Understanding Open edX courseware organization

When building a course in Open edX, it's helpful to understand how things are organized. 

Courseware organization

In Open edX courseware is comprised, from largest to smallest, of Sections, Subsections, and Units.

When working in Open edX Studio, this is what sections look like when they are expanded (Top), and collapsed (Bottom). Sections are the highest level of organization and generally are used to divide content up into things like Chapters or Weeks. 

Note: Grading is configured at the subsection level. So if you are creating a subsection that will have a quiz unit within it, be sure to set that subsection to be graded as a Quiz. For more information on grading, read our article Setting up grading and assignment types for your Open edX course.

By clicking on a unit, we see that this is where all of the authoring happens. 

At the top of the unit, you can edit the name and settings.

Inside the unit, there are individual components that can be edited, hidden, copied, deleted, and moved.

At the bottom of the unit page is where you can add new components to the unit.

Learning Management System (LMS) view

This is what the unit looks like in the learner live view of the LMS. The Previous and Next buttons navigate to the prior and subsequent units. To the left of the unit, you can navigate through the course organization.

Note: Because this is showing the first unit in the subsection, the previous button is grayed out.