Testing your course

If you didn't use the course creator, you'll need to add your course to Learning Lab in order to test. When you first create your course, it will be in Draft.

Install Learning Lab on your repositories

The Learning Lab GitHub App will need to be installed on your course and template repository.

If you'd like to avoid installing the app each time you create or join a course, consider the following tips:

• If creating a course owned by an individual, consider installing on your personal account
• If creating a course owned by an organization, consider installing Learning Lab on the organization.

Publish as a draft course

When you first publish a course, it will be in draft. Only you and other administrators of the course repository will be able to take the course while it is in draft.

To publish a course in draft:

1. Click on the + on the top-right of any page on Learning Lab, or navigate to https://lab.github.com/:owner/new, replacing :owner with the login for the owner of the course.
2. Select the course owner from the drop down.
3. Enter the name of your course repository in the field.
4. (Optional) If your organization can create private courses, select Public or Private.
5. Click Create course

A console will appear with real time updates as the course publishes.

Test your course

Now that your course has been created, it's ready for testing. To test:

1. Navigate to your course by going to https://lab.github.com/:owner/:title, replacing :owner with the login of the owner and :title with the slugified title of course.
2. Verify the course description.
3. Register for the course.
4. Verify the repo was created for you as a learner.
5. Complete the steps in your course.
6. Click on all links in your course.

Making updates to your course

As you test your course, it is likely that you'll want to make updates. Pushing any changes to your course repository's master branch will automatically update the course. See Keep in sync for more information.

Error handling

As you test your course, you'll run into errors and bugs. Sometimes, recognizing where you got stuck and giving a close look at the config.yml will show you exactly where you've run into issues.

Other times, you might need some extra context. Once a course has been published (even in draft), the Learning Lab app will report a status back to your course repository indicating whether your course was properly updated. This will be visible in the repository's commit history, or in pull requests.