Discover the New Course Catalogue

Available around Easter time, the new Course Catalogue will allow learners to discover and enrol in your courses independently, whether they are colleagues seeking professional development, students looking for enrichment opportunities, or community members wanting to learn something new.

This article explains how it works.

What Course Catalogue does

Course Catalogue provides a searchable overview of courses. It allows both students and staff to browse available courses, view information about them, and enrol directly. Teachers can choose between two types of courses:

• Internal Course Catalogue is available to users within your organisation. Teachers can use this, for example, for professional development courses, optional courses for students, or specialised subject offerings.
• External Course Catalogue is accessible to users outside your organisation. This is suitable, for example,  for community education, adult learning programmes, or collaboration with partner organisations. The external catalogue is also available to anonymous users (users that are not logged in), and when they want to enrol a course, it is possible to create an account on the fly.

Note: The Course Catalogue must be activated by the school administrator before it becomes available to all teachers.

How it works

Publishing Courses

Teachers with the necessary permissions can add courses to the catalogue through the course settings. They need to select whether the course appears in the internal catalogue, external catalogue, or both. Required information includes a course description and subject classification. Teachers can also set seat limits and define who can see the course.

Enrolment methods

The teacher who is creating the course decides how users enrol in the course. Three options are available:

• Open enrolment allows users to join immediately without any restrictions.
• Approval based enrolment requires you to review and approve each application before granting access.
• Registration key requires users to enter a code you create and distribute.

Managing applications

The teacher who created or is responsible for the course, receive daily notifications summarising enrolment activity. They can approve or reject applications individually. For external users, all enrolments require manual approval regardless of the method the teacher set.

Course organisation

Teachers can use several fields to keep the courses structured and easy to find.

• Subject tags help learners filter courses by topic.
• Target role lets you control who can enrol: staff only, students only, or both.
• Seat limit lets you set a maximum number of participants when courses are offered through the course catalogue.
• Educational level is managed nationally by itslearning. If you don’t see this field, it simply means no levels are set up for your country.
  
  

Sharing options

Beyond the catalogue, teachers and schools can share courses using direct links or QR codes. This is useful for email distribution, website integration, or printed materials.

What leaners see

Learner access the catalogue through the Courses page for internal courses, or through a link on the login page for external courses. The interface provides search functionality and filters for subject, educational level, organisation, and target role.

Each course displays as a card showing the course image, title, description, teacher information, and subject tags. Leaners can click on a course to view full details before deciding to enrol. The enrolment process depends on the method the teacher have set.

What can you use it for?

• Professional Development: Staff can browse and enrol in professional development courses based on their needs and interests. 
• Optional Courses: Students can select from enrichment or specialised courses beyond their core curriculum. Subject tagging helps them find relevant courses.
• Community Education: The external catalogue allows local residents, for example, to find and enrol in courses such as evening classes or adult learning programmes. Account creation happens during the enrolment process.
• Cross Organisational Sharing: Partner schools or organisations can share courses with each other's users. This works for both internal and external catalogue options.

What this means for you

Course Catalogue reduces administrative work by letting learners enrol themselves whilst giving you control over who joins your courses. An existing course content reaches more people without additional effort. Learners gain more autonomy to choose learning opportunities that match their needs and interests.

For organisations, this means better use of educational resources, easier cross department collaboration, and the ability to serve the wider community. The feature adapts to your requirements through flexible enrolment options and visibility settings.

The Course Catalogue will be available around Easter time as part of your itslearning platform. When the time comes, if you have any questions about enabling or using this feature, please contact your system administrator or refer to the itslearning Support Portal.