Do You Create Online Courses?

Have you ever taken an online course? Do you create online courses yourself? Courses are being created for every topic imaginable these days, and everyone is jumping on board. Creating an online course is a great opportunity to share knowledge you’ve gained and make some money.

I have taken several courses online that peaked my interest. Some were good. And some fell flat.

What I’ve found is that many people struggle to organize and plan their courses. Without a clear plan, lessons become ineffective.

I have spent my career designing courses and lesson plans. While I teach middle school, the framework and concepts are similar for an online course. Having a well-planned course with organized lessons can make the different in your students’ experience.

Before planning your lessons, you must answer these questions.

Who is your audience?

What do they already know?

For example, I took a course on Project Management. As a teacher, I have managed many projects, but I thought it would be helpful to understand the philosophical systems involved. I got lost in the unexplained corporate jargon in the first lesson and quit following along. The instructor billed the course as a beginner experience, but she did not consider what a beginner actually knows.

After determining your audience and their level of understanding, consider this basic framework for each lesson you create.

✏Determine your objective for the lesson

What are you planning to teach? What will students be able to do at the end of the lesson?

Some examples:

Students will be able to identify the 3 characteristics of —

Students will be able to understand the meaning of–

Students will be able to create–

The more specific you are with your objective the easier the lesson planning will be. This does not mean, however, that you need to narrow your plan. It just means you should have a clear goal for what your students can accomplish or understand by the end of the class.

✏Create engaging introduction question or activity

Here is where many people lose their audience. You cannot just dive right into your content and start spewing information. In many classes I’ve taken, this is what instructors have done.

Instead, create some kind of introduction into your material. Pose an interesting question or have students write what they already know about the topic. Perhaps you want students to create their own goal for the course-what do you want to learn? These can be shared with you, or not, but they get your students thinking about your topic and how they will engage with it.

✏Deliver information

During this section of your lesson, you share the main content information. If you are speaking or using a slideshow, keep your conversation focused. Try not to stray from your learning objective.

For example, if the learning objective is to learn the 7 stages of grief, you will want to stick to those 7 stages. Give examples of each, and allow your slides to move consecutively from stage 1 to stage 7. When you are an expert in a topic, it becomes very easy to share too much information and go off on tangents. This weakens your objective and ultimately your course.

✏Review or Apply knowledge activity

At the end of your content delivery, you will want to wrap up with a basic review or activity. The most basic level of this idea is “Here is what we covered in today’s lesson”. Or, you can highlight the most important quote or idea.

If you are looking for an activity, you can have students journal about how they would apply this knowledge. Or, students could create a diagram to show any “steps” you taught.

Whether teaching adults online or children in a classroom teacher, systems and frameworks improve instruction. If you want high engagement and repeat customers, having planned and organized lessons is crucial.