This chapter shows you how to create a new, blank course. In this chapter, you will see how to create the course, choose the best format for your course, and enroll students into the course. In addition, we will ensure that the course is well designed and that you are continuously mindful of the overall learning objectives.

You will also learn how to create course categories and to use those categories for organizing your course catalog. They will align with your institution's mission and vision so that you maintain a coherent presence. You will also be able to use the results for marketing and promoting your programs and your institution. While someone else may have installed Moodle and created categories for you, you can always go back and change them. Thus, you will be able to constantly update and refresh your content.

We will also cover some of the more advanced settings that you can use in your course completion and conditional activities. These settings will enable you to better track your students' progress through the course and will require students to complete the course material in a specific order.

Later chapters in this book will show you how to fill your course with resources and activities.

If your students enroll themselves, they will usually choose the course from a list or a catalog of courses. The list of courses is organized by category, so we will begin by learning how to use course categories to organize our courses. We will then tie together vision, mission, and course objectives.