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School-level feature — managed within your school portal at yourschool.deandesk.com.
A course in DeanDesk is a self-contained learning environment. Each course comes with its own overview page, materials drive, assignment board, announcement feed, curriculum editor, student roster, attendance tracker, and gradebook. Instructors and admins manage everything from a single course dashboard; students see a clean, organized view of the same content.

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What’s inside a course

Every course includes the following tabs:

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Creating a course

1

Open the Courses section

From the Admin Dashboard or your instructor sidebar, navigate to Courses.
2

Click Create New Course

Select Create New Course from the top of the Courses page.
3

Enter course details

Fill in the following fields:
4

Set access and pricing (optional)

The create dialog includes an Access and Pricing step, so you can create the course’s tuition product in the same flow. Add one or more price rows — Recurring (with a billing interval), One-time (with optional installments), or Free. See Products for how pricing works.
5

Save the course

Click Save Course. DeanDesk creates the course and provisions all its tabs immediately.
To create many courses at once, use the Bulk Course Creator in the Admin Dashboard. It gives you a spreadsheet-style interface where you can enter all course details in rows and create them all with a single click. See Initial Setup for the full walkthrough.

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Session staff assignments

Each schedule row in the course create and edit dialogs (and in the Bulk Course Creator) has a Teacher/TA dropdown, which defaults to Unassigned. Use it to assign a specific staff member to that weekly session — useful when different teachers or TAs cover different days of the same course. Assigned staff appear on calendar views and in the course header, and their session hours feed into payroll hour attribution.

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Schedule overrides

A schedule override temporarily replaces a course’s weekly schedule during an inclusive date range — for a holiday break, exam week, or a special intensive. During the override’s dates, its schedule completely replaces the default weekly schedule. An override with no meeting times pauses classes entirely — the supported way to model holidays and reading weeks.
1

Add an override

In the course create or edit dialog (or the Bulk Course Creator), find the Schedule Overrides block and click Add Override.
2

Name it and set the date range

Give the override an optional name (e.g., “Ramadan schedule” or “Exam week”) and set the Starts and Ends dates. Both dates are inclusive.
3

Add the temporary meeting times

Add the override’s own schedule rows — day of week, start and end time, location, online flag with meeting link, and assigned staff. Leave the schedule empty if the course should not meet at all during the window.
Two validation rules apply: every override needs a start and an end date (and must end on or after it starts), and override date ranges cannot overlap each other. Overrides take effect everywhere the schedule matters:
  • Course page — while an override is in effect, the schedule heading changes to Current Temporary Schedule with an alert naming the override and its end date. An empty override shows “No meetings during this period”.
  • Calendars — student, teacher, and parent calendar entries on affected days show an orange chip with the override’s name (or “Temporary schedule”).
  • Staff assignments — staff assigned only inside an override get the course in My Teaching, receive course-staff permissions, and appear on the admin master schedule.
  • Payroll — session counts use the override-aware schedule.
  • Auto-scheduled video meetings — automatically scheduled meetings look ahead to the next actual meeting time under the effective schedule.
  • Spreadsheet import/export — overrides are included in the admin course spreadsheet import and export.

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Course welcome emails

You can have DeanDesk email each student automatically when their enrollment in the course becomes active.
1

Turn on the welcome email

In the course create or edit dialog, enable the Send custom welcome email switch.
2

Write the subject and body

When the switch is on, Subject and Body fields appear — both are required. The body accepts plain text (converted to paragraphs automatically) or full HTML.
3

Personalize with placeholders

Use placeholders anywhere in the subject or body:
The email sends automatically when a student’s enrollment becomes active — you don’t need to trigger it manually.

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Evergreen vs. term-based courses

DeanDesk supports two course models:
Linking a course to a term keeps your academic calendar synchronized. If you adjust the term dates later, all courses tied to that term update automatically.

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Course status

Every course has a lifecycle status, set with the Course Status dropdown in the course create and edit dialogs: In addition, DeanDesk derives two display states for Active courses from their dates: an active course whose start date (or term start date) is in the future shows as Upcoming, and an active course past its end date shows as Completed. The current status appears as a colored chip on course headers, home banners, course cards, and admin course tables. The course catalog can filter by any of the four statuses as well as the derived Upcoming state.
My Courses and My Teaching show only active courses by default, with a badge indicating how many are active. Use the Show all courses toggle to include inactive, completed, and cancelled courses.
Setting a course to a status other than Active removes it from the student dashboard immediately. Students mid-course will lose access until you set it back to Active.

