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Vetting a course

Vetting is a separate step from publishing. Publishing says the course exists; vetting says it has been reviewed against its sources and is ready for learners.

A course that has not been vetted shows learners a "Coming soon" page instead of the lessons:

  • Its landing page stays public, and search engines still index it. Visitors read the title, the description, and the academic standards it meets, and they can share the link.
  • The content is closed: no lesson list, no lesson titles, no media, no price, and no enroll button.
  • Anyone already enrolled keeps full access, and so do you (the instructor) and the platform owner. Un-vetting a course never locks out someone who is already studying it, including anyone who paid.
  • Visitors can leave an email on the "Get notified when this course opens" form.
  • Under that, "Want to help this course open?" opens a longer form where a visitor can offer to test the course before it opens or to vet it as a subject matter expert. That is a request, not access: see People who put their hand up below.

There is deliberately no expected date on that page. A missed date is worse than no date.

If you are the instructor: getting your course approved

You cannot mark your own course vetted, and that is deliberate: vetting means someone else reviewed it. Here is the path.

  1. Finish the course. Every lesson published, quizzes in place, and the ## Sources block filled in on any lesson that makes a factual claim.
  2. Check it against the guards. Ask the platform owner to run the content checks (they fail the build on a quiz answerable without reading, a broken self-check card, a figure with no credit), or watch for their feedback if they run them for you.
  3. Get a second pair of eyes. On your course manager, Invite to audit lets you invite someone by email to read the whole course while it is still Coming soon. They can read everything and change nothing, and their quiz clicks never touch your course statistics.
  4. Tell the platform owner it is ready. The banner on your course manager shows how many people have already asked to be notified when it opens, which is the most useful thing you can send along with the request.
  5. They mark it vetted, and the lessons open to everyone at once. Nobody loses access at any point in this process: people already enrolled keep the full course throughout.

While you wait, your course is not invisible. Its landing page stays public and indexable with the title, description and the standards it meets, plus the notify-me form, so the waiting list builds before launch.

Marking courses vetted (platform owner only)

Finding the queue: it is in the menu twice, in the site header under Teach and in the Admin sidebar. Both entries are called Courses to vet and both land on the same list (/teach?status=unvetted). Only the platform owner sees either one. The Courses published tile on the Admin home also links there whenever something is waiting.

On /teach, tick the courses you want, then choose Mark vetted or Mark unvetted. Both work on any number of courses at once. Use the Vetted and Unvetted filters to find what still needs review, and the small 🕒 coming soon tag on a row tells you at a glance.

Marking a course vetted a second time does not change the date it was first vetted.

Opening a course before its review finishes ("live but unvetted", owner only)

Sometimes a course should open now, review still in progress. Next to the vetting buttons on /teach, Open while unvetted flips exactly that: the full course opens to the public, and every page of it carries a visible "review in progress" notice so nobody mistakes it for a reviewed course. Close while unvetted returns it to the Coming soon page (enrollees keep access, as always).

Two things the switch never changes: the course still counts as unvetted in your review queue (the notice is the point, not a workaround), and the public API keeps withholding its lessons until it is actually vetted, because an external site republishing them cannot show your notice. Once you mark the course vetted, the flag stops meaning anything.

Who is waiting

Open a course you have not vetted (/teach → the course) and the banner at the top says how many people asked to be told when it opens.

The list itself lives at Admin → Interest & leads (/admin/leads). That page opens on a demand board: how many distinct people are waiting, counted by course, by learning track, by bundle, and by source, highest first. That is the answer to "what should I vet next". Tap any line to filter the list below it to exactly those people, or use the Filter form to combine a course, a track, a bundle, and a source. Everything is in the address bar, so you can bookmark a view, share it, or print it.

  • A track filter picks up everyone waiting on any course in that series.
  • A bundle filter picks up everyone waiting on any course that bundle contains.
  • The source filter separates "waiting for a course" from an /explore pricing enquiry.
  • Download this list as CSV exports whatever is currently filtered, one row per person, ready to paste into an email tool.

Each signup is also mirrored to the WitUS Inbox.

Vetting a course does not email the people waiting for it. Nothing is sent automatically, on purpose: you decide what that message says and when it goes out. Filter to the course, export the CSV, and send it yourself.

