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 clean, engaging online courses for your customers.
Online courses give you the flexibility to teach in the format that works best for your content and teaching style.
You can upload and host videos directly on Podia, add downloadable files, create text-based lessons, and include quizzes to keep customers engaged as they learn.
Each lesson is flexible, allowing you to combine different types of content in the same place — including videos, downloads, embeds, text, and more. This makes it easy to build lessons that fit your course structure and teaching approach.
Whether you want to create short, focused lessons or larger resource-packed modules, you can organize your course however you’d like.
Creating an online course
Here's how to create new online courses on Podia:
From your home feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From the Admin dashboard, click Products in the sidebar menu.
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.
Categories: Set up categories for your online course.
Included items: Give customers access to specific items (such as other products and events) once they join your online course.
Spaces: Grant customers access to private spaces to encourage discussion.
Certificate: Enable or disable certificates for the online course.
Comments: Allow you and your members to leave comments on your product.
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 sign up for our community and check the included courses at https://community.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!