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Publish button for Blocks content
Publish button for Blocks content

What it means to click the Publish button inside a step in your course.

Laurie Garcia avatar
Written by Laurie Garcia
Updated over a week ago

Publish your content in order to share your most recent edits with anyone who has access to your course. In courses using Blocks, you can now publish your changes one step at a time by clicking the Publish button in the upper right corner of the step.

See also how to Sync path changes to one Cohort or to multiple Cohorts.

Editing Steps as a Teacher

Teachers can edit the content of custom steps that have been added to the Cohort they are teaching. They can also edit a copy of a step. Teachers (unless they are also an admin or editor) do not have access to edit the original (or Source) version of a step that is shared with other Cohorts.

When a teacher edits a custom step for their Cohort only, they will see this publish message: "Publish block content changes."

Please be aware that if you remove content that is associated with learner progress (assessment questions, discussions, notes, etc.) that learner progress will be lost.

Editing Steps as an admin or editor

Anyone with admin or editor access, on the other hand, can edit content that is shared with the Source and all other Cohorts. They can make these edits anywhere the step is used, and the edits will be published universally.

When an admin or editor edits a shared step, they will see this publish message: "Publish block content changes to all Source & Cohort paths?"

Please be aware that if you remove content that is associated with learner progress (assessment questions, discussions, notes, etc.) that learner progress will be lost throughout all Cohorts.

Adding custom steps to a single Cohort

To customize the path for a specific Cohort, open the Cohort to the Path and make any cohort-specific changes by adding new learning steps, deleting any steps not needed for that specific Cohort, customizing the Cohort's schedule, and adding the teacher and/or moderator for that Cohort.

A few tips for personalizing cohorts:

  1. Changes published to the core Block content inside a step update that content everywhere it is used. In other words, if a step is synced between the Source and one or more Cohorts, the content will be updated everywhere no matter where you edit it.

  2. Changes made to the Cohort Path stay on the Cohort Path and will not be overwritten by future changes synced from the Source.

  3. To customize core Block content inside a step for just one Cohort, make a copy of the step within that Cohort and edit the copy, or just add a new step to that Cohort. Steps added or duplicated on the Cohort Path do not share their content with the Source Path.

Reverting changes

If you made edits to a step in error and you don't want to share your edits with the Source and all Cohorts, you may revert your changes. This will reverse all changes since the last publish. Once published, the changes are live and cannot be reverted. We do not keep previous versions of content once your changes are published.

What publishing means

Publishing content means that any non-staff member who has access to the course, such as learners and observers enrolled in the course, can now see the new content.

Be sure to publish the content inside each step individually. Steps with no content or unpublished content will not be shared with participants.  

Publishing your content does not make the course public. Publishing only shares new content with anyone who already has access. See how to control who has access to your courses. 

Once published, the content cannot be unpublished, but can be edited again or locked or deleted. If you don't want learners to see published content until after a certain date, you can schedule and lock content with future start dates. See how to schedule your cohorts here.

Note: in our legacy content, the "Save and Publish" button publishes content instantly every time you save your changes. In the newer Blocks, by contrast, content saves automatically, and you can choose when to publish it using the "Publish" button.

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