Inviting someone to review a course before it opens

Open the course at /teach → the course and scroll to "Invite someone to review this course". Enter an email address and send. The invitee gets a link (and you get the same link on screen, so you can send it yourself if you prefer). When they follow it and sign in with that address, they see the real course instead of the "Coming soon" page.

A reviewer can read every lesson of that one course, and nothing else. In particular:

  • An invitation that has not been accepted yet grants nothing at all.
  • A reviewer of one course cannot see any other course, vetted or not.
  • Reviewers are read-only. They cannot enroll, cannot earn a certificate, and nothing they do is recorded: no progress, no quiz scores, no recall grades. That is deliberate, so a reviewer clicking through a quiz to check its wording never moves the course's statistics or your dashboard averages. The pages say so plainly, so nobody thinks they are being graded.
  • Once you mark the course vetted, the invitation stops mattering: the course is open to its normal audience, and the reviewer is an ordinary visitor again.

Remove next to a name revokes access, and it takes effect immediately. If someone loses their link, invite the same address again, that mints a fresh link and replaces the old one.

People who put their hand up

Inviting a reviewer is one direction. The other is people volunteering, and that panel sits just above the invite box on the same page: "People who put their hand up".

On the public "Coming soon" page of any course you have not vetted, a visitor can offer one of three things: to take the course when it opens, to test it before it opens, or to vet it as a subject matter expert. They give a name and an email address, and optionally a phone number and a few lines about their background.

Nobody who fills that form in gets any access. It records a request with your name on it, and nothing happens until you decide:

  • Approve and invite on a tester or an expert sends them exactly the read-only review invite described above, with all the same limits: one course, read-only, nothing recorded. They still have to open the link, so an approval they never act on grants nothing either.
  • Mark reviewed on someone who only wants to take the course records that you saw it. It grants nothing, because there is nothing to grant: they are already on the notify-me list.
  • Decline closes it. Re-submitting the form does not reopen a declined request.

Changed your mind about someone you approved? Deciding again does not take the grant back. Use Remove on the reviewer list just below the panel, which is what actually revokes access, and it applies on their next click.

Approving somebody never enrolls them. If you want a tester to go through the course as a real learner, enroll them deliberately, and know that their quiz scores will then count in your statistics, which is exactly why the review grant does not.

Phone numbers and backgrounds are shown on that panel and nowhere else. They are not on the course page, not in the leads CSV, not in any email, and not in the WitUS Inbox mirror. The form says so to the person filling it in, so please keep that promise: they are contact details you were given in confidence, for this one course.

The Inbox does get a notification for every submission, saying who put their hand up, in which capacity, on which course, and linking back to this panel. It does not carry the phone number or the background.

Video tutorial script7 steps · about 4 min

  1. /teach, the instructor's course list

    Publishing and approving are two different steps here. Publishing says the course exists. Approving, which we call vetting, says a person reviewed it against its sources. Until it is vetted, visitors see a Coming soon page instead of the lessons.

  2. A course page while it is still unvetted

    This is what a visitor sees: the title, the description, the standards it meets, and a form to be told when it opens. What they do not get is the lessons. Anyone already enrolled keeps full access, and so do you.

  3. /teach/<course>, the course manager

    If you are the instructor, your job is to make the course ready to review. Finish the lessons, check that every claim has a source, and use Invite to audit if you want a colleague to read it before it opens. You cannot mark your own course vetted, and that is the point: review means someone else looked.

  4. The Coming soon banner on the course manager

    When it is ready, tell the platform owner. The banner here shows how many people are already waiting to hear it opened, which is usually the most persuasive thing you can send them.

  5. /admin, the owner's dashboard

    If you are the platform owner, the Courses published tile tells you how many are waiting for review, and takes you straight to them.

  6. /teach?status=unvetted, the vetting queue

    This is the queue. Tick the courses you have reviewed and choose Mark vetted. You can do one or fifty at a time. Marking a course vetted a second time does not change the date it was first vetted.

  7. A course page with the owner's vetting call to action

    You can also do it from the course itself. When you land on an unvetted course, this panel explains who can see what, and the button marks it vetted right there. The moment you do, the lessons open to everyone.