Overview
Course Builder is a curriculum and program development tool. Most Forum content, including lesson plans, syllabi, assignments, etc., is created and maintained in Course Builder.
How do Forum and Course Builder interact?
While Forum and Course Builder are highly dependent on each other, it's important to note that they are separate systems. The relationship between the two is unidirectional–Course Builder changes can be reflected in Forum, but Forum changes will not be reflected in Course Builder.
The general rules are that:
Changes in Course Builder will only be reflected in Forum once the changes are published in Course Builder.
Changes in Forum generally will not be reflected in Course Builder.
One example of this is publishing changes to a lesson plan. If the content of a lesson plan is changed in Course Builder, then those changes will be visible in Forum once that specific plan has been published. Otherwise, you will not see the change made on the lesson plan in Forum.
Courses and sections in Forum and Course Builder
Since Forum and Course Builder are different systems, there are some concepts in one system that don't exist in the other. The main example of this is sections.
Course Builder has no notion of sections. Sections only exist in Forum.
Sections and courses in Forum are created from Course Builder courses:
When a Course Builder course is published to Forum, it creates a Forum course and a Forum section
All content in the Course Builder course populates the Forum section and course with information such as course code, course title, lesson plans, syllabus, assignments, etc.
Multiple Forum sections can be created for one course. For example, course CS100 can have multiple sections (Section A, Section B, Section C)
Any changes that are made in the Course Builder course and published to Forum will update all Forum sections that live under that course