First things first. If you are reading this, it means you have been thinking about the possibilities. You have been considering selling and building online course content. With more and more students looking at online courses as a convenient way to learn more, the online learning industry is touted to become a $325 billion industry. That means ample opportunity and scale are available, and the time has never been better to launch your online courses. This is the best time to launch and create your own online. So here’s how you can create content for your online course.
But first, why should you even build an online course at all? There is a significant shift towards online learning because it offers excellent convenience and interactive elements. Additionally, it provides freedom to learners. Hence, there’s a high potential to make money through online education. Creating content for online courses, especially content that enables excellent learning outcomes, can be one of the most challenging parts of creating an online course. Getting the hang of what you put into the course is critical to success of your course.
The mark of a great course is whether it completes the goal of teaching what you want to teach? Was your student able to complete the course and then do the task on their own, make the behavioural change, or recall the content depending upon the type of the online course?
Here are a few things which online course creators need to keep in mind while doing online course creation:
Different Students Different Learning Styles
Some people listen by watching, some by reading, some by doing it, and some prefer a mix of everything. However, what is interesting is that with the advent of Social Media, video-based content consumption has become the highest form of content consumed daily. Some estimates suggest more than 2 hours of video content gets consumed by an average social media user every day.
So what that means for your online course is that the more you use video content, the better will be the engagement factor. Now it does not mean you need to record professional quality HD videos. Basic selfie videos based content or explainer videos wherein you have PPT Slides, and you explain the content can also be used as course content.
In order to cater to all types of learning styles, you must incorporate videos and documents for reading as well as tasks that can be listed to be performed by students as additional learning journeys beyond the online course.
Reducing Attention Span
People just don’t have the attention spans they used to. The latest estimates state that average attention spans are down to 8 seconds. That means a person may be unable to continue paying attention to your online content beyond 15 seconds or maybe a minute at max. Hence, it makes absolute sense to create bite-sized content to ensure maximum retention. One of the best ways to do that is to ensure that you break up bigger topics into smaller lessons ranging from 5 – 15 minutes at best.
Just in the case of food, where small bites are always better, similarly, in the case of an online course as well, break it down into smaller chapters and extend the duration of the online course in case the topic is a complex or lengthy one. Ideally, the daily progress should be one where the student can learn the concept during the online course, go through the additional reading material, and have a few more tasks, such as researching more information on their own beyond the online course.
Decide on who your course is for
Before you start creating your successful online course, think and decide who your course will be for. Is it for a novice who wants to learn the basics of the domain or someone who is good at it but needs to improve? Hence, it is critical to identify your ideal batch of students and then customise your course as per their learning environment needs. Once you know who you are building the online course for, then you can start building the online course.
Create your online course structure
Once the online course topic is decided, you must define the course outline. For example, if your course is about how to, then you could break down your course in the following steps: ‘become an Instagram Influencer
Once you have the structure in place, then you can break down each module into smaller lectures that help you complete the module.
Imp Note: You need to make sure that every lecture is short and precise. The overall daily learning should be no longer than fifteen to thirty minutes maximum, but ideally, they’d be under 15 minutes.
Additionally, this gives you a roadmap to what kind of content should be created for the module.
And there’s a good reason for that. One of the biggest reasons online course businesses are in demand is because the lectures are available on request.
Anytime a student wants to revisit the content, they should be able to go back to the specific point where they can find specific information. Instead of searching for the same information in an hour-long video which could be a better learning experience. At any point in time, if you find yourself asking should I break the content into smaller bite-sized content, keep this daily learning activities breakup in mind, which you can also use to outline your online course content
Online Course Content Types You Must Have For Success
Video
Videos are a great way to connect with your audience immediately. You could create explainer videos or record yourself speaking directly to your audience. As mentioned above, video content is consumed most on social media channels. Hence, regardless of the demographics, your audience is conditioned to watch videos. Therefore, it makes sense to add videos to your online courses. And the best part is you no longer need fancy equipment to create videos. You only need a decent phone camera, a mic and a free movie editor, such as a windows movie maker, to edit your videos quickly. That’s all, really.
Here’s how you can quickly build your own video: How to Make Engaging Videos for Online Courses
PowerPoint Presentations
One of the best things about PPTs is that most laptops come with them, so you don’t have to pay anything extra to get the software. Additionally, it helps you quickly build video content for your online course with PPTs by simply narrating your content per slide.
Further, it increases engagement as you can add more information than what is mentioned in the PPT. Record your voice-over as a narration in the PPT and export your presentation as a video.
This allows you to quickly create video content using Presentations and narration, exponentially increasing engagement in the online course.
Webinars
Webinars are another great way to create video content. Available as a free tool via Facebook live or YouTube live, once the webinar is recorded, you can embed that webinar as online course content. Additionally, questions asked in the webinar can then be addressed separately with additional content for learning, which further increases the value and makes the online course profitable.
PDFs, spreadsheets, and other documents
Share additional cheat sheets, spreadsheets, lists, hacks, and other helpful content as additional learning material that you can make available for download in PDF form. Offering these extra learning materials can really help potential students get the maximum value from your online course.
Course Content Planning & Outline Is Done. What Next?
Now that you have awesome online course content planned and know what all content is to be created, it’s time to start producing the content and building it on the platform. You need the payment plan your course structure first to avoid the costly mistake of making content you may not need.
Planning your course content creates a solid foundation upon which you can start structuring your online course step-by-step guide. Now it’s just a matter of time. Once the course content is built, you can then quickly assemble the course on Knorish using the course content builder tool.
Once the content is enabled in your account, you must create your site and landing page for your online course. Here’s How to make the perfect landing page for your online academy?
