Enjoy this week’s guest post from Samantha Groff, a Learning and Training Specialist, on What You Need to Know About Creating a Course!
With the rise of COVID-19 and everything going digital there have been some glaring inequalities and discrepancies- not just in the business world, but with education too.
Taking classes online is not as easy as it may sound. The gurus have been touting all you need to do is slap some videos together with a couple PDFs and you have yourself a bonafide online course. WRONG!
Even seasoned teachers struggled with creating engaging content for their students in the online space this spring when the world came to a searching hault. Parents and caregivers alike were forced to pick up the pieces as teachers scrambled to turn amazing in-class activities, labs, and discussions into digestible online content.
So where does that leave the humble entrepreneur that wants to make a secondary stream of income?
You’ve been promised riches and success beyond your wildest beliefs that if you create an online course or mastermind- you will be rolling in the dough.
WRONG, again – sorry!
As an entrepreneur and online course creator you need to understand some basics about teaching to make solid eLearning materials.
Let’s start with the basics.
- An effective online course is not simply stand-alone educational materials delivered through a web-based portal. Instead, courses need to include actual involvement from the instructor, who is ultimately the subject matter expert.
- A platform is actually an LMS, which is a fancy acronym for Learning Management System. These systems are intended to track student progress and success, not just house video and text content.
- Content creators need to have a desired outcome in mind for students before even creating an online course. When you are making modules and lessons each should have an objective. An old teacher methodology is SWBAT or the Student Will Be Able To. What do you want your students to learn? When you create your modules and lessons from that lens, you are putting your student at the core of the learning experience.
- Learning is not a passive experience or a single sensory experience. Everyone learns differently. Try to provide the information in a least 3 different ways. For example: (1) tell the student about the information you want them to learn, (2) show them an applicable visual to support their learning, (3) have them interact with the content either independently or within a group setting. In educational settings this topic is called Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
- Once your course content is released listen to all student feedback. Follow the metrics provided by your LMS, and make adjustments in 6 and 12 month increments, because education is iterative.
eLearning is here to stay based on everything we’ve seen both positive and negative in 2020. It is a multi-billion dollar industry. So how do you get some of that money for yourself?
First you decide on what skill or information you are going to share with your audience. Recognize that you aren’t going to make millions of dollars overnight without spending money on ads. The gurus are just that, gurus. They’ve been around for a lot longer than many of us have been paying attention, so they have accumulated wealth and a TEAM!
That is a huge piece of the puzzle.
If you are just starting out and bootstrapping things, don’t expect everything to look super pretty and fancy like the big named people. Pay attention to providing solid content to your student first, then worry about making it pretty.
Your students want true value and information they can walk away with to either earn them money or solve some sort of other problem in their life. Be their solution by creating your course content from a beginner’s perspective.
The people buying your course are not the masters of your field. These are people with simple problems who want solutions. They want basic step by step guidance on how to get the job done without having to wade through hours of senseless stories and fluff!
Samantha Groff is a learning engineer on a mission to cultivate sustainable educational experiences for ALL! She helps entrepreneurs and small businesses create secondary streams of economy through strong eLearning programs. This can be content to go with your group online coaching program or training support. Either way, it reduces the time you need to spend creating materials or repeating the same thing over and over again.
With a background in K12 education and corporate instructional design Samantha brings a multifaceted approach to learning. She elevates the stress and overwhelm involved in making an online course while providing the high quality instruction the students were promised. This gets everyone the best possible results. The course creator gets paid and has lots of happy clients (= 5 star courses) referring more business their way, while their students walk away with the knowledge and/or skills they were promised.
Samantha lives by the famous Ms. Frizzle quote from The Magic School Bus, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” Learning either in the classroom or online is like a garden, you reap what you sow. So let’s cultivate some amazing eLearning!
You can learn more about OmniBiz Services either on LinkedIn or Facebook.