Working copies — editing a published lesson
Edit a lesson that students are already using without changing what they see, then publish when the new version is ready.
Who this is for
Teachers, academic leads, and anyone else who edits course lessons after they have been published to students.
What this page answers
- Why don't my edits reach students immediately any more?
- What is a working copy, and when does one appear?
- How do I publish my changes, or throw them away?
- What does the amber asterisk on a lesson mean?
- What happens if I edit the same lesson in two tabs?
Prerequisites
- a course lesson that is already published
- the right to edit that lesson
The short version
Once a lesson is published, editing it does not change the course lesson straight away. Your edits go into a working copy — a draft of that lesson — and the course keeps handing out the last published version until you press Publish.
This applies to published lessons only. A lesson still in draft behaves as it always did: there is nothing live to protect, so your edits save straight to the lesson.
Publishing is not the last step if students already have the lesson. A course lesson is a template. The moment a lesson is assigned, the student gets their own copy of it, and publishing a new version of the template does not reach copies that already exist. To push your changes out to students, use Overwrite for students as well — see Getting your changes to students.
Why it works this way
A working copy separates drafting from publishing. A half-finished paragraph, a widget mid-configuration, or AI-generated content you have not reviewed yet stays out of the course until you decide it is ready — so you can leave a lesson half-rewritten for a week and the class you teach tomorrow still gets the version you approved.
How editing works now
Every change you make in the lesson editor goes into the working copy — manual saves, autosave, an imported document, a Lesson Builder result you accepted, and anything AI inserted for you. One working copy exists per lesson, shared by everyone editing it.
The action button tells you where you are
The main button at the top of the editor changes as you work:
| Button | What it means |
|---|---|
| Save Working Copy | You have unsaved keystrokes. Saving stores them in the draft — students are unaffected. |
| Publish | The draft is saved and nothing is pending. Pressing this replaces what learners receive. |
Publishing asks for confirmation first, because the previously published version cannot be restored afterwards.
Switching between the draft and the published version
Next to the action button is a two-segment switcher: Working and Published. An amber dot on Working means there are unpublished changes.
- Published shows the current published version of the course lesson, read-only, with a note saying so. Switching to it saves your draft first.
- Switching back to Working returns you to your draft with your edits untouched.
Use this before publishing to compare the two versions. You can also browse past published version history from the lesson's action sheet to inspect historical documents side by side.
Edit conflict fences during AI generation
If you start an AI generation and simultaneously type manual edits into a Step, the editor's edit conflict fence (step_edit_fence) protects your document: the incoming AI result is safely captured in the recovery log without clobbering your manual keystrokes.
Discarding a draft
The undo arrow next to the switcher discards the whole working copy and returns the lesson to its published state. It asks for confirmation, and it cannot be undone — it throws away every unpublished change, not just the last one.
The asterisk on the lesson list
On the course page, a lesson with unpublished changes shows a small amber asterisk right after its title. Hover it to see who edited the draft last and when, along with a reminder that students see the last published version until the draft is published.
This is the fastest way to spot lessons you started editing and never finished.
What the course hands out in the meantime
While a working copy exists, the published version is what everything else draws from:
- new assignments of that lesson
- self-study starts
- lesson previews
- copies made from a marketplace listing
Nothing about the draft is visible outside the editor.
Students who were already assigned the lesson are a separate case: they hold their own copy, made when it was assigned, and neither the draft nor a fresh publish reaches it on its own.
Assigning from the course page does not warn you about an unpublished draft. Open the assignment sheet from the lesson list and the student's copy is made from the last published version — not from the draft you were just editing — and nothing on screen says so. The only signal is the amber asterisk on the lesson.
Assigning from inside the editor is the safe route: it offers Publish and assign to student, and a dialog lists exactly what it will publish before it opens the assignment sheet. Declining that dialog cancels the assignment rather than assigning an older version.
Getting your changes to students
Publishing updates the course lesson. Copies that already exist in students' hands are updated separately.
Publish the working copy
This makes your draft the course lesson's published version, and every assignment made from now on uses it.
Open "Overwrite for students"
It sits in the dropdown next to the Save button in the lesson editor, and appears only once the lesson is published. The dialog is titled Overwrite assigned lessons and tells you how many copies it will replace.
Confirm
The copies are replaced with the current published content.
Overwrite only reaches copies students have not opened yet. The dialog says so: it updates "the copies students haven't opened yet". A student who has already started the lesson keeps their copy — overwriting it would discard the work they have done in it.
To update a lesson a student has already started, open that student's lesson on its live lesson page and pick Reload from Course from the Reload menu. It replaces that one document with the current published content and does not ask for confirmation, so anything the student wrote in it is gone. Be sure before you use it.
This is why the safest order is: finish the draft, publish, overwrite for students, and only then tell the class the material has changed.
Working in two places at once
Working copies are shared, so two people (or two of your own browser tabs) can collide. The platform resolves this rather than letting one silently overwrite the other:
- If someone changed the draft after your tab loaded it, your save is refused and you are told that the working copy changed in another tab, and to review those changes before saving yours. Reload, look at what changed, and decide.
- If the draft was discarded elsewhere, an idle tab stops offering it instead of quietly recreating it.
When in doubt, reload the editor before a long editing session. That guarantees you are working from the current draft.
The one exception: live classroom lessons
Saving from inside a running live session still writes to that session's lesson directly. The students in that room are already watching you edit, so there is nothing to protect — deferring those edits would only confuse the class.
Suggested workflow
Open the published lesson and edit freely
Your changes accumulate in the working copy. Save whenever you like.
Check the published version before you commit
Flip the switcher to Published to see what students have right now, then Return to your draft.
Publish
Press Publish and confirm. From that moment, every new assignment uses the new version.
Push it to students who already have the lesson
Use Overwrite for students — see Getting your changes to students. Skip this only if nobody has the lesson yet.
Or discard
If the rewrite did not work out, use the undo arrow to drop the draft and keep the published lesson exactly as it was.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get the old published version back after publishing?
No. Publishing replaces the previous version of the course lesson and it is not archived. If a rewrite is risky, keep the original by copying the lesson into another course first — see Manage Course Lessons.
Snapshots are a different thing. The Snapshots restore in a live session brings back an earlier state of the document you are working in together — it is not a way back to a previous published version of a course lesson. See Collaboration.
Does an unpublished draft block anything?
No. The lesson keeps working normally for students the entire time. A draft can sit unpublished indefinitely.
Who can see my draft?
Anyone who can edit the lesson. It is not private to you — it is the lesson's single shared draft.
I edited a lesson and students say nothing changed
Two different causes, in the order worth checking:
- The changes were never published. Look for the amber asterisk on the lesson list. If it is there, your edits are still sitting in the working copy.
- The students already had the lesson. Publishing updates the course lesson, not copies that already exist. Use Overwrite for students, and for anyone who has already started the lesson, Reload from Course on their individual lesson. See Getting your changes to students.