Create and manage components

Day-to-day authoring uses coursekit

The Studio Add Component menu is the entry point. For new interactive content (problems, image-hotspot, drag-drop, sequencing), choose Advanced → coursekit — see Authoring with coursekit. The component types below remain documented for reference and Studio chrome (publishing, visibility, file uploads).

A component is anything that lives inside a unit. You drop components into a unit in the order learners will see them, top-to-bottom. Get fluent with this — it’s where 80% of authoring time goes.

A unit open in Studio. Each card is a component — here, an audio-player-xblock followed by a Text component. The right rail shows publish state and visibility; the left rail shows where you are in the outline.

Component types

Type	What it is	Common use
Text	Rich-text block (TinyMCE editor)	Intros, explanations, references
Video	Hosted or YouTube video	Lectures, demos
Problem	Question — many sub-types	MCQ, dropdown, open response, etc.
Discussion	Embedded forum thread	Reflection prompts
Advanced (XBlocks)	Custom interactives	Liverpool Dental case-based blocks

Adding a component

1. Open the unit.
2. Click Add New Component.
3. Pick the type. For Problem and Advanced you’ll see a second menu listing variants.
4. Edit, then click Save.

Drafts vs published

Every component has a state:

• Draft (unpublished changes) — visible only in Studio preview.
• Published — visible in the LMS once the parent unit is published.

The unit publish button publishes all components inside it. You can’t publish a single component without publishing its parent unit.

Reusing content

Studio has a Library feature for cross-course reuse, but for most Liverpool Dental courses it’s overkill. If you find yourself copy-pasting the same component into three courses, ask support@learning.endo360.co.uk about wiring up a library.

Liverpool Dental custom XBlocks

The deployment ships 11 custom interactive XBlocks for case-based learning. See The problem component for the full list.