clicking the title will take you to the public course page in view mode and not edit mode.
Once in edit mode, scroll down to the course builder section.
Course Builder
There course builder is where you will manage your courses. As you can see on the picture above, the first thing you will see is a add new topic button. Think of it as a chapter
Add Topic
Topic name: This could be the chapter or section of the curriculum that you want to teach, for example statistics.
Topic Summary: Describe topic and include all subtopics
Note that after adding your topics, you can rearrange them. You can drag and drop any topic by clicking on the three bars.
Adding Lessons
For each topic, you can add a lesson, Quiz, Assignments and Zoom Live Lesson. Before you can add a lesson, you need to record and edit it if its a prerecorded lesson. To schedule a zoom live lesson click on the Zoom live lesson. Note that you can also schedule zoom lessons from the instructor dashboard by clicking zoom option.Â
Scheduling a Live Zoom lesson
Scheduling a zoom meeting lesson is easy like abc on our site. Click on the Zoom live lesson to reveal the following options.Â
Meeting Name: Give the meeting a name. We recommend this must reflect what learners will learn.
Meeting Summary: Give a summary of what the meeting is about. Mention things such as topics to be covered, type of meeting, etc.Â
Meeting Time: Select the time and date of the meeting.
Meeting Duration: Select the duration of the meeting. Keep in mind that if you are a free user of Zoom, you cannot hold meetings longer than 40min. Upgrade your account to a premium zoom account to hold longer meetings.
Time Zone: Specify the time zone for the meeting. GMT +2 is South African time.
Auto Recording: This is a very IMPORTANT setting. Specify the Recording type of the meeting. Local will store the meeting on a user’s PC . Do Not leave this on No Recording otherwise your meeting won’t be recorded and you will not have a video to upload on our website after the live lesson has concluded. Note that you are required to upload a video after each lesson.
Create Meeting: Once done press the create meeting button.
Starting a Zoom Meeting
You can now click zoom option on the left panel to view a list of your schedule zoom meeting. If this is now the time for you to be live, click on the start meeting button to be live with your learners.
Please note that you need to have zoom app installed on your computer before pressing the start meeting button. Follow the prompts and the meeting will be automatically recorded if you have set the recording option to local. If you forgot this step, you have to press record meeting on the zoom app and failure to do so will result in no record, a situation you do not want to happen.
Editing your recorded Video Lessons
After you have concluded your zoom live lesson or recorded with zoom you need to wait for zoom to convert your recording. Please do not disturb this process because you might lose your recording if you do. The recording will be in My documents folder inside the Zoom folder by default.Â
You are required to do some minimal editing of your video before posting it. Your videos must look professional so using an editing software, you can cut out some part of the video, split and merge video clips.
Recommended Editing Video Software: We recommend OpenShot or Movavi but any editing video software can be used but we recommend you start by using the free ones that can be downloaded on the internet.Â
Cut Out: Please make sure you cut out the first part of your video where your zoom app is shown, before sharing your screen and or when you are still opening your software. A professional Video will t when your whiteboard is on screen and you are ready to teach the learners. Also cut out the last part of the video when you have concluded the lesson. Do not upload a video showing you closing software and your desktop.
Split and Merge: During the lesson, minor hickups may occur like a freeze or your software, longer than normal moment of silence etc. Cut out these parts of your video using the split and merge tool.
Text tool: If you made a mistake in the video and realise during editing stage your can correct that by displaying text on screen using the text tool.Â
You do not need to be a professional Video Editor: You can do everything we mentioned above in 5 minutes so no need to be an expert in video editing, you are required to do the minimum.
Uploading your Video to YouTube
Below we will explain the process of uploading a video to YouTube to get you up to speed if this is your first time doing so.
Login to your gmail account and then go to www.youtube.com. At the top right hand corner click your avatar and then select YouTube Studio.
Now upload videos or create at the top right hand corner of your screen. now select the video file from your computer and wait for the upload to finish.
You will have to go through four stages before you can publish your videos.
Video Details: Enter Video title and description
Video elements: Choose the target audience for your video. Is the video made for kids? If you select yes its made for kids, YouTube will place restrictions for your video. We suggest you select No its not made for kids. A kid in the US is someone below the age of 13. Note that you can also select Yes its made for kids and this is not going to be a problem.
Checks: YouTube checks your video for any copyrighted content.
Visibility: This is the most important setting for videos that will be uploaded on our site so it is important to get it right.Â
As you can see on the picture above, choose Unlisted option, copy the video link and then press save. With unlisted option your video will not be shown on Youtube but can only be viewed from our site after uploading it.
Uploading a Video Lesson on rain.fundisa.net
You are now ready to upload your video on our website. Login to your account and navigate to my courses then select the course for which you want to upload video if you have more than one. Under course builder section, click add lesson under the topic/chapter for which you to upload the video. This will reveal the following options.
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Lesson Name: If this was live lesson, we suggest you make it the same as zoom meeting name name to make it easier for your learners to recognise it.
Lesson Content: This space is for text based lessons. Leave empty since we offer video based lessons.
Featured image: Upload a thumbnail for your lesson if you have one (optional).
Video Source: Select youtube on the dropdown menu and paste the video url, the link you copied earlier on from YouTube.
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Upload Attachments: Lesson attachments are the notes you prepared for the learners and lesson activities (exercises). Please note that marking of these activities is optional. Activities to be marked are going to be assigned to learners using the assignment feature.
Enable Course Preview: Check this if you want website visitors to be able to view this lesson without enrolling/paying for the course. T
Note that you have to unlock 10% (1 for every 10 videos uploaded) of your lessons , to promote yourself. This allows your audience to view to course content before committing themselves to purchasing your course. Refer to your contract.
Update Lesson: Click the update lesson to publish your video lesson.