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Course Builder: modules and lessons

The Course Builder lets you structure content into modules, each containing individual lessons.
1

Open the Curriculum tab

Navigate to the course and click the Curriculum tab.
2

Add a module

Click Add Module and give it a name (e.g., “Week 1: Introduction”). Modules act as top-level containers.
3

Add lessons to the module

Inside the module, click Add Lesson. Each lesson can contain text, embedded video, uploaded files, or a link to an assessment.
4

Reorder with drag and drop

Drag modules and lessons into the order you want. Students progress through the curriculum in the sequence you set.

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Adding course materials

The Materials Drive is a cloud-backed file storage area for each course. Students can browse and download everything you upload.
1

Go to the Materials tab

Open the course and select the Materials tab.
2

Upload files

Click Upload and select one or more files from your device. Supported types include PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint slides, images, and video files.
3

Organize into folders

Click New Folder to group materials by topic, week, or type. Drag files into folders to keep things organized.
Label files clearly (e.g., “Week 3 Slides.pdf”) so students can find what they need without opening every file.

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Video hosting

You can upload course videos directly to DeanDesk without relying on a third-party platform.
1

Upload a video

In the Materials tab or within a Curriculum lesson, click Upload Video and select your file.
2

Wait for processing

DeanDesk processes the video for adaptive streaming. You’ll see a progress indicator — processing time depends on file size.
3

Embed in curriculum

Once processed, insert the video into a curriculum lesson so students can watch it inline, with playback controls including speed adjustment and captions if provided.

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Scheduling a live session

Live sessions let you hold real-time classes with integrated video conferencing.
1

Open the course schedule

Navigate to the Overview tab of the course and find the Schedule section.
2

Create a session

Click Add Session and set the date, start time, and duration.
3

Enable video conferencing

Toggle Live Video on. DeanDesk generates a meeting link automatically.
4

Notify students

Post an announcement or let DeanDesk send an automatic reminder before the session starts. Enrolled students see upcoming sessions on their personalized dashboard.
During a live video session, participants can send in-call reactions — Heart, Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, and Raise Hand — which appear on their participant tile for everyone in the session. For everything that happens inside the call — the pre-call lobby and device checks, screen sharing, recording, and the End class button that finalizes attendance — see Live classes.

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Curriculum editor

The Curriculum editor lets you arrange all course content — lessons, videos, readings, and assessments — into a guided learning sequence called a Learning Feed.
1

Open the Curriculum tab

Go to Courses → [your course] → Curriculum.
2

Add and arrange items

Add modules and nest lessons beneath them. Drag and drop to set the order.
3

Link assignments

Within a lesson, click Add Assessment to attach a quiz or assignment that students must complete before advancing.
4

Publish the curriculum

Click Save when your sequence is ready. Students see the curriculum immediately upon visiting the course.

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Enrolling students

1

Open the Students tab

Navigate to the course and click the Students tab.
2

Add students

Click Enroll Students, search by name or email, and select the students to add. Click Confirm.

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Waitlists

Courses with a capacity limit can fill up. When that happens, students can join the waitlist directly from the course page — and leave it the same way if they change their mind. When capacity increases or a spot opens up, waitlisted users are notified automatically. Admins review and manage waitlists from the Waitlist Manager.
1

Open the Waitlist Manager

Go to Admin Dashboard → Waitlist Manager. A summary count shows how many users are currently waitlisted across your school.
2

Find the entries you care about

Filter the table by name, course, or product. Each row shows the waitlisted user (child accounts are flagged), the course — including its active status and current load vs. capacity — and any related products.
3

Adjust capacity if needed

Use the inline capacity editor to raise, lower, or remove a course’s capacity limit. Raising capacity frees up spots, and waitlisted users are notified automatically.
4

Enroll someone directly (optional)

Click Enroll on a row to open the Manual Enrollment Override dialog. Choose the program or product to enroll them under and add an internal note. The user is enrolled immediately and their waitlist entry is cleared.