Online Lessons

Build and deliver online course content with rich pages, activities, assessments, resources, and SCORM packages. Online Lessons are reusable: one lesson can be linked to multiple online-enabled courses, and each course arranges its published lessons in its own order.

Access required

Choose the task you are doing. Each row is a separate action.

Learners use the course player through their own enrolments. Availability and completion gates still apply regardless of a staff member's authoring permissions.

Overview

An Online Lesson is structured as modules of topics, where each topic (page) holds ordered sections:

Online Lesson
└── Module 1
    ├── Topic 1.1
    │   ├── Content sections
    │   └── Knowledge check
    └── Topic 1.2
        ├── Formal assessment
        └── SCORM activity

Question Banks are reusable and versioned separately from the lesson, so knowledge checks and formal assessments across many lessons can draw from the same published bank.

Build online delivery in Course Design

Open the course's Course design and go to the Content section. Select Add item to choose an existing lesson from the Library or create a lesson in the course. Adding the first lesson turns on Online course content for the course. To deliver the course face to face again, unlink its lessons and turn Online course content off on the Delivery section of Course design.

On the Content step, select a lesson's title in the course sequence to edit it on the course page, with the sequence beside it. The sequence also sets each lesson's Completion choice: Required: complete it or Optional. Save in the lesson editor before selecting another item. Publish N drafts on the Content step publishes every draft lesson and assessment on the course, and Review and publish offers to publish them with the course. See Create and design a course. When the course maps requirements, use the editor's Requirements action to map the topic, sections or questions to the course requirements. Publish the lesson before accepting its coverage.

Delivery settings belong on the Delivery section of Course design. Keep the structure, delivery environment and access rules consistent with the course you intend to publish.

Restricting access by state or territory

On the course's Delivery section in Course design, use Allowed student access states when learner content must only be available from particular Australian jurisdictions. Leave all states unselected for unrestricted access. A restricted course only opens when Cloudflare resolves the student's network to an allowed state; outside or unknown locations are blocked before lesson or assessment content is returned.

Allowing completion outside Australia

For a course whose primary delivery mode is Online, open the Delivery section of Course design and enable Allow learners to complete this course outside Australia. Select the active Australian RTO location from which the online training is coordinated. The location must have an AVETMISS Location Code. RTObase uses that location as the enrolment delivery site and in NAT00020/NAT00120 reporting; the learner's country is not substituted as a delivery site.

Australian state access restrictions cannot be combined with offshore delivery. Eligible learners confirm the offshore facts and overseas residential address at the portal USI gate. Australian citizens or permanent residents studying overseas still need a verified USI. Government-funded enrolments also remain on the normal USI pathway.

Creating a lesson

Open Learning & Assessment → Library to find reusable learning items, collection instruments and assessment instruments together. Choose Create by the outcome you need:

• Add online lesson creates a learning item. It can contain content, checks and embedded collection forms, and finishes with activity completion.
• Collect information or evidence creates a collection instrument. Responses are accepted or returned for changes; they are reviewed, not graded.
• Make an assessment judgement creates an assessment instrument. Its evidence is judged Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory and can contribute to competency.

From the Content step of a course's design, choose Add item to either select an existing Library item or create a new learning or assessment item with the same outcome-first flow. Collection instruments are assigned as course requirements or embedded inside a learning item rather than placed in the journey as graded activities.

Question Banks remain a supporting authoring resource. Use the Work Queue for assessment activity, assessor judgements, collection acceptance and requests still waiting for a response; these are operational workflows, not separate content libraries.

Preview a SCORM package

In the lesson editor's Preview, a SCORM module shows Launch. The package then plays full screen as the learner sees it, from a private link that lasts two hours. Select Exit preview to return. Nothing in the preview is saved. The preview plays on your organisation's rtobase.com.au learner site, so the package's scripts never run inside the RTObase dashboard.

The Audit Log records lesson authoring and review evidence. Republishing creates a new immutable version; an attempt already in progress remains pinned to the version the learner started.

Managing the lesson structure

The lesson editor has a collapsible Contents sidebar on the left showing all modules and topics. Click any topic to open it in the canvas. Long module and topic names are truncated in the sidebar, hover to see the full title.

