Using Leanpub courses to get started in Terra

Overview

To help get you up and running on Terra, the Terra User Education team has created a series of short online courses staged on Leanpub, which specializes in MOOCs (massive open online courses). Each course takes you through a curated journey of documentation on a particular topic (e.g., platform intro, sharing and collaborating, workflows, notebooks, etc) in about an hour. Quizzes and hands-on exercises help you check that you've understood the key information.

You can find the Terra University courses via a link or email invitation, and you can even send invitations to others. The courses are 100% free, so don't be concerned with the fact that they need to be "purchased". The fee for purchasing them is $0, and the optional donation is just a standard part of the Leanpub platform.

We recommend taking the courses in this order

Intro to Terra
Billing and Secure Collaboration in Terra (billing and finance admins)
Introduction to Data Tables in Terra
Intro to Workflows in Terra
Introduction to Interactive Analyses in Terra
Writing WDLs workflows in Terra

How to access Terra University on Leanpub

Follow the step-by-step instructions or the video demo below (it's not intuitive from the website itself!). You can find all of the available courses on the Terra University page on Leanpub.

Video walkthrough of accessing Terra University on Leanpub

Step 1. Purchase the course

1.1. Add the course to your cart

After you've found a link to the course, you'll be taken to a screen like the one below. Add this course to your cart, leaving the purchase price as $0.

Screenshot of Introduction to Terra course landing page on leanpub. The top of the page has menu items for books, bundles, and courses, a search field, a heart icon, a shopping cart icon, and a three parallel line main menu. The main section of the page includes a thumbnail of the course title and indications plus a slider that you paid zero dollars for teh course and an add course to cart button

1.2. Checkout

On the next screen you'll be able to complete the purchase by clicking "checkout with free purchase". To send this course as a gift to another user, click the This is a gift checkbox. This can be useful if you're trying to share this course with someone else and they aren't able to find a link.

Screenshot of the leanlub shopping cart with Intro to Terra in the cart. An arrow points to the This is a gift option at the top left and a blue Checkout with free purchase button at the bottom.

Step 2. Find the course in your library

2.1. Navigate to the courses section of your personal Leanpub library

Now that you've purchased the course, you can find it in your library. Click on the three-dash main menu icon at the top right of your screen, then click on "Library" on the left, and lastly click on "Courses".

Screenshot of Leanpub with arrows pointing to the main navigation - three parallel lines at the top right of the page - plus the library tab in the left column, and the Library tab in the middle column.

2.2. Select the course

You should now see a list of all of the courses you've ever purchased. Click on the Terra course you're interested in to see your options and metrics for that course

Screenshot of courses tab with the Intro to Terra course card in the middle

Step 3. Launch the course

After you select a course, you will see a screen (below), which lets you launch the course and shows your progress. This view also gives you the option to "complete" the course if you've finished all of the readings and quizzes, which will generate a certificate of completion.

Screenshot of Intro to Terra course with button to Go to course, progress report - you have completed 0 of 2 quizzes - and buttons to Start the course or complete the course.