.. highlight:: none Set up a new course ============================================================ In this tutorial, we will use the CLT command line interface to set up a new course: "CLT101 -- Introduction to Command Line Teaching." Preparation ------------------------------------------------------------ We will need an access token to make API calls to Canvas. Follow the `Canvas instructions `_ to generate an access token. We will use the token shortly. Next, determine the API URL for your institution. The URL should end with the path ``/api/v1``. Be prepared to copy this URL. Finally, change into a directory to hold your courses. Create a new course ------------------------------------------------------------ We are now ready to set up a new course. We can access the CLT toolkit with the command ``clt``, followed by the name of a "tool." To create a new course, we use the ``newcourse`` tool followed by the name of a directory. For this tutorial, we will set up our new course in a directory named ``CLT101``. Type the following command and press ``enter``: .. code-block:: bash clt newcourse CLT101 You will now be asked a series of questions: ``> Enter API token`` Copy the access token that you generated on Canvas, paste it here, and press ``enter``. ``> Enter API URL:`` Copy the API URL for your institution, paste it here, and press ``enter``. ``> Enter course unique identifier:`` Open your course on Canvas. The URL will end with the path ``/courses/``. Find the identifier after ``courses`` (in place of ````), copy it, paste it here, and press ``enter``. ``> Enter quiz unlock time:`` The ``newcourse`` tool will set up a default time to unlock each module quiz. Enter the default unlock time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), in the format ``HH:MM:SS``. For example, let's say that we want our quizzes to unlock at 10:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). PDT is seven hours behind UTC, so type ``17:00:00`` and press ``enter``. ``> Enter quiz deadline:`` The ``newcourse`` tool will set up a default deadline for each module quiz. Let's say that we want students to complete the quizzes by 11:00:00 AM PDT, one hour after quizzes unlock. Type ``18:00:00`` and press ``enter``. ``> Enter quiz lock time:`` Students will not be able to access quizzes after the lock time. Let's give students an extra 30 minutes to submit a late quiz. Type ``18:30:00`` and press ``enter``. The ``newcourse`` tool will now create a new directory, ``CLT101``, containing several sub-directories and configuration files. File structure ------------------------------------------------------------ Let's explore the files and directories set up with the ``newcourse`` tool:: CLT101/ _conf/ quiz-desc.md settings.yaml token modules/ The ``_conf`` directory contains our course configuration files. We will edit a few of them to finalize our course set up. The ``modules`` directory will hold our course modules. We will set up a new module in the :doc:`next tutorial `. Default quiz description ------------------------------------------------------------ We can edit ``CLT101/_conf/quiz-desc.md`` to prepare a default quiz description. We will format the quiz description following the `CommonMark `_ Markdown specification. (Refer to the :doc:`Markdown reference <../markdown>` for additional details about the Markdown parser used by the CLT toolkit.) Open ``quiz-desc.md``, delete any text, and add the following:: ## Overview This is an open-book quiz: - You **may** refer to course materials and notes. - You **may not** ask classmates for help. ## Deadline Submit your quiz by 11:00 AM. Notice that we have used a level-two heading for our first heading: ``## Overview``. Level-one ``

`` tags are reserved for webpage titles, so we will use level-two headings for the top-level headings in the body of our content. Save and close ``quiz-desc.md``. CLT tools will use the above description for each quiz, unless we provide an alternative description. Refer to the :doc:`guide to quizzes <../howto/quiz>` for details about quiz customization. Token ------------------------------------------------------------ Your Canvas access token was written to ``CLT101/_conf/token``. If your access token changes, you can replace the token in this file. .. danger:: Do not make the access token public. Do not use Command Line Teaching on a shared computer where others can access your ``token`` file. If you use Git for version control for your course, add ``token`` to your ``.gitignore`` file. Next steps ------------------------------------------------------------ Now that we know how to set up a course with the ``newcourse`` tool, we can move on to the :doc:`next tutorial `. For additional details about how to customize your course, refer to the :doc:`guide to course settings <../howto/course>`. .. include:: ../links.rst