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Creating a Course

Abstract

This article will walk through the steps needed to create a course in the Virginia Cyber Range. A Cyber Range admin will be required to approve a course before it will be created.

Requesting a Course

  1. Click on Create a New Course Button

    Once you get logged into the range for the first time, you will get an empty course listing:

    The "create a new course" button is in the top-right, below the header of the page.

    Once in, you will want to click on the "Create a new course" icon "+" to request a new course.

  2. Complete Course Request

    Once you click on the "Create a new course" icon "+", fill out all the fields in the pop-up box shown below. The course name and description are what your students will see once you've enrolled them. Please set the course's expiration date to shortly after the conclusion of the course; this allows us to make efficient use of our resources and ensures that other instructors can be assigned the resources they require.

    The fields on the form are, in order, Course Name, Course Description, How Course Relates to Cyber Security, Reserved Enrollments, Start Date, Expiration Date.

    Recommended Course Expiration Dates

    A course requested from January to May should have an expiration date of May 31st, a course requested from June to July should have an expiration date of July 31st, and a course requested from August to December should have an expiration date of December 16th.

    A course requested from January to March can only be extended until June 15 of the same year, while any course requested from April to December can be extended until June 15 of the following year.

    If you want to personalize your course's invitation email, click the advanced options button in the top left corner of the pop up window. Here, you can edit both the invitation email's subject and body to your liking.

    The advanced settings window allows you to customize your course's invitation email as you see fit.

    Note

    You can use any of the variables at the bottom of the advanced settings window while customizing your invitation email, but it is required that the invitation link variable be used in the email body. If this were to be excluded, students would not receive the link they need to accept your invitation!

    Once you are satisfied with your course settings, hit the CONFIRM button in the bottom right corner of the popup to submit your course request.

  3. Wait for Pending Course Request to be Approved

    After you create your course request within the Cyber Range, you will see your course and its current, "Pending approval" state:

    A pending course card displays the course name and its "Pending approval" state.

    Once it is approved by a Cyber Range admin, you will receive a confirmation email, and the course will change to a live course:

    A live course card displays the course name, instructor, number of users, and number of exercises.

    Note

    Course approval usually happens the same day you put in the request, but could take several days depending on approval request loads.

  4. Approved Course is Now Ready to Add Exercises or Invite Students

    Now when you click on your approved course you'll see your course details and can add exercises, create environments or invite students. Your approved course will show your course title, role, course description, and status.

    Once the course is live, the expected number of users can be set while creating the course invitation code; this will create a number of pre-warmed VMs to reduce each VM's startup time (please see the article titled Cyber Range Pool Model for more information on this).

    Note

    To provide the best learning experience, we offer two exercise environments and one CloudCTF environment per course. However, if you require more exercise environments, you can either delete an existing exercise environment or request an additional course.

To start using your new course, please see the article titled Adding Exercise Environments to see how to add exercises to your new course.

Have a Question? Contact Support

Students: Please reach out to your Instructor or Admin who can submit a ticket to our Support team on your behalf.

If you are an Instructor or Admin and still have questions after reviewing the information above, please feel free to submit a ticket with our support team and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.