Instructor guide: courses & lessons

This is the path you'll use most: your organization's instructor portal → create a course → add lessons → open it to your learners. It walks through each step in order, with what each setting does along the way.

If you've never used the audiometer yourself, do the Quick start: your first audiogram first — it's the same simulator your learners will use.

1. Find your way around the instructor portal

On the Dashboard, click your organization's card in the left rail — the one marked Instructor portal. (On a phone, the rail is in the ☰ menu at the top of the screen; so is the organization's sidebar once you're inside.)

The organization's Home shows four cards — Courses, Lessons, Submissions and Members — with Settings & tools below them. The sidebar has the full menu:

2. Create a course

On the Home page's Courses card, click New course (or open Courses in the sidebar and click New course there). Fill in:

• Title — the only required field, and what learners see.
• Abbreviation and Description — optional.
• Who can open this course:
  • Draft — staff only — hidden from learners while you build.
  • Open — anyone in the organization — every member sees it and can enroll. This is the default.
  • Invitation only — learners you enroll — listed, but only the learners you enroll can open it.
• Prerequisite courses — courses a learner must finish before this one opens. Leave as None for a first course.

Click Create. The course opens on its Build tab, ready for its first lesson. Its tabs are Build (what learners work through), Results, Progress and Enrollments.

Course settings

Settings in the course header reopens the course's details (Edit course), with one more setting that only appears once the course exists: Certificate of completion — Offer a certificate when a learner completes this course. See Progress & certificates.

3. Add lessons

An empty course shows two buttons right on its Build tab: Design new lesson and Pick an existing lesson. Once it has items, the same two are behind Add lesson. A lesson can come from three places:

• Design new lesson — opens the designer with a banner saying the lesson belongs to your organization and will be added to this course. It's added the moment you save it (step 4).
• An existing lesson — the Add a lesson dialog lists your organization's own (This organization) and ready-made ones from the Theta lesson bank. Click Assign on each one you want (it changes to Added), then close the dialog. To adapt a bank lesson rather than use it as Theta keeps it, copy it first: Lessons in the sidebar → Copy from Theta.
• The Element Explorer — build a single test on the dashboard's Element Explorer, try it, and Save as lesson with Save to set to your organization. It lands in your organization's Lessons, ready to assign from here. See Element Explorer & the Library.

4. Design a lesson

The designer opens on a blank lesson.

1. Lesson Title (required) and Description (optional).
2. Under Available Elements, click the tests the lesson needs — Information, Otoscopy, Tympanometry and Audiometry are up front; More elements opens the rest (acoustic reflexes, OAEs, the ABR, speech, hearing aids…). Each joins the Lesson Sequence in the order you add it, and opens its panel.
3. Work through each element's panel (below), then Try in simulator to run the whole lesson exactly as a learner will — nothing is saved, and Back to Designer returns you to your work as you left it.
4. Save Lesson. A brief Lesson created successfully! confirms it, and you're back on the course's Build tab with the lesson listed.

Each element's panel

Most elements have three tabs (a questionnaire has no Settings):

• Design — the patient. For Audiometry: each ear's Degree (Min), Degree (Max), Type and Configuration, or Shuffle for a new patient with the same profile. A new audiogram already holds a random patient, so it works as it stands. Save Changes marks the design done and moves you on to scoring.
• Settings — how the test behaves: for audiometry, the required frequencies, masking and the transducer. They start from your organization's element preset; Reset to Defaults goes back to it.
• Scoring & Report — what counts. Each item cycles between not scored, scored (and shown on the report) and report only (shown, not scored); Sync Ears keeps the two ears' choices together. The defaults are sensible — an amber Review scoring badge just reminds you they haven't been looked at. (For an Information or Questionnaire element, this tab only decides whether it appears on the report.)

An element's row in the Lesson Sequence can also carry two switches:

• Fixed / Template (a padlock or a shuffle icon) — Fixed: every learner gets this exact patient. Template: each attempt draws a new patient from the profile you set, so learners can't share answers. Most test elements have it; Information, Questionnaire, Speech and the hearing-aid elements don't.
• Visible / hidden (the eye, on an Audiometry row) — hide an audiogram that exists only to feed another element, such as the one a speech test reads from. A hidden element isn't shown, answered, scored or reported.

The Designer pages cover every element in full.

5. Decide how each lesson is taken

Back on the Build tab, each lesson row has three icons: the pencil (edit the lesson in the designer — shown for your organization's own lessons, not for one from the Theta lesson bank), the gear and the trash (remove it from the course). The gear opens Assignment Settings:

• Mode — Practice or Exam. Exam is for assessment: study aids such as Show true thresholds are hidden.
• Maximum attempts — unlimited unless you set a number.
• An availability window — when it opens and closes.
• A time limit.
• Prerequisites — items that must be finished first (not offered on the course's first item).

A new lesson starts as Practice with unlimited attempts.

Drag items by their grip to change the order. With two or more items, Make sequential locks the course to that order — each item opens only once the one before it is finished.

Lessons don't have to be alone: Add text, Add video, Add PDF, Add embed and Add quiz put reading, recordings and checks between them.

6. Open the course to learners

If you chose Draft, open the course's Settings, set Who can open this course to Open (or Invitation only), and click Save.

Then get learners in:

• Members already in your organization — on the Enrollments tab, open a row's ⋯ menu and choose Enroll, or tick several and enroll them together. (With an Open course they can also enroll themselves.)
• New people — sidebar Members → Add members. Enter their email, leave Join as on Learner, pick this course under Enroll in courses, and click Send invitation.
• A class paying with access codes — if your organization buys seats through Theta, Billing → Issue access code creates an invoiced code; set Auto-enroll in courses (optional) to this course so everyone who redeems it lands here.

Course access and Members cover enrollment and invitations in full.

7. Preview it as a learner

In the course header, click View as learner. You see the course exactly as a learner does — open a lesson and click Start Lesson to take it. Exit learner view, in the strip at the top, takes you back to your organization's Home.

8. Follow their results

• Results (course tab) — every submission in this course, with its score and report, and any quizzes waiting to be graded.
• Progress (course tab) — each learner's progress through the course, and their certificates if the course offers one.
• Submissions (sidebar) — every attempt across all your courses, with the report — and, if your organization has Advanced Analytics, a replay of how each learner tested.
• Analytics (sidebar) — pass rates and scoring patterns across learners, where your organization has it.

Next steps

• A ready-made course. Copy from Theta on the Courses page copies one of Theta's courses into your organization to adapt.
• Your own standard. Element presets set the symbols, masking rules and defaults every new element starts from.
• The details. The Designer covers every element; Scoring explains how each is graded.