how to test idea of online course

^{5 Steps To Test Your Online Course Idea In The Real World}

1. Determine your minimum viable outcome. Your pilot course is a scaled-down version of the full course you have in mind. ...
2. Choose your pilot type and price. Decide whether you want your pilot course to be high-touch or low-touch. Each has its pros and cons.
3. Plan your pilot curriculum. Now you’re ready to plan your pilot curriculum. I guarantee you’ll have it ready within a couple of hours.
4. Sell your pilot. You’ve got your pilot course all planned. Now it’s time to sell it! ...
5. Proceed or Pivot. If you enrolled as many students as you hoped for, then congratulations! You can proceed with delivering your pilot course.

Full Answer

How to test your online course?

Apr 12, 2016 · 5 Steps To Test Your Online Course Idea In The Real World Step 1: Determine your minimum viable outcome. Your pilot course is a scaled-down version of the full course you have in... Step 2: Choose your pilot type and price. Decide whether you want your pilot course to be …

How do I create an online course?

Oct 20, 2017 · Once you realize that an online course is fundamentally a software program, you can treat it as such. Try it in different browsers and see what happens. Test it with dummy …

How to evaluate your online course’s topic?

Mar 30, 2017 · Launch Like a Pro: 8 Steps to Beta Test Your Online Course Idea 1. Define your goals. I don’t know who said it first, but one key to business is to “fail fast, fail cheap, and fail...

What should I choose for my online course topic?

Mar 21, 2022 · There are two easy ways to test your course idea. It will involve some work on your end but can ultimately save you a lot of wasted time and money down the line. In both of these …

How do you assess the quality of an online course?

How do I beta test an online course?

How do I choose a topic for an online course?

How do you validate learning?

Should I beta test my course?

How beta testing is performed?

What is educational validity?

What do we mean by validated learning?

What is educational validation?

How long does it take to implement a pilot course?

Your pilot course is a scaled-down version of the full course you have in mind. It must be small enough in scope that you can implement it within six weeks or so. But not so small that it doesn’t deliver appreciable results to your students.

Who is Danny Iny?

Danny Iny is the founder and CEO of Mirasee, host of the Business Reimagined podcast, and best-selling author of multiple books, including Teach and Grow Rich: The Emerging Opportunity for Global Impact, Freedom, and Wealth .

Prepare for the Course Validation Process

To test whether your idea has merit, you must first condense it into a value proposition. Answering these questions will help you refine your idea.

5 Steps to Validate an Online Course Idea

You may learn, after doing steps 1 and 2 below, that there isn’t sufficient demand for your online course idea. However, doing these research exercises will give you a better sense of what your audience is seeking.

1. Get Search Volumes By Using Keywords Planner

Search volumes for keywords related to your topic is a great indicator of student interest in your niche and when it comes to search, nothing beats Google. To get search volumes on Google for your keywords, you can use this handy keywords research tool called Keywords Planner .

2. Search On YouTube

YouTube is the largest video platform in the world. On Youtube, you can find videos on almost any topic and in any possible niche. Go to YouTube.com and do a search with your keywords. You should see a lot of tutorial and how to videos related to your niche.

3. Search In Online Forums

There are numerous Q&A forums on the internet and it's very likely that your niche has a few as well. Your potential students hang out in these forums, so you should join the community and follow and participate in the conversations. This will help you understand their pain points and you can fine-tune your course topic based on this intelligence.

4. Search On Udemy And Other Course Marketplaces

While Udemy is the largest online course marketplace, there are other popular marketplaces like OpenSesame and Coggno. Searching your course topic on these marketplaces is one of the best ways to gather market intelligence in your niche and validate whether students are willing to pay or not.

5. Search On Amazon

While Amazon is not directly related to online courses, it's the largest marketplace for ebooks which are nothing but information products like online courses. So, if you find any popular ebooks related to your course topic on Amazon, this is a great news for you.

6. Survey Your Audience

If you have an audience, you can consider creating a survey to get direct feedback from your potential students. You can use a free solution like Google Forms or a paid solution like Survey Monkey to create a survey and send it to your audience. With this method, you can also get feedback on your course curriculum in addition to your course topic.