• Add a topic: Click + Topic at the foot of a module's topic list.
• Add a module: Click + Module at the foot of the sidebar. A module always contains at least one topic, so you name the module and its first topic together.
• Rename a topic or module: Hover the item in the sidebar and open its ⋯ menu, then choose Rename topic or Rename module. Renaming a module applies the new title to every topic grouped under it.
• Reorder: Drag the grip handle to reorder modules, or drag topics within a module. The order determines how content appears to learners.
• Delete: Open the item's ⋯ menu and choose Delete topic or Delete module.

Generate with AI

The lesson editor includes AI content generation that creates learning material based on the course and topic context.

Resources

Content Library is the organisation-wide catalogue for reusable course resources and media. Add an item once, then reference that same record from topics, pages, courses and supported website content without uploading another copy.

• Course resources: Uploaded documents and external links used in lessons (for example worksheets, templates, guides and regulatory references)
• Media: Organisation images registered by the website builder or media uploader, with their alt text and usage references
• Folders: Organisation-defined folders and nested subfolders for arranging the library; moving an item changes its presentation in the library, not every place that references it

Every item also has a visibility badge. Course files uploaded from lesson authoring default to Authenticated, which requires a signed-in learner with access to a linked course. Public files can be opened by anyone who has the URL, and External links follow the access rules of their destination. Members with Courses and units: Manage can choose Public or Authenticated when uploading a course file, or change an eligible file later from Edit details in the Content Library.

Use the Course resources and Media views to narrow the catalogue, or select a folder to work within one part of the organisation's structure. Items remain organisation-owned rather than course-owned, and the library shows where an item is already in use.

Files can be up to 500 MB. Production uploads use multipart transfers into the organisation's Cloudflare R2 content namespace, so the dashboard shows progress and interrupted reservations can be retried safely. The storage layout keeps reusable resources together by organisation; course, topic and page associations remain references, so reusing a file never creates another billable copy.

Resources that were originally added inside an older course or lesson appear in the organisation library automatically. Their database records and course references do not change. After release, the background storage job copies eligible legacy file bytes from Supabase Storage to R2, verifies the copy, switches downloads to R2, and retains the Supabase copy for seven days before cleanup. No administrator re-upload is required, and a failed copy leaves the original download working. Identity-document files remain in their private, short-lived Supabase workflow and are deleted after review. Deleting the original course does not delete a shared resource that is still referenced elsewhere.

Each lesson has a Resources tab, and the topic editor includes a collapsible Resources panel on the right side. From these course authoring surfaces you can:

• Reuse an existing resource: Select any ready resource in the organisation library without making another copy
• Toggle resources on/off: Use the checkbox list to link or unlink resources for the current topic or page
• Add a new resource: Create a new link or upload a file from the lesson editor. It is added to the organisation library and linked to the current topic or page.

Students see linked resources in the Notes sheet when viewing the topic in the course player.

Student experience

Students see the course's ordered lessons, page-level navigation, resources and notes, practice knowledge checks, formal assessment/retry history, and required SCORM activities. Launch plays a SCORM module full screen, with its title, status and Exit module. A learner can skip an optional question in a formal section and still submit; the skipped question is left out of the marks. When a trainer grants extra attempts after a learner runs out, every section that ran out reopens for those attempts. Linear mode redirects a locked deep link to the first incomplete lesson; Free mode allows any published lesson to be opened.

Best practices

Structure your content

• Keep topics focused on a single learning objective
• Aim for 10-20 minutes of content per topic
• Use modules to group related topics

Use video effectively

• Keep videos under 10 minutes
• Include key points in text as well
• Add transcripts for accessibility

Assessment design

• Use knowledge checks for quick, practice-style checks
• Use formal assessments for competency evidence
• Align assessments with unit requirements

Related

• Add a Course: Create the base course record and enable online delivery
• Using the Question Bank: Author reusable, versioned questions for knowledge checks and assessments

Existing courses and retained content

Starting a new version retains the content versions used by the original course. Changes made while preparing the replacement do not move the original course to those new versions. Existing mappings remain valid when the original still delivers the mapped content.

The legacy Course Builder remains editable for organisations with legacy authoring enabled. This includes its builder and module names, topic titles and page content. Organisations without that setting see retained published builders as read-only.

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