Building a module

Open Learning Modules from the course dashboard.
Add a module, then add items to it, with rich item types including readings, uploaded files, external links and assessments.
Reorder items and modules by dragging them into the sequence you want students to follow. Each module also has up and down arrows: click one to move the module one place, or hold it to move the module straight to the top or bottom. Hovering over the arrows shows Move to top and Move to bottom, handy if you keep the newest week at the top.
Find things quickly with the toolbar above your modules. Search finds any module or item by title and opens it. Show lists all items, only published items, or only draft items. Collapse all shows every module as one line. ProfDesk remembers the filter and Collapse all for each of your courses on any device, and a module you open stays open while you work in it.
Publish or keep as draft, drafts stay hidden from students until you're ready.

Reusing a module in another course

Teaching the same material again? Click + Module and choose Copy from a course. Pick any course you teach, pick the module, and tick exactly which items come with it, pages, files, weblinks and assessments included. Everything arrives as a genuine copy in the destination course, never a link back to the original, so editing one never changes the other. The same flow duplicates a module inside the course it is already in.

The copy lands as a draft, and any assessment that comes with it is created unpublished, with no due date and submissions closed, so nothing reaches students until you say so. Student work, grades and progress are never copied, and prerequisites, availability dates and CLO mappings are left for you to set in the new course.

Pro: copying a module between courses is a Pro feature.

How students experience it

Students move through a clean sequential player, one item at a time. On Pro you can also mark items as required, so both you and they can see real progress through the module.

Pro: completion rules (marking an item as required to view, mark done, or submit) and prerequisites (a module unlocks only once an earlier one is complete) are Pro features. A locked module hides its own content, but by default students can still open and submit the assessments it links to. Turn on "Also lock the assessments this module links to" per module if you want strict sequencing. On Free, learning modules work fully, just without completion tracking or gated sequencing.

Release dates

A module, and any page, file, link, video or text item inside it, can carry an available from and an available until date. Before the opening date students see the row and the date it opens, and the content itself is not served, so a paper you scheduled for 9am cannot be downloaded at 8am. After the closing date everything already visible stays readable and only new progress stops. A module is the outer bound for the items inside it, so an item can never open earlier than the module or stay open later.

Items that have not opened still count towards a module's required-items total, so the progress bar does not jump around as the term goes on.

Pro: setting a release date is a Pro feature, and so are completion rules and prerequisites. Publishing and unpublishing are on every plan, at any time, which is all most courses need. A date you have already set keeps working whatever your plan, and you can clear it at any time on any plan.

ProfDesk learning modules builder with drag-and-drop items — The Learning Modules builder: drag-and-drop items, mixed content types, and publish/draft state.

Assessments inside modules

Because assessments and quizzes can live inside a module, a module can double as a guided path: read, watch, then take the quiz. For computer-delivered exams, see Quizzes & Question Banks. For PDF assignments and manual grading, see ZenGrader and AI Grading.

Discussions and announcements inside modules

A module can hold a discussion or an announcement as an item of its own, so the week's prompt sits right after the reading it is about.

Click + Item on the module and choose the Discussion or Announcement tile.
Link an existing one from the list, or choose Create a new discussion and type its title and message right there. A new one also appears on the Discussions (or Announcements) page, with the item switched off.
Switch the item on when students should see it.

The item is the discussion itself, not a copy. It shows the discussion's name and the start of its message, and students open it with Open discussion to read and reply. Rename or edit the discussion and every module that holds it shows the change.

Once a discussion is in a module, the module decides when students see it. It is published while the module is published and the item is switched on, the same rule as everything else in a module, and that applies on the Discussions tab too. Publishing the module publishes it and students get the usual new-discussion notification; unpublishing the module, or switching the item off, hides it everywhere. On the Discussions page it is listed under In learning modules, and its switch there is locked. If students have already replied, ProfDesk asks before hiding it; their replies are kept either way. A discussion in no module keeps its own switch on the Discussions page.

The module's dates apply too. Before the module opens, the discussion is hidden from the Discussions tab as well, and no notification is sent until students can open it. After the module closes, it stays readable but takes no new replies.

Students post before seeing replies. Tick Students must post before seeing replies when you create a discussion, or later from Edit on the Discussions page. It is also in Create a new discussion under + Item. Each student then sees your prompt and a reply box, and the other replies, yours included, appear once they post their own. You always see every reply. The Discussions page marks these discussions Students post first. Copying a module or re-teaching the course keeps the setting, and Canvas imports bring over Canvas's Users must post before seeing replies. Courses imported before October 2026 came in without it, so tick it from Edit where you want it.

Pro: a discussion item can be required, complete when the student posts a reply. The item ticks off the moment they reply, with no button to press. Announcements can be required to be opened or marked done, but not replied to, since comments on an announcement can be switched off.

A few things to know:

A module that is locked hides the item, but a published discussion can still be opened from the Discussions tab, the same way a linked assessment stays open by default.
If Discussions are turned off in Course Settings, the Discussion tile is hidden and existing discussion items are paused until you turn them back on. Announcements have no such switch.
Removing the item from the module (or deleting the module) gives the discussion its own switch back without changing whether students see it. Restoring it from Course Trash puts it back under the module.
Deleting a discussion leaves its module item behind as a draft, marked as deleted, so you can remove it or link it to another discussion.
Discussions that came in from Canvas as links were turned into Discussion items. Where the module would have changed what students see (a published discussion in a draft module), the discussion keeps its own switch until you next publish or unpublish that module.
Copying a module, or re-teaching the course, copies each linked discussion into the new course as a draft with its message. Replies are never copied.
To link to a discussion from inside a Text Page or instructions, use Insert link › Course content › Discussions. Pasting the address from your own browser gives students a link to your teacher page, which they cannot open.

Learning Modules