how to develop an online course beginner

by Abby Quitzon 7 min read

How to create and launch an online course?

May 14, 2021 · How to Create an Online Course for Free Choose Your Course Topic. In all significant endeavors, you need to plan. Your plan for making an online course should... Identify the Target Audience. After choosing the topic for your online course, it’s now time to identify your target... Gather and ...

How much does it cost to develop an online course?

Apr 22, 2022 · How to Create an Online Course From Start to Finish (2022) 1. Get Your Mindset Right. First things first, you need to understand what you’re getting into. While creating a course... 2. Decide What You Want to Teach. Deciding what to teach is tricky because it needs to be something you’re ...

How to build an effective online course?

Whether you're an author, a consultant, a Youtuber, a blogger, or any other form of an entrepreneur. Step 1: Choose A Profitable Topic. Ok, so now we've established why you want to create an online course, it's time to dig into the process of …

How to start creating an online course?

Aug 26, 2019 · E-learning templates are predesigned and preprogrammed pages that you can use to build your course faster, usually you just need to copy / paste texts, add audio and video materials, if you have any, delete the parts you don’t need, adjust color scheme, change logo and you are good to go.

Who can create online courses?

Anyone with knowledge in a particular area can create online courses. You don’t need a formal qualification or a degree to teach an online course....

How much money can you make selling online courses?

While some course creators make $50k+ month, most successful ones make between $1k-$10k per month. However, your actual course revenue depends on v...

How long does it take to create an online course?

As you might expect, there is no set-in-stone amount of time to create an online course. Generally speaking, it can take anywhere between 20 and 50...

What is the cost of creating an online course?

Generally speaking, it can cost you anywhere between $140 and $10,770 to create your own online course. But, of course, it could even be more, as m...

Can I create an online course for free?

Yes, it is possible to create an online course for free, but for that, you’ll need to do all the work yourself. Plus, you should use your smartphon...

How long should an online course be?

An online course should be as long or short as it needs to deliver value to your target audience and cover the information thoroughly. Overall, it...

What technical skills do I need to create an online course?

In most cases, you don’t need any technical skills. You’ll have to learn about a few things, such as video creation and setting up your course webs...

Where can I host my online course?

There are several options for hosting your online course, but the two best platforms are Thinkific and Kajabi. These platforms allow you to build y...

How much should you charge for your online course?

There is no definite answer to this, and you need to evaluate your competition, the value your course provides to students, and the niche you’re in...

What is the difference between a blog and a video?

The difference is that blogging uses the written word instead of video format . Your aim while blogging is to use SEO (search engine optimization) to get your blogs to rank high for various Google searches, which will get people viewing your website and hopefully clicking through to your course. This is also called organic traffic.

What is a webinar?

A webinar is a live video presentation or conference where you deliver some useful information to people that relates to your course.

What is a sales funnel email?

Once people have signed up for your email list, you can send them a newsletter or put them through an email sequence (also known as a sales funnel) that takes new subscribers through a process that warms them up to you and makes them see you as someone who offers a lot of value.

What platforms do you use to promote a course?

That means using various platforms at your disposal like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and others .

What happens when you stop paying for a course?

When they stop making their monthly payments, they lose access to the course materials. It costs less to students up front, but over time could earn more money if students stay with the program.

Why do online courses use video?

Most online courses use video format because it's engaging ​and enables your students to hear and see you and you can illustrate your points visually.

How to search for courses that already exist?

Use Google ​to search for courses that already exist about your topic. You can also search on online course platforms like Udemy.

What does competition mean in online courses?

Having competition means that people find the topic relevant and helpful for them. It’s also a good idea to create content that can comfortably fit into an existing, tried-and-tested space.

What should the topic of an online course be?

The topic for your online course should be either a subject that you’re already knowledgeable about or are willing to invest in learning thoroughly. Either way, you need to be passionate about the subject.

What to do if you already have professional experience with your course topic?

If you already have professional experience with your course topic, it’s likely that you’ve put together content about it in the past. Have you ever written a blog post or created a webinar about the subject? Maybe you host a podcast or run a YouTube channel for your business in which you’ve discussed similar themes? If so, go back to these materials. Repurposing existing content into your online course will help get you started and save a lot of valuable time.

What to do after a video is filmed?

After you’ve filmed your content, invest some time editing your raw footage. There are many free video editing software available, from iMovie, to Lightworks, and the Wix Video Maker. Try to craft a nice rhythm to your video by breaking it up into digestible bites.

How to get your audience to work on a topic?

