Creating Your First Online Course? There has never been a better time to start creating your FIRST!
According to GlobeNewswire, the global e-learning market size is expected to grow from 144 billion in 2019 to 374 billion by 2026.
This comes as no surprise considering that the demand for online learning spiked after the emergence of Covid-19. As the lockdown measures took place, teaching professionals started looking for better alternatives to offer to learn, exploring the possibility of creating and selling online courses.
If you are here to learn how to create your first online course, then you are in the right place.
Check out what you need to do step-by-step in this article.
Step 1: Choose Your Course Topic
A successful course helps people get from point A to point B. This means that it should teach a subject that allows them to overcome a challenge so that they can change and grow in certain aspects of their lives.
Ultimately, this is the value that comes with an online course, and you will get to offer it to your learners. But first, you need to choose the right topic.
The course topic needs to depend on three key parameters:
- You need to have expertise in it
- You need to enjoy teaching it
- It needs to be in demand
While the first two factors are easy to identify, the third one needs some more exploration.
Your upcoming course needs to offer a solution that is going to be useful to a niche group of people. Ideally, these will be your target audience. If you don’t have a specific target audience in mind, try to think about who your course will appeal most to and research their pain points.
If people don’t find it useful, then there is no point in creating it in the first place because it will not sell. So prior to choosing the topic, check demand either through Google Trends or surveys.
Step 2: Decide on Your Instructional Style
There is no right or wrong way to teach and each teacher has their own instructional methods. When teaching online, however, there are certain things to consider.
- What will your online course include?
- Will it be a series of presentations, recorded videos, one-to-one, or group learning activities? What about assessments and exams?
- Are you going to conduct live classes? If yes, how and what tool will you use?
All these important considerations need to be dealt with early in the course creation process. Doing so will help you decide how often you plan to check in with your students either to give them feedback, monitor their progress, or answer their questions.
It should also help you decide what type of content you need to prepare for your course.
Step 3: Build the Course Content
Before you start creating course content from scratch, gather all the information you have already from blog posts or ebooks you have written to presentations or webinars you conducted in the past.
There is immense value in there that often goes unnoticed. Using such content will save you lots of time and effort in collecting your educational material and adding them to the course.
Once you do this, add any new information you create and start building your course sections.
Label each section as you prefer e.g. ‘Chapter 1, 2, 3,’ or ‘Introduction, Theme 1, 2, 3, Conclusion’, ‘Lesson 1, 2, 3’ and write a course description.
For the entire course but also each section, come up with learning objectives. Make sure that every piece of content you create serves an educational goal helping students attain the required level of knowledge and skills.
Step 4: Select Your Course Platform
A course platform can host your online content and deliver it in a way that is easily accessible to your learners.
Depending on the course platform you choose, you will get different options on the type of course content you can create.
For example, with LearnWorlds you can choose from a wide range of learning activities for your students. Select from ebook, pdf, audio, video, create quizzes and upload graded SCORMs to grade your learners’ assignments and issue certificates.
Not every course platform is the same, and when conducting research on your options, the best elements to look for are ease of use, key features and capabilities, app integrations, pricing, and customer support.
Step 5: Promote Your Course
Once you have prepared and uploaded your course content to your chosen platform, you are ready to teach.
To get your first learners – customers, start spreading the word in every way possible. Tell your immediate family and friends or people you know might be interested in your course. Most successful online course creators use email to build interest and gather attention as well.
So it might be a good idea to create your own email list, build a group of subscribers and use email to nurture a relationship with your target audience, and keep in contact with them.
Also, don’t forget social media community groups. With most people being active social media users, you have the potential to engage many interested learners.
Ready to Create Your First Online Course?
As you can see, you don’t need much to create an online course.
While the actual process of creating course content will require some time and effort on your behalf, the results will be all worth it. Simply follow the steps described above, and do your own research to decide what is best for you and your learners.
Investing in the power of learning and helping people build on knowledge while working on your passion project is the best way to contribute back to the world.
So what will your first online course be about? Let us know!
Author: Kyriaki Raouna
Bio: Kyriaki is a Content Creator for LearnWorlds, writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.
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