7. Pre-Launch Your Online Course

If you’re still not confident about your online course idea, you can use pre-launch strategy to test it. With pre-launch, you sell your course even before you create it. Generally, instructors offer a heavy discount or, offer other benefits to motivate students to pre-order their online course.

Is it good to search for a course?

Searching is always a good place to start. Search engine results are , after all, a record of what actual people are looking for and what they have tended to click on the most. The key to using them effectively, though, is to have a crystal clear understanding of the value your course will be designed to provide and then think hard about the words or phrases a prospect seeking that value might type into a search engine.

What is feedly blog?

Feedly is a great tool for aggregating feeds from a wide variety of blogs. Subscribe to the blogs of people—particularly those with a significant following—who are already creating content related to your target topic area. Ask:

What is a focus group?

Doing this gives you the opportunity to see the reactions and ideas that arise when different viewpoints are shared. They almost always reveal opportunities or challenges related to your course idea that you had missed.

What is lead magnet?

The term “lead magnet” applies to pretty much any content you offer to get a prospect to hand over his or her e-mail address. Most typically, it is going to take the form of a downloadable eBook, a checklist, a video, or a Webinar.

What is a live pilot?

A live pilot really is the ultimate test prior to investing in truly productizing and scaling your online course, and it can be used in combination with “Pre-selling” above. The idea is to pull together the core concepts for your course and present them in live Webinar sessions—using a platform like Zoom or GoToTraining —over a period of days or weeks.

What is Buzzsumo?

BuzzSumo. BuzzSumo, a search engine that gives you visibility into what content is popular by topic or on a specific website, is a great tool to have in your mix for many reasons. You can use it, for example, to see how your own content—or your competition’s content—is doing on social media. You can also use it see how popular a course topic you ...

Be Confident Your Custom-Developed Elearning Works

Microassist’s custom elearning development teams have proven processes for testing your online courses before we hand them off for launch. To see where we can help support your organization’s custom training project needs, get in touch with us. We’d love to hear what your goals are and see if we can be an asset to your group.

Sign Up for More Learning and Development Insights

This commentary originally appeared in our Learning Dispatch newsletter. Use the on-page form to subscribe today for monthly learning insights, resources, and thought leadership for learning and development!

How to beta test a course?

There are countless benefits to beta testing, or piloting, your course, including: 1 Getting to know your students more intimately before launching to a bigger audience 2 Witnessing the transformation that your course content actually causes in other people 3 Collecting case studies or testimonials 4 Determining how much interaction will be needed from you during the Big Launch 5 Getting cash flow in order to make additional purchases for the Big Launch 6 Increasing your profit margin during the Big Launch

What are the benefits of beta testing?

There are countless benefits to beta testing, or piloting, your course, including: Getting to know your students more intimately before launching to a bigger audience. Witnessing the transformation that your course content actually causes in other people. Collecting case studies or testimonials.

What is feedback in a pilot?

Feedback from your students can be extremely valuable during the pilot phase. It can be used to determine what people are willing to pay, the most feasible length, or the additional training videos or worksheets that you need to create before launching your course.

1. Check Out the Competition

Look at what courses are already out there on your topic. What are they teaching in those courses? What's selling well?

2. Ask Your Customers

Find out what your customers' biggest questions and problems are, related to your area of expertise. If you don't already have customers, then focus on your target market.

3. Give Them a Choice

It's good to have 3 to 5 course topic ideas you're considering. Then ask your market to choose which one they'd like you to teach. This works particularly well after you've done a survey asking about key challenges.

4. Test Content Interest

Give people a taste of the content you'd be offering and measure the reaction you get. Be sure to make it valuable content that offers small solutions to specific problems related to your course topic.

How about creating your own course on how to create an online course?

When you purchase our ready-to-teach course, you'll get a license to use it yourself AND teach it to others 🙂

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.

Do you need to run a test before starting an online course?

Creating an online course requires a lot of hard work and effort on your part, so running a test before you begin will allow you to validate this online business idea as one that will pay itself off down the line.

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.

Why is online education important?

Therefore, fostering a community of learners around your course will greatly improve their experience, contributing to the overall success of your course. An active online community can help users share their learning process with a group of peers.

What is a paid plan?

Paid Plans act as a pay-wall, allowing users to access the content only after they pay and log into the members area within your site. One-on-one real-time lessons: In addition to the course, you may teach live lessons to students in a personalized 1:1 setting.