Ask a group of friends, as well as your existing audience, what they think of the subject you had in mind. Test it out by sharing polls or online forms for your audience to fill out. You can make a short tutorial first, and monitor its performance. Then, follow up on the tutorial on social media or via email marketing campaigns, asking your audience if this type of material is something they’re interested in seeing more of.

How to test your idea?

In order to test your idea, use a landing page builder to create a page for your upcoming online course. Although you haven’t created the course just yet, you already know what it’s going to be about. Include a concise description of the course explaining what people can expect to learn and add eye-catching imagery to further reflect the concept. Check out these fully customizable landing page templates to use as a starting point.

How to teach a lesson?

Go in a logical order and try to make your ideas evolve naturally from one to the other , to ensure a smooth and frictionless learning process. Remember that teaching is about guiding your audience through an idea, step by step. To make this clear in your course outline, define an objective for each of your lessons.

Step 1: Define the topic

Consider the context of the average students who will complete your course.

Step 2: Collect all necessary content

Creating an online course is a truly creative process, and it takes time to bring together all the pieces that will make up the course. Once you have identified your learning objectives, the work of writing content and choosing the related media such as photos and videos that will be used throughout your course begins.

Step 3: Create a storyboard

Once you’ve collected all the content for your course, you’ll want to weave the items together into a cohesive storyboard, which is similar to an outline. In this document, you’ll map out all the planned content, course verbiage, and describe the ways you will use the authoring tool to make the presentation interactive.

Step 4: Author your course

Now it’s time to bring your course to life! An authoring tool is a software program that enables you to create eLearning content and distribute it via a learning management system, or on the Web. Most authoring tools maintain a slide-based course structure – you create slides, fill them with text, images, videos, and animations.

Step 5: Conduct final reviews and share the course

Obtaining reviews and feedback on the course from your colleagues and school administrators may be useful. Each of them has their own perspective on the content and the course itself, so they can share their opinion on what they like and what they feel needs to be improved.

Final Thoughts

With a little planning, creating eLearning courses using today’s authoring tools can be a truly enjoyable and efficient way to work. Whether you are new to online course design or already have some experience in content development, we hope this guide provides some helpful orientation.

What do you need to know about authoring tools?

What you need to know is that Authoring tools allow you, a non-technical developer, who does not know how to code, create amazing, fully functional and interactive e-learning courses. And, in addition, you will be able to publish these courses in SCORM or xAPI format and track your learners’ progress. Wow, let’s take a pause here!

What does LMS support mean?

Support – If the LMS is hosted by the provider, they ensure user support as well as saving and backing up data. If the LMS needs to be hosted by you, you need to be able to provide sufficient infrastructure and support internally.

What do you do when you have LMS installed?

The first thing people usually do when they have just had their LMS installed, is upload internal documents like internal procedures, guides etc, usually in PDF or Powerpoint formats.

What are the features of LMS?

Features – There is a variety of features that you may (or may not) need for your eLearning, such as integration of other systems, social features, visual customization and so on. Pricing – Of course, affordability is also always a factor.

What is learning platform?

A learning platform ensures user logon/authorization, tracking, assignment of learning activities or allows users to choose the learning path themselves . LMS allows all user management to be done. There are many LMSs that also include ...

Why use LMS?

So, our suggestion is to use LMS for user management and tracking and create content in an environment specifically built for this purpose.

Why use e-learning templates?

E-learning templates – allow much much faster course development, and can be a source of inspiration and learning if you are struggling with developing everything on your own.

What is the expectation of people to focus on hour-long video lectures?

Expecting people to focus on hour-long video lectures is asking for a lot. You might have a lot of information to deliver, but you need to do so in compact amounts of time.

What is sweat equity?

Sweat equity is the main cost you'll incur, and once you have your course created, most of the sales you make will be profit.

What to consider when considering a course?

Consider which ones you valued and why, as well as why you were drawn to the course in the first place.

Why is it important to have goals in class?

Having goals helps to keep both you and them on track.#N#These are also important because they help you assess your own teaching effectiveness.

How many videos can you make in a video series?

The depth of your content will likely be the determining factor in how long the course should be. You can create a 45 video series course, or 15 videos.

What is digital course secret?

Digital Course Secrets is an A-Z training on how to create an online course. With hundreds of five, six, and seven figure students, this program is worth considering. You can get more info below by checking out the free training.

Why is online education so popular?

Due to unforeseen pandemics, the enormous expense for traditional educational institutions, and the convenience of learning new topics from the comfort of your own home , online education is more popular than ever.

What is an ideal member?

Your ideal member is the person who most needs your online course topic taught by you. They are motivated by what the topic will help them achieve and the way that your story makes it feel accessible and doable for them to achieve it.

Why are people motivated to take online courses?

