How to Plan an Online course (Templates and Tips)
Find out the most important things you should plan your class, then download the free templates in each section to implement these ideas.
Creating an online course is an enormous task. It's sort of similar to building those super complicated pieces of furniture you can buy from IKEA -- sure, it's possible to just dump every single piece of raw material on the floor of your living space and then try to determine the way to put everything together when you get there. But it's oh so much more efficient if you've got an organized plan to guide your.
Unfortunately, there's never been an instruction manual for preparing your online class.
...Until now! (Ta-da! )
Introducing: Your First Course by . You can now follow simple step-by-step instructions to plan, create your very first online course. And thankfully, it's much more easy to follow than some of the maddeningly-hard-to-decipher illustrations from IKEA...
With the right program in place, you can assure that you're crafting your lessons in an organized and strategic way. It's easy to check the appropriate boxes to ensure that the lesson plans you create are interesting as well as your students' are engaged and (perhaps more importantly) your time won't be spent. The foundation of every great online course starts by following these 5 easy steps.
Five steps to design an online class (with template)
If you've been scratching your head trying to determine how to begin planning your course, this is an excellent place to begin. Read on to learn about some essential things you should do while planning your online course, and be sure to download the templates for free in each of the sections to help implement these ideas...
- Define your audience
- Choose your course topic
- Make your own plan of study
- Structure your lesson plans
- Design your course storyboard
Define your audience
Once you've got an idea to create a new course, it can be tempting to jump ahead to begin planning your classes. But before you get deep into everything, the very first important thing that you'll want to establish exactly who your course will be for.
Why bother defining your audience first? Because this helps you avoid typical mistakes new course designers tend to create: a course that nobody actually would like to purchase. With a clear understanding about who you want your customers are and how you plan to help them, you can ensure that you're making something valuable (and instead of throwing away a huge bunch of your time ).
Being aware of your students' needs will not just help you market your program, but it will also help you choose the best topic for your course, design the right sort of curriculum, and develop the most efficient type of lesson plan. In the words of Michael Gospe...
"Whoever understands the customer best will win." Mike Gospe, Author, " The Marketing High Ground"
If you are a member of an audience that is already in place
It's possible that you have an audience of some sort. This could be a social media following, a group of email subscribers or a collection of YouTube users, or even clients of your company. First thing you're likely need to take when you're dealing with this situation is start collecting data about them.
Two primary kinds of information you need to seek out:
- Insights that are quantifiable: These are data about demographics that can be verified, typically through analytics. Try to learn the basics like their age, location or gender and also what items of content they're interested in the most.
- Qualitative insights: These are more in-depth insights around their wants, needs and desires, their likes, dislikes struggle, interests, and needs. They can be gathered by randomly selecting some of your customers and sending them a survey or making the Zoom phone call with them, and having a brief interview. It's a bit more effort however the results are worth it!
It is possible to use these data to create a brief profile of what your audience looks like and what their main paint marks are. This is crucial for you later on as you plan out your program.
If you're looking for a new audience
However many creators begin off without a target audience. This is fine. You just want to make sure you know which type of audience you're seeking out and the best way that you'll achieve them.
Consider where your ideal people hang out , and attempt to gather a sense of what strategies you can employ to reach them. Make an effort to contact some of the people in this community to discover your target people's needs and goals:
- What kind of results do they expect to achieve?
- What steps do they need in order to achieve their goals?
- What do they struggle with most?
Design a persona to the ideal student
Based on the information you've gathered using the information you gathered, you'll be able by creating a persona of the ideal student. This will act to determine your north-star when you go through the rest of the course planning and creation process. If you encounter a tricky spot or a hard decision, all you have to do is look to your ideal student and consider whether this is something they'd like to do?
It is helpful to imagine them as an real person. Therefore, instead of needing to design a plan with hundreds of names and faceless people, you can just concentrate on the only one person.
Need help defining your audience? Use this workbook to start making your own profile for your client and build a snapshot of your ideal student. Find prompts to define the most important characteristics, fears, wants, aspirations, and more.
Select your topic for the course
This isn't just about yourself, but look back at the ideal persona of a student and consider where your specific niche of expertise can be the most helpful to students. What kind of information can you provide which they'll find useful?
You'll probably have a few different ideas for courses which you could develop. How do you narrow it down to the one that is the best? Find out which one you're the most passionate about, which one fits your expertise the best, and which one lines perfectly with your audience's problems.
Form an "transformation statement"
It's pretty rare for students to purchase an online class for just the sake of knowing. The majority of the time when someone hits"Buy "Buy" button is not due to the knowledge they'd like to acquire however, it's because of the transformation they wish to achieve.
It's not about selling knowledge. Instead, you'll be selling the results of your learning.
For creators, marketing funnels must begin with the first transformation. That's why we like to see them as an alternative: Transformation Funnels. When your marketing funnel is able to guide students through a transformation, it is possible to make money through your teaching.
It can also be useful to identify right at the top of your list what this transform will appear as. This can be a super helpful exercise when you're deciding on a course topic. If you have a few candidates to consider, you can create the transformation statements for each of them and see which one sounds most intriguing.
What is a transformation assertion? It's easy -- all you need to do is replace the bolded words in this sentence with ones relevant to your program:
- My class on THE MATTER
- ... will aid AUDIENCE in achieve a LEARNING
- ... so they are able to be transformed .
My program covering Vedic Astrology helps people interested in spiritual knowledge to learn how to read the planets and stars using Indian theology, so they become more grounded and rooted in the map of the universe.
