Start from a real course, not a blank page
Good teaching technology rarely fails on the technology. It fails because adopting it costs a semester nobody has spare. So the starting point here is a course that already works, rather than an empty shell with a “create your first module” button in the middle of it.
Three weeks out, a platform that opens on an empty screen, and a syllabus that has to exist either way. The rational call is to teach it the old way again this year, and that is exactly what happens.
It arrives assembled, not in pieces
The modules, readings, tool assignments, quizzes and badges come already connected to one another. Nothing has to be wired up before it does anything.
And nothing is locked. Every module, quiz and due date in a template is yours to rewrite, reorder, hide or delete, without touching anybody else's course.
How the afternoon actually goes
Pick a shape you recognise
Start from a template close to your course, or assemble one from the teaching library, where readings, mini-tools and full tools are searchable together and add straight into a course.
Cut it down to your syllabus
Reorder modules, swap a chapter, hide the tools you will not teach, set your own dates, add your slides as course resources. Platform defaults stay intact for everyone else.
Get the students in the door
Paste or upload a class list and the importer matches students to accounts, or hand out a registration code and let them enrol themselves into the right section.
What is in the box before you touch it
⚠️ The fair objection
"A template course is somebody else's course. Mine is not generic."
Agreed, and the template is not meant to survive contact with your syllabus. It exists so your first hour goes on deleting and reordering rather than authoring from nothing, which is a far faster hour. Most instructors keep the module scaffolding and the question banks and replace the examples and the sequencing entirely. If you would genuinely rather start empty, you can.