Online course glossary

Clear definitions of the terms that come up when you build and sell an online academy.

• LMS (Learning Management System)

  An LMS is the software that hosts, organises and delivers online courses. It handles content, enrolments, each student's progress and certificates from a single place.

• Virtual campus

  A virtual campus is the online space where a school gathers its courses, its students and its brand. It acts as the institution's digital home: students log in, study and track progress there.

• Membership area

  A membership area is the private space only buyers or subscribers can enter. It holds the videos, materials and communities that are not public. In Brazil it is the standard name for the category.

• White label

  White label means the product carries your identity rather than your vendor's. Your students see your logo, your colours and your domain, with no trace of the software underneath.

• Infoproduct

  An infoproduct is a digital product made of knowledge: a course, an ebook, a recorded mentorship, a template. Produced once and sold many times, with no inventory or shipping.

• Custom domain

  A custom domain means using your own web address (courses.yourbrand.com) instead of a subfolder on the platform. Students never see the vendor's name in the address bar.

• Sales commission

  A sales commission is the percentage a platform takes on each transaction, usually plus a fixed amount. It grows with your revenue: the more you sell, the more you pay.

• Completion certificate

  A completion certificate is the document confirming a student finished a course. It usually carries the student's name, the course name, the date and a verification code.

• Checkout

  Checkout is the screen where the student pays. It collects details, processes the payment method and unlocks course access. It is the last step of the funnel and where most sales are lost.

• Membership

  A membership is a model where students pay on a recurring basis for ongoing access to content, community or updates, instead of buying a course once.

• Gamification

  Gamification applies game mechanics such as points, badges, levels and leaderboards to a course, to sustain motivation and increase how many students reach the end.

• Completion rate

  Completion rate is the percentage of enrolled students who finish a course, calculated by dividing completions by total enrolments. In open online courses it tends to be very low.

• Student onboarding

  Student onboarding is the path from purchase to completing the first lesson successfully. It determines whether a course actually gets started or sits forgotten in a tab.

• Evergreen content

  Evergreen content stays valid over time without depending on news or dates. Produced once, it sells for years with minimal upkeep.

• Cohort

  A cohort is a group of students who take a course at the same time, with shared start and end dates. They move together, unlike on-demand formats where everyone begins whenever they like.

• SCORM

  SCORM is a technical standard for packaging a course so it runs on different LMS platforms without being rebuilt. It defines how content is structured and how student progress is reported.

• Automatic transcription

  Automatic transcription turns a video's audio into text using speech recognition. From that text come subtitles, summaries, internal search and derived material, with no manual typing.

• Sales funnel

  A sales funnel is the path from someone discovering your course to buying it. Each stage loses people, which is why it is drawn as a funnel: many enter, few purchase.

• Drip content

  Drip content releases lessons gradually on a schedule instead of unlocking the whole course at once. Release can be tied to fixed dates or to days since enrolment.

• Churn

  Churn is the percentage of subscribers who cancel in a given period. In a membership it is the metric that decides whether the business grows or merely replaces what it loses each month.