What you should consider when creating an online course

Whether you want to make money, maintain your personal brand or generate leads: There is no better advertising than a high-quality course that enables participants to achieve the promised goal. Only then will they recommend it to others and remember the course creator.

That doesn’t mean your course has to be the most comprehensive, the easiest, or the most interactive on the market. But you should know the competition and not just throw another mediocre online course onto the market. Look at what others are doing well and what topics they are covering. But also note where there is still room for improvement. Ask yourself: Would you like to complete your course and successfully complete it?

If you put effort into creating it and offer better courses than the competition, it will always pay off for you in the long run. The recommendation rates and repeat purchases increase, you save on advertising budget and benefit from even more positive effects on your image.

What would you like to teach your students? Summarize this goal in one sentence. This goal is the top of your pyramid. Now define what skills and knowledge the participants need to achieve this goal. And one level below you can fan out again which information your participants need for this.

So, for example, if you want to design an online course about what is important when creating an online course, the goal would be the following:

“I know everything to create a successful online course.”

For this, the participants need technical knowledge, marketing and didactic basics. Technical knowledge must be divided into information about creation on the one hand and information about publication and maintenance on the other. When creating it, you need to consider hardware, camera and microphone, and media editing software. In the same way, the other topics can also be broken down into smaller, necessary units.

It’s so much easier to organize information and figure out what knowledge you need to teach to make your course work for beginners. If you’re targeting advanced users, you can assume knowledge and don’t even need to lay the first layer of foundation. However, it always makes sense to find out in advance in tests which content you can actually assume.

The big advantage of this approach is that you don’t lose sight of your goal and thus keep your promise. In this example: imparting all the knowledge needed to create a successful online course.

In order for us to internalize content and stay on the ball, we need practical application. Only if we apply what we have learned will we remember it and be able to recall it later. That’s why you should always give your participants the opportunity to act.

There are countless ways to do this: from short tests to extensive final tasks, there are no limits to your imagination. However, it is important that you should set such a task after each chapter at the latest. It should focus on the content of the chapter. Basically, you should provide all the information and tools in the chapter to deal with the question.

It is of course ideal if either you or your community examines the tasks and gives helpful feedback. Many course platforms allow learners to interact with each other and even make feedback a requirement for completing the assignment. Since many people prefer to learn when they don’t feel alone, such assessments are not only affirmative, but also motivating. So you kill two birds with one stone. Especially when it is a creative task, you can hardly avoid personal feedback from yourself or other participants.

Which tools you use also depends on which target group you have. Basically, you don’t have to reach every learning type. However, you should clearly communicate in advance which tools and media you are working with and what you expect from your participants.

If you want your participants to learn as easily as possible, you should integrate the following features into your course:

• Repetitions, for example with an overview at the end
• Simplify content and convert it into familiar images and analogies
• Tell stories
• use different media and make the course varied
• sprinkle in humor

A basic tip: not everyone wants to work with video or audio. It is therefore always useful to provide an audio description. Visual and auditory learners can also find information there more quickly.

When you create an online course, you should always focus on conveying content that is relevant to your target group in a didactically meaningful way. A good product does not market itself all by itself, but it finds its target group much more easily.