Does the idea of creating a course from scratch seem daunting to you?

Course creation

Does the idea of creating a course from scratch seem daunting to you?

So you have an idea for an online course. Perhaps it’s an idea you’ve had for some time, but you’ve never created a course before and the idea of creating a course seems daunting. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, you can start where you’re at and do it bit by bit.

Here are 4 practical tips to help you get started.

But wait, before you get started on creating your course, have you checked if there’s a demand for your course? Please make sure you do this before you start creating content. If you skip this step – you may regret it.

Right, you’ve got your course idea, you’ve made sure there’s a demand for it, what’s next …

Tip 1. An easy way to create your course outline

Spend a couple of minutes writing each part of your course on individual post-it notes. Then rearrange the post-its into a logical sequence and add/delete any steps that you need to add/delete.

 

Tip 2. Decide what type of content you intend to offer

What type of content do you want to offer on your course? Will it be as simple as sending them an email a day? Or do you want to cater to all of the different learning styles? Do you want to record videos? Create workbooks? Slideshows for live webinars? Do you want to offer additional support with Facebook communities or Slack groups? Consider all the things you can add to your course that add value for your course attendees. What will truly benefit your students the most? Here are a couple of examples for you to consider:
  • Emails
  • Videos
  • Blog posts
  • Audio files/podcasts
  • Free consulting
  • Live Q&A calls
  • Workbooks

Tip 3. Batch similar tasks together

It makes sense to batch your tasks together rather than jumping from one thing to the next. Using our build your own website course example again. Let’s say you want to offer the following for each module of your course: a video explaining what to do in this module host a live webinar with a slideshow provide a worksheet for your course attendees to download Instead of getting your hair and makeup done 9 times on 9 different days for each video, do all your recording once. Take a day to record all your video content in one go. The same goes for creating your worksheets or slideshows. Gather all the information together and create them at the same time. However, if the thought of creating 9 worksheets at once seems overwhelming you can try the next tip …

Tip 4. Break big tasks up to make them more manageable

Having big time-consuming tasks can seem overwhelming and if you’re anything like me, the bigger the task, the more I procrastinate. If you know you have 9 worksheets to create and that it will take you at least an hour to do one. Create a schedule to do one every evening after supper for 9 days. Doing one a day is a lot less overwhelming than 9 in one go and you’re more likely to get them done. And if even this seems unachievable, well, we all have small chunks of free time in our days that we could use better. It’s just a matter of finding them in your day. If you commit to replacing any wasted time with course creation, you could fill those small gaps. 4 x 15-minute gaps in your day = 1 complete worksheet. As easy as that. As long as there’s no need for you to get your course done as fast as possible, breaking everything up into small, manageable tasks is ideal. So with a little bit of planning and task management, creating a course doesn’t have to seem daunting. You can create an entire online course. Yes, you can. So what are you waiting for?