Turn a YouTube Playlist into a Course, Free, with Tests and a Certificate

What you get, free

Everything below works on a course made from a playlist. There is no plan to pay for, and the course stays free for learners.

Why turn a playlist into a course

A playlist is a list of videos. A course gives the same videos an order, checkpoints and an end. When you turn your playlist into a course on Sikhami, learners get:

• Structure: your videos in order, under one course page, instead of one video found in search.
• Progress tracking across the whole course.
• Tests with explanations, so they know what they have understood and what to watch again.
• A certificate of completion when they finish every lecture and pass every test, which anyone can check on its own page.
• Doubts at the exact moment in a video, which you see in one place and answer.
• A course page to share, with Q&A and reviews.

For you, the course adds analytics, such as who is active this week, test results and where learners stop, and announcements that reach every enrolled learner in the app and by email. Your videos stay on your YouTube channel and play embedded inside Sikhami.

Step by step

1. On YouTube, make sure the playlist is public, and that its videos are public with embedding allowed (how to check is below).
2. Sign up on Sikhami. Courses live under an institute, so open Learning studio, choose New institute, type a name (your channel's name works) and choose Create institute. It is free and saved as a draft.
3. In Details, add your logo, a username, an about section, your email and phone (each confirmed with a code), your full address and your location on the map, so the institute can be published.
4. Under Courses, choose New course, then Video course, then YouTube playlist, and paste the link where it says Paste a public playlist link.
5. Check the curriculum. The playlist's title becomes the section name, and each video a lecture.
6. Add a new section for your tests and use Add test in it. Keep or switch off the Certificate of completion, which is on by default.
7. Publish the course and share its page.

A course goes live only under a published institute. The course owner or a co-teacher can import the playlist, and a video course's Curriculum tab also has Import a YouTube playlist. Any course built from a playlist is free.

What is imported, and what is skipped

From each video, Sikhami takes the title, the description and the duration. The playlist's title becomes the name of its section, and the playlist's thumbnail and description fill the course picture and description if those are empty. Videos play embedded inside Sikhami, so they stay on your channel.

• Up to 500 videos come in from a playlist. If your series is longer, split it into shorter playlists and make each its own course.
• Only public videos that can be embedded are kept. Private and unlisted videos, and videos with embedding turned off, are skipped, and Sikhami counts how many were left out.
• The link you paste must be a public playlist.

To check a video on YouTube, open YouTube Studio and go to Content. Visibility must say Public. For embedding, open the video's Details, choose Show more and make sure Allow embedding is ticked, then save. YouTube's own help pages, listed in the sources at the end, explain both settings.

Re-sync, and its catch

Playlists grow. When you add videos on YouTube, open the course's Curriculum tab and choose Re-sync. It brings in the new videos and refreshes titles and order to match the playlist. Nothing syncs on its own, so Re-sync after each round of uploads.

The catch: Re-sync rewrites the playlist's section. Any test or lecture you added inside that section is removed. So keep tests in a section of their own, after the videos, and never inside the playlist's section.

Because titles and order come from YouTube, rename and reorder videos on YouTube rather than on Sikhami. Re-sync then carries the changes across.

Adding tests and the certificate

Choose Add test in a section of its own. Each question is multiple choice with one correct answer and two to six options, and you can write an Explanation (shown after submitting). Set a Pass mark (%) and, if you want, a Time limit (minutes), where 0 means no limit. Tests are marked automatically, and learners can take them again.

The Certificate of completion is on by default. A learner gets it after finishing every lecture and passing every test. It has its own ID and a public page where anyone, such as an employer or a parent, can check it: the learner's name, the course, your institute as the one offering it, the lectures, the tests passed and the date it was issued. Switch it off if the course is only a short sample.

What learners see

Learners open the course page, enrol for free and start. On the website and in the Android app, they watch each video inside the course, choose Mark complete as they go, and see their progress saved. They can ask a doubt at the exact moment in a video, keep notes and bookmarks, ask questions in the course Q&A and leave a review. When they have finished every lecture and passed every test, they choose Get certificate.

How to organise a playlist so it works as a course

Whether or not you use Sikhami, a playlist that works as a course follows a few habits, and they make every video more useful.

Put the videos in teaching order

Order the playlist the way you would teach the subject, not by upload date. On YouTube you can open the playlist and drag a video up or down. If a video depends on another, the other one comes first. Take out videos that are off-topic, repeated or out of date.

Give every video a title that says what it teaches

A lecture title should name the topic and its place. 'Lesson 4: Simple interest word problems' tells a learner far more than 'Class 4' or 'Part 2'. Keep the numbering consistent, and start each description with what the video covers, so learners can scan the course and find a topic again when they revise.

One topic per video

Short videos on one topic each are easier to finish, to find again and to revise from. If a long recording covers three topics, split it into three videos before you build the playlist, so a learner who needs one topic can go straight to it.

Group videos into modules, with a test after each

Think of the course as modules of a few videos each, such as one chapter per module, and plan a short test for the end of each. Five to ten questions on what the module taught are enough to show a learner what to revise. On Sikhami the playlist arrives as one section, so mark the modules in your video titles (for example, Module 2, Lesson 3) and put one test per module in a tests section after the videos.

Before you share it

• Every video public, with embedding allowed.
• The order checked from the first video to the last.
• A playlist description that says who the course is for and what they will be able to do at the end.
• A playlist thumbnail that is clear at a small size, since it can become the course picture.
• Old or repeated videos removed or replaced.

If you also want to sell recorded lessons, that works differently: see how to sell courses online on Sikhami, and our wider guide to online teaching platforms, which covers YouTube alongside the other ways teachers earn.

Good to know before you start

• Playlist courses are always free; you cannot charge for them. A paid course needs uploaded videos.
• A course needs an institute, which is free. Publishing the institute needs your logo, a username, an about section, a confirmed email and phone, a full address and a map location, and signed-in learners can see that address. Our page on a coaching institute website shows what visitors see.
• There is no automatic sync. Choose Re-sync when you add videos, and keep tests outside the playlist's section.
• Only public videos that can be embedded are imported, up to 500 from a playlist.
• Video courses are created on the website. Learners use them on the website and in the Android app.
• Tests are multiple choice with one correct answer.