To add a version to a course, go to the course landing page.  You will see tabs in the content of the page for options related to the content.  Click on the "Add New Version" tab to get started.  There are lots of options for versions but the only really important things are the title, description, content outline, and version type settings.

ELMS believes firmly that rapid prototyping can lead to better course designs through trial and error.  This is where the Content aspect comes into play.  By default, ELMS will start to create a content outline with nothing in it.  This allows you to build out a course from scratch.  But, what is recommended to do is play around with some of the other outline structures to see what they do.

ICMS ships with three different types of instructional content outlines.  You can then replicate parts of these instructional flows with the select box below the type of outline.  For example, to get 15 lessons created as your starting point, select 15.  These outlines structure as follows:

  • Default -- Lesson page that has an introduction under it.  This will create one lesson per number of times you tell it to.  In the future you will be able to define what the default is in the global ELMS settings.
  • Unit / Topical Outline - one Unit per number of times and each unit has three lessons with short content outlines in each.
  • Lesson Outline - Similar to Default but with extended default content outline.

Version type can be changed after the fact but is important as it allows you to select between whether or not what you are creating is closed course content or open educational resources (OER). These types can be extended as well as switched between at any time but a goal of ELMS is to reduce the overhead involved in the production for OER to the point that is a click of a button (you can duplicate versions after they have been created and change this value for the branched content!).