People are motivated by transformation and they are willing to pay for it when it comes in the form of an online course (delivered by the right instructor, as you’ll see in the next point). Therefore, it’s not just the topic or content of your online course that matters. It’s how that topic or content attracts the most motivated people to it.

How to create an online course?

What does that mean? It means combining a concept with actions and results—think class topics or homework assignments—then, offering all of it in a community of fellow students or members.

Why do you need a community component in an online course?

That’s a huge missed opportunity: Establishing a community component alongside your online course gives your course members the opportunity to build relationships with each other, navigate challenges together, and get that much closer to your goals. And in the end, it spurs the growth of your business too, since your course graduates won’t be able to stop raving about their experience to everyone who will listen.

How many people do you need to start a Mighty Network?

What’s different about a Mighty Network? You only need 10 people to get started.

How to spark your imagination?

To spark your own imagination, consider your circumstances, identity, cultural background, where you’ve been and why, what you’ve achieved and how, who and what you’ve taken a stand for, and who you’ve helped along the way. You might be surprised, but there’s always something in our personal backgrounds that we can share with others.

Do you need to be an expert to create online courses?

That’s right. You don’t need to be an expert to create online learning courses.

How to align a course?

Using the learning objectives you can become more selective in what you include in your course. This selection process is known as alignment. Alignment occurs when the course component (activity, assignment, material, technology and/or assessment) will help the student meet the learning objectives. To get started, build a Conceptual Framework for each module. In this framework outline the learning by identifying the course competencies and learning objectives for the module. Then review the course components (each piece of your module that you identified in the module map process) and see if they fit (align), i.e. contribute to the student achieving the stated learning objective. If a component does not align you need to either change the objective, change the course component or if it is essential to keep this non-aligned component, make sure that it is clearly identified as supplemental.

What are course competencies in Maricopa?

In Maricopa there are “course level” competencies that are designed and written by faculty at the district level through the Instructional Council for each discipline . Course competencies are what is required to be covered and taught in every course. For course design and mapping, especially online, a faculty member designs activities, assessments, lectures, etc. to teach those competencies….along the way students will learn incrementally – those are unit or module level learning objectives. These help students understand what they will be learning, how all the activities and assignments help them learn, and then in the end see where they have been.

What is summative assessment?

Summative Assessment evaluates student learning, skill and academic achievement at the end of a defined instructional period (i.e. project, unit, course, semester, etc.).

What is the ABCD method?

ABCD Method – An easy framework for creating learning objectives is the A.B.C.D. method. This stands for Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree. Learning objectives that contain each of these elements will clearly outline the learning that is to be achieved after completing each module.

Why is it important to have clear objectives?

It is essential to build measurable and clear objectives that outline what is expected of the learner. These objectives will make it easy to align the rest of your course and will serve to communicate learning expectations to students.

What is a well designed C.A.T.?

Tip: Well designed C.A.T.s include a planning, implementing and responding phase.

How to make a course interactive?

Plan for interaction! Make sure your course is rich in opportunities for students to engage with the content, with you and with each other. This means creating diverse activities like discussions, group work, case studies and collaborative problem-solving. Also, be sure to select resources that are relevant and present a variety of viewpoints and meet different learning styles. Consider multimedia, periodicals, web resources, etc.

What are the accommodations for LMS?

Most LMS systems will offer accommodations like out-loud readers or text enlargement for the sight impaired. [12]

What is learning management system?

Understand your Learning Management System. A Learning Management System (LMS) is the software that you and your students will use to navigate the course. Each LMS has unique features and understanding their strengths and weaknesses will guide you in terms of what types of content you can or should use.

Why do you outline some rule of engagement in the syllabus?

You’ll want to outline some rule of engagement in the syllabus to ensure that everyone on the message board is respectful and refrains from personal attacks. It may help to stay away from questions that involve particularly hot button political issues unless they’re directly related to the content.

How to help students adjust to the pace of the course early on?

Try to be consistent with the amount of information, the amount of time required, and the number of assignments for each module. This will help students adjust to the pace of the course early on and prevent confusion.

How to get students to get out of a course?

Determine learning objectives. Decide what you want students to get out of the course as a whole and out of each individual unit. These outcomes should be explicitly stated to the students and guide your development of the content. Start with objectives for individual units.

How to organize online courses?

Because of this, it is especially important that your content is organized consistently and with purpose. Divide the core subject matter into major units or modules and create further subdivisions that guide students through the content.

What are the limitations of online learning?

One of the most significant limitations of online learning is that students can’t interact with you or each other as directly. If you don’t include an interactive aspect of the course, the education students are receiving will be little better than if they simply bought a textbook and read it on their own.

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