Courses & Settings

Creating a course

From My Courses, click Create a Course. Choose Build with ProfDesk AI for an AI-assisted planning walkthrough, or Set up manually for a shorter essentials-only wizard. The AI route has up to 13 steps when Outcome-Based Education is enabled (11 when it is off); the manual route has up to 9 steps (8 when OBE is off).

Stage	What you decide
Name and course details	Title, learner level (from primary school through doctoral, vocational, professional, or mixed audiences), course code, term, credits, and type. ProfDesk can generate a code if you leave it blank.
Description and class setup	Course description, class size, and grading style.
AI-assisted planning	On the lavender AI route, draft a description, course outline, textbook ideas, and an assessment structure. You review each suggestion before it becomes part of the course. The manual route skips these generators.
Optional OBE setup	Choose whether to use outcomes. If enabled, select a PLO framework and build CLOs with PLO mapping.
Students and review	Share an invitation code, add students from your roster, or do it later, then review the course before creation. ProfDesk generates an active invitation code automatically and displays it under Manage Enrollment.

Both routes start with Absolute grading, OBE off, and Share a join code selected. You can change any choice during setup or later in Course Settings. Draft progress and the selected setup route are saved if you leave before finishing.

On Free, you can create unlimited courses with up to 2 active at a time. Additional courses are created as Locked (Read-Only). You can replace one active course after 30 days, or move to Pro for unlimited active courses. See Plans & Billing.

The course dashboard

Opening a course lands on a dashboard with two clear areas. Course Analytics & Insights shows class performance, at-risk students, CLO achievement, pending work, and AI similarity or integrity signals. Course Tools holds the operational tools for teaching and assessment.

The dashboard keeps exactly eight tools in the main tile zone. Any remaining tools appear as compact buttons. You can drag tools between the two areas and reset the arrangement with . Attendance appears only when it is enabled.

Tile	What it does
Manage Enrollment	Add or remove students from this course's roster (from your full student list, see Roster).
Gradebook	Spreadsheet view of every student's score on every assessment. See Gradebook & Grades.
Submissions & Work Samples	The Sample Picker and per-assessment submission uploads. See Submissions.
Results & Outcomes	Weighted totals, letter grade, GPA, distribution, outcome results, and grade release.
Course File Builder	Assembles a printable/PDF course file with outcomes, assessment category weights, sample performance, and final grades. See Documents & Content.
ZenGrader	The annotate-and-score grading surface. See ZenGrader.
AI Matching	Bulk-upload scanned PDFs and let AI match them to your roster. See AI Student Matching.
Learning Modules	Build and publish sequential course content. See Learning Modules.
Quizzes & Banks	Author online quizzes, question banks, and auto-graded assessments. See Quizzes & Question Banks.
Manage Rubrics	Create and edit reusable grading rubrics. See Rubrics.
Course Files Library	Organize categorized course files and link them within Learning Modules for students.

The pinned action row provides:

• Attendance, when it is enabled for the course. See Attendance.
• Announcements, post course-wide updates.
• Inbox, this course's message thread with your students. See Messaging.
• Reset layout, return tools to the default arrangement.
• Settings, open the course settings covered below.

Course Settings tabs

Click Settings on any course dashboard to open four tabs:

General Settings

• Course Information: code, title, term, credit hours, course type, and a free-text description.
• Class Schedule: start/end dates, class days, and class time, used for context around attendance and the course file.
• Enable Attendance: shows the Attendance tool for tracking participation. It remains tracking-only unless you explicitly give Attendance a weight under Assessment Categories.
• Annotation Colors: two colors used in ZenGrader and in downloaded graded PDFs, the first color is used for AI-generated marks, the second for marks you add yourself, so at a glance you can tell what the AI proposed versus what you personally marked.
• Co-instructor: on ProfDesk Pro, invite one colleague by email to teach and grade alongside you in this course. See Co-Instructors.
• Danger Zone: delete a course to hide it immediately. Its materials are retained for recovery by an administrator; permanent removal becomes available after 30 days.

Assessment Categories

Categories such as Quizzes, Assignments, Midterm, and Final carry the final-grade weights. Add categories and adjust them until the running total reaches exactly 100%. If attendance tracking is enabled, the permanent Attendance row can remain Tracking only or be turned into a weighted category; its instructor-set weight is included in the same 100% total. Assessments and questions are assigned to the ordinary assessment categories (see Assessments & Questions).

Grading Scheme

Choose between an absolute grading scale (fixed score cutoffs mapped to letter grades) or a bell curve scheme, and edit the cutoff rows for each. This scheme drives the Letter Grade + GPA columns on Final Grades.

Outcomes (OBE)

A single on/off toggle for Outcome-Based Education, plus (once on) a shortcut into the Open PLO Wizard. Full walkthrough in Outcomes (OBE).