Adding sections and lessons to courses

Creating meaningful content and structuring it in a thoughtful manner will help ensure your teams are well-prepared to engage in sales conversations with prospects and customers. Lesson content makes up the bulk of Showpad courses. This section is where you will create and/or upload the content that will make up the courses that you assign to learners. To help you build courses efficiently, any content you add to lessons is also saved to the Asset Library. The only exclusions to this are authored and voice-over content created within the course.

You will also configure certain general settings related to the course content at this time. Keep in mind that you may add five pieces of content per lesson, and you can add as many sections or lessons as you’d like.

To start building out your course content, drag and drop the section tile into the course. Then, drag and drop lessons into those sections. Multiple lessons and sections can be added into a single course. To add more, click and drag a new lesson or section into the drop zone.

See how it works

Key features

• Choose between two main options for course content: select, create, or upload
• Within those options, pick and choose the best approach for distributing content
• Flexibility in content management allows for more engaging learning initiatives

You need this to succeed

• Admin or promoted member permissions to course content
• Showpad Coach Plus, Essential, or Ultimate

The quick way to awesomeness

• Add sections and lessons with titles
• Configure permissions for the content in the Settings panel
• Choose the content type and follow the prompts to include relevant content

Do this step by step

1. If you choose the Standard template, your course will already have a section included. If you choose a blank template, drag and drop a section to your course. Sections allow you to lump separate lessons into one group. This will help in organizing the structure and general approach you are taking to course creation. Each section will need a title. Click where it says Untitled Section and add a name. Tap the Enter key.
2. Now that you have created a section, begin adding lessons to it. Drag and drop the lesson tile to the section you created. 
   
   
3. Add a title for the lesson the same way you did for the section. 
4. Anytime a lesson is added to the course, the Settings menu will open for that lesson. This is where you will add the Time to completion, which is how long you expect it to take for a user to finish that particular lesson. If you'd like to allow users to make annotations on lesson documents, check the box. If you'd like to allow users to download lesson assets, check the box. This setting enables downloading assets to a desktop and is not applicable to mobile devices.
5. There are three different options for adding content to a lesson. Choose one of the following:
   Upload from Computer: Choose a file from your local device
   Select Content: Choose content already uploaded into Showpad from the Assets & Experiences tab
   Create Content: Create new lesson content from scratch, including screen capture, authored, webcam, or voiceover content
   
6. The following section will go into detail on how to use each option for providing lesson content.

Create

Creating content can take shape in various ways. The available options to create content and how to complete them are found below:

Screen Capture
Screen Capture is a feature that will allow you to record your screen while providing commentary. Capture is the perfect tool to use for product demos and process training, such as Salesforce. Before recording, make sure you have your desired application open in a separate window.  If it’s a web-based application, separate the tab from other tabs you have open so navigating between Showpad Coach and your application is seamless, and users are only seeing relevant information. Have a rough script ready regarding what commentary you want to add to your demo so that you’re not re-recording multiple times.

1. Click Create Content and select Screen Capture form the drop-down menu.
2. Choose between Microphone only – which will record your screen and your voice only; or Microphone and Webcam, which will record your screen and access your webcam to record a video of you simultaneously. To record video, you will need to use a Chrome or Firefox browser.
   
3. After choosing your desired option, select Start Screen Share.
   
   
4. After beginning, a pop-up window will appear that will ask you to select the window or application you want to record.  Once making your selection, the platform will begin recording your screen, and your audio and/or video, depending on which option you chose.
   
   
5. Once you’ve finished recording your session, hit Stop Recording.
   
   
6. Once the recording is stopped you have an opportunity to watch it back and choose to Re-record, or click Save.

Authored
This content tool works the same as a standard word processing tool. You can write content directly, insert links to outside resources, iframe objects and even embed files from Google Drive or Box into the lesson through this option.

1. From the Create drop-down menu, click Author.
   
   
2. Manually enter any text into the text box and have it appear in the lesson. Basic HTML formatting is supported so you can customize the look of your written content.
3. To point to a location outside of Showpad, copy the link you want to embed. Click on the link icon in the options above the text box. In the Display Text field write what you want the link to display as. In the Link Type field choose email or URL. If you choose email add the email address, message subject, and message body. If you choose URL, paste the link in the URL field and click OK.
   
   
4. If you would like to embed a Box or Google Drive file directly into the lesson, click the Source button and paste the direct link or embed code in the main text box. If permitted, the content will automatically update in Showpad when changes are made through Google or Box.
   
5. You can also add an image that was uploaded to an external location, by adding the image URL.

6. You can also add iframe objects using the source option to visualize embedded links, for example questionnaires prepared via Google Form or Monkey Survey. Click the Source button and paste the embed code in the main text box. Previewed below is an iframed Google Form.

    

Webcam
To make the content look and feel more like a direct instructive interaction, you can record information via webcam. This can help in elevating the course instruction or information to a more engaging level.

1. From the Create Content dropdown menu, select Webcam. Choose between Microphone only recording, or Microphone and Webcam.
   
   
2. After choosing each of these options, a larger window will open where you will have the option to Start Recording.  Clicking Start Recording will give you a 3-second countdown before your recording begins.
   
   
3. Once you are finished, click Stop Recording.
   
4. You can listen back to your recording and decide if you'd like to re-record or save it.
   

Voiceover
The Voice Over option is used to add context to a static piece of content. This allows you to upload a file and add commentary to it while scrolling through.  

1. From the Create Content menu select Voiceover. Choose between Microphone only, or Microphone and Webcam – which will access your microphone to record your voice, and your webcam to record a video of you.
   
   
2. After choosing your desired option, you will be asked to select a file from your local hard drive.  Choose your file, click Save, and it will be uploaded to the Lesson.
   
3. Once you’ve uploaded your file, a larger window will appear that will display your content.  You’ll be able to scroll through this content to make sure it’s the correct file before recording. When you are ready, click Start Recording.
   

Upload from Computer

This option is for uploading files, recordings, or other content that is completed and ready to be added as course content.

1. To upload files directly into a course, select Upload from Computer.
   
2. You can either browse your local folders or drag and drop content to upload into the course.
   
3. Once you've selected some content to upload, you can opt to add tags or search for existing tags to label the content you are uploading.
   
4. Once the file processes, you will see it attached to your course. Clicking the X next to the file will allow you to delete it directly from the course. 
   

Select Content

1. To select files from the content library, click Select Content.
   
2. A file picker will allow you to select files from your content library to add to the course. 
3. You can easily search for content or filter by type, property, tag, and source. 
   
4. All the files you select will be added to that lesson in the course. Click Insert Item(s) when you're ready.