Online courses are a flexible product type that let you create lessons using a variety of media—videos, downloadable files, quizzes, and more. This makes it easy to build the learning experience you want for your customers.
In this article, we’ll show you how to create an online course on Podia.
What is an online course?
Podia makes it easy to create a clean, beautiful online course your customers will enjoy.
Online courses give you the freedom to share a wide range of content in whatever format works best for your teaching style.
You can upload and host videos directly on Podia, add downloadable files to support your lessons, and create simple text-based lessons whenever you want to explain something quickly. You can also include quizzes to keep customers engaged and help them check their understanding as they progress.
Each lesson is flexible, so you can mix and match different content types—such as adding one or multiple videos, downloadable files, embeds, and more—to design the perfect learning experience.
This lets you structure your course however you’d like, whether you prefer short, focused lessons or more detailed modules packed with resources.
Creating an online course
Here's how to create new online courses on Podia:
In the sidebar menu, click on Products.
From the Products page, click on "+ New Product".
On the product creation page select "Course" and give your product a name.
Click on Create product to create your online course.
And that's it! Your online course has been created. Now it's time to populate it with content.
Adding lessons to online courses
After creating your online course, the next step is to add your content. Every piece of content inside a course is a lesson, and a lesson can be anything you need it to be:
A simple text lesson
A lesson with one or multiple videos
A lesson that includes videos and downloadable resources
And more!
You’ll need to add at least one lesson before you can publish your course and share it with your customers.
To add a new lesson, click on "+ New lesson" and select what you want to add:
Lesson: Add a new lesson you can populate with text, files, videos, embeds & more!
Quiz: Add a new quiz to test your customers' understanding of what you're teaching and see how they're progressing.
Files: A quicker way to upload files into your online course.
Creating sections/modules
As your course grows, you may want to organize it into sections or modules.
Sections help you group related lessons together so your course stays organized and easier for students to follow. This makes the curriculum clearer and improves the overall learning experience.
For example, you could create a “Getting Started” section for introductory content, and separate sections for more advanced topics.
To add a new section, click on the + New section button.
Tip: You can easily drag and drop lessons into different sections—or move entire sections around—to organize your course exactly how you want.
Simply click on the "three line" icon next to what you want to move and drag and drop them to where you want.
Adjusting product details
After adding content, navigate to the other tabs of your product - Details, Pricing, and Availability - to adjust additional settings.
Here are the parameters for each one of the options.
Details
Details: Name, description, and image.
Included products: Give customers access to specific products once they join your online course.
Categories: Set up categories for your online course.
Integrations: Sync new product signups with an external mailing list when they complete their account setup.
Pricing
Offer: Set up a free or paid offer for your online course.
You'll also be able to set up a trial period for paid subscription pricing.
Upsells: Set up upsells that customers can buy after they purchase your online course. Upsells show up during checkout after the main product is purchased.
Availability
Availability: Determine availability options, such as status, visibility and access
Status: Choose if you want your product to be available to new and existing customers or not.
Draft online course will prevent new people from purchasing and remove access for existing customer.
Visibility: Choose whether you want your product to appear on your site. Hidden products are only available through their specific link or if manually added to your site.
Access: Choose if people can sign up for this product or not.
Limits: Set up a start date, access duration or sign-up limits.
Publishing your course
Once you're finished setting up your online course, hit “Publish” on the top right to make it ready to be shared with your audience.
FAQs
What do online courses look like to customers?
What do online courses look like to customers?
Customers will see all of the available lessons on the left-hand menu. They can also use this left-hand menu to navigate through the available lessons.
From there, they'll also be able to view how many lessons they have completed.
If you want a real-time demo of online courses, you can check out our demo site at https://demo.podia.com/
Can I customize the course viewer page of my product?
Can I customize the course viewer page of my product?
No, the course viewer page cannot be customized at this time.
What's next?
You can check additional resources to customize your online course even further!
Still need help?
If you have any questions, send an email to [email protected] or click the purple help icon to send us a message 😄