Course launch activities

As the start date for your course approaches, the following checklist or timeline of activities can help you make sure that your course, and your learners, are ready to begin. Suggestions for activities to complete before your course starts follow.

Verify Course Settings

• Check the course start date and time in Studio. 
• Review the grading policy, and set a grace period for homework assignment due dates. See Setting up grading and assignment types for your Open edX course.
• Confirm that any optional features that you want your course to include, such as learner cohorts, are enabled and configured. See Enabling and creating cohorts in Open edX. 

Verify Certificates

• Make sure that certificates are correctly configured and ready to be issued. See Setting up HTML certificates in Open edX.

Review First Week Content

• Verify that all units are present and published. 
• Verify that videos, transcripts, and download links are in place and working. 
• Check all assignments for completeness and verify their due dates. 
• Review feedback from the course team and beta testers to be sure that the content has been thoroughly reviewed and tested.

Welcome Learners

• Some time before the course start date, prepare and send a welcome email message to currently enrolled learners. 
• Compose a welcome message and add it to the Course page. 
• Verify that a syllabus and other references are available on the Course Handouts page. See Adding handouts to your Open edX course.
• One week before the course start date, prepare and send a welcome email message to currently enrolled learners.
• Add an “Introduce Yourself” post to a discussion topic. 
• On the course start date, prepare and send a launch email message to currently enrolled learners. 

Prepare the Course Team

• Define communication methods for all course contributors, including team members with the Staff, Admin, and discussion moderation team roles. For example, set up a course-specific email address.
• Verify that all course contributors know how to record their work, report issues, and collaborate on tasks.
• Verify that the people who will be Admins or Staff for your course have the correct role assignments in the LMS. 
• Verify that the people you have given the Discussion Admin, Discussion Moderator, and Discussion Community TA roles have registered and activated their user accounts and enrolled in the course. See Adding a discussion moderator in Open edX. Note that team members with the Admin and Staff roles must also be given one of these roles to have discussion moderation privileges.
• Define methods for managing discussions and guidance for discussion moderators, and distribute to the discussion team.