A transformation statement will help you focus your course content so you're serving the primary goal your students want to achieve.
downloadable Topic & Positioning Workbook
Are you looking for a book to help you choose a course topic? This guide will aid you to narrow down your most appealing ideas, and also position it for a specific target audience.
Build your outline of course
However, this transformation will not happen immediately when students purchase the program. There will likely be several steps they need to take along their way to reach their goals.
This is why it's beneficial to break down the learning journey into milestones. This will give you more insight into how much content you need to create, and assist in the planning of your lesson plans as well as curriculum.
- Foundation of Jyotish
- Basics of Terminology
- Decades of Planets
- Zodiac Signs
- Understanding the Birth Chart
- Groups of Houses
- Transits
- Etc.
After you've identified the milestones that students need to master, you'll be able to have a better idea of the length of your class to last and how much work you're going to need to put in.
Downloadable: Content Plan Workbook
Create your course outline using this worksheet for creating a content plan. Think of ideas for your student milestones and arrange them in a manner which makes sense to your journey of learning.
Structure your lesson plans
As you are in the planning process You have a general concept of what the course will cover and what learning milestones you want students to hit along the way. The next part of the procedure is to break down each step into a separate lesson schedule.
You can do this using the following tools: Google Doc, whiteboard, or trust notebooks and pen. However, it's easier to jump right in the process of putting together your lesson plans in there. You'll be able to create a course skeleton to help you visualize what your course might appear like once it's completed and in the system.
While every class may have a distinct format, you can follow the following general format to hit each milestone...
Part One: The High-Level Lesson
For the most basic lesson You'll need to discuss everything a student should know BEFORE jumping in to engage in a hands-on activity. This part of the portion should concentrate on the WHAT and WHY prior to getting into the what and how.
Lessons at a high-level include:
- The concepts students must be able to comprehend
- Definitions as well as other important specifics
- Everything you aren't able to discuss or show in a demonstration
Part Two: The Practical Lesson
The hands-on portion of the lesson you should be covering what you need to do to put your high-level knowledge into action. This isn't required for all courses, however it's a good option to make your class engaging and beneficial for students.
Cover the following:
- Explain the steps of your course
- Show how you can get one project completed
Part 3: The Formative Evaluation
The end of your teaching comes the testing. In general, you do not wish to administer an examination which is too difficult to pass It's just a matter of trying to confirm the students have learned. This is key for the long-term retention of students and their engagement.
Consider the following when making a quiz
- Make sure that the questions focus on what the students have just had to learn
- Ask questions that can be easily remembered the answers to
- Assesses should not be graded, and provide explanations for the answers
Part Four: The Learning Aids
In the aftermath of the intensive and hands-on instruction, it is recommended to include a learning aid or resource that helps them put their knowledge into action. An exercise sheet, cheat sheet templates, workbooks, or even a template can work well here.
Consider the following:
- A reference guide to pertinent details
- A place for student to work on learned abilities.
- Resource that makes the student's work easier
Downloadable: Lesson Plan Template
Want a handy reminder of how to organize your online classes? Check out this free guide, which includes all of the information above, plus other resources to help you structure your course introduction and concluding.
Design your lesson storyboards
By this point, you already have a pretty solid plan for an online online learning course. (In fact, I'd wager that you've created a better strategy than 90 percent of course designers!) However, there's a second action you could take if you'd like to be more prepared to create the content for your course: creating the creation of a storyboard to accompany each lesson.
These methods have been proven to be effective in effective teaching which have been tested scientifically and backed by researchers. Take a look at the templates for storyboards for ensuring your lesson plans are entertaining and unforgettable. For example...
Storyboard Template 1 Bloom's taxonomy
You can apply this hierarchy to any of your lessons plans to improve their effectiveness. You can begin with helping students remember a concept, then give students the opportunity to show their knowledge and put it into practice to real-life situations.
Storyboard Template 2: 9 events of Instruction
Another design model you can follow for your storyboard are the nine events of instruction. The model breaks learning down into three steps which you can use to online lessons or lecture.
Based on this model of storyboarding, each of the nine events is vital to creating an engaging learning experience. Therefore, you shouldn't simply "present an instructions" (event four) and hope for your students to be successful. Instead, you have to guide your students through the events in order to prepare them properly and then follow up with them before and after each lesson.
Storyboard Template #3: 70-20-10
The final template for storyboards I'd like to mention here is the 70-20-10 strategy. These numbers represent different methods learners learn and the they should be weighed to each one of them. Three different types of categories are...
- 70% of our knowledge originates from experiences, experiments, and the process of reflection.
- 20% of knowledge comes from working with others.
- 10% of knowledge comes from formal, planned learning.
For the majority of online courses, creators tend to focus on the top 10% of students. According to this concept, you would give your students more value through giving them the opportunity to collaborate with other students (perhaps by attaching a learning community to your class) or to experiment with and analyze your course material.
Free download: 7 Instructional Design Templates
How do you create an online training course? Stick to the plan.
It's never easy when you first start creating a brand new online course. However, with the proper directions and plans in place then the process of making the material to teach your students and getting your course prepared for launch will be a snap. (*snap fingers noise*)
If you're in search of additional step-by-step directions regarding the course creation process make sure you check out the guide for free at Your First Course by . And if you're looking to start from the beginning, you could always sign up for a free account on . After the initial planning has been complete, it's time to start with the exciting stuffmaking your course come to life!
Test it for the free version and take this free course on Creating the perfect Curriculum & Content.
