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About this lesson
Understanding your content, audience, and resources will prepare you for proper course development.
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Choose the Right Path for Course Creation61.4 KB
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Choose the Right Path for Course Creation
A Quick Note from the Instructor...
Hi everyone! My name is Dan Gorgone and I'm the Course Producer at GoSkills. I've been building online courses for about 15 years with experience at online universities and educational/consulting companies.
I wanted to start this course with a quick video introduction to what we'll cover. Whether this is your first time creating a course or you've got experience, there's plenty you can learn here to help you train others.
Before we continue, here's a quick question for you: What are you hoping to learn in this course?
In the table below, pick the closest option, and check out my response for you.
| Question | What are you hoping to learn in this course? | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Choices | I’ve never built a course before. I need the basics so I can move forward with an online training project. | I have some experience training others, but never online. I want to know how to put together an online course. | I have built courses before, but I want them to be more effective for my audience. |
| Responses | Welcome! This course will cover those basics, from how to create an outline, balance information and activities, and assemble it all in a learning management system. | Welcome! This course will highlight fundamentals of training while applying them to online courses. You’ll get the information you need to assemble and create a fantastic online course. | Welcome! In this course, you’ll learn from an experienced course builder about ways to ensure learners stay engaged, and how to deliver content that meets their needs. |
Whatever the case, I know this course will have plenty to offer someone looking to create and manage the training materials your team needs!
"I need to build a course... Where do I start?"
The first step I always take with a new course is asking some key questions so I know which path to take. The answers will help anyone figure out how to give their audience the best training possible.
I think about these questions every time I build a new course, so give them some thought as well:
- What do you need to teach? - This helps define the scope and length of the course.
- Who needs to learn it, and why? - You must know your audience to deliver the appropriate content. Understanding WHY they need the knowledge is a key piece of the puzzle.
- Who is going to teach the course? - Decide if you, a colleague, or hired help will deliver the content.
These questions will point you in the right direction when it comes to considering your own training course. As we progress through this course, we will revisit these questions. You’ll see why the answers are important as the plans for your own course come into focus.
Login to download- 00:04 Hey there, welcome to this course on how to create your own training course.
- 00:09 I'm Dan from GoSkills and I've been building online courses for
- 00:13 about 15 years now.
- 00:15 I've worked on courses to train people in marketing, leadership,
- 00:19 web design, Microsoft Excel, all kinds of subjects.
- 00:23 But the first thing you should know is that there is no right way to
- 00:28 build a course and no two courses are exactly alike.
- 00:33 So, whatever you create should work perfectly as long as you deliver
- 00:37 the training your audience needs.
- 00:39 Whether that's 30 minutes of narrated screen recordings or
- 00:43 a 5-day long workshop with lecture activities and assessment tests,
- 00:48 what matters most is that you understand who you're creating this training for
- 00:53 and what you need to deliver.
- 00:56 So if you're thinking about creating a training course of your own, I'm going to
- 01:00 take you through some of the fundamentals, the questions you should ask yourself,
- 01:05 how to define the scope of a course and build your outline and course objectives.
- 01:09 And then how to build something that meets the needs of your audience while engaging
- 01:13 them too.
- 01:14 So welcome to this course.
- 01:17 The first step I always take with a new course is asking some key questions so
- 01:22 you know which path to take.
- 01:25 The answers will help you figure out how to give your audience the best training
- 01:29 possible.
- 01:30 I think about these questions every time I build a new course, so
- 01:33 give them some thought as well.
- 01:35 What do you need to teach?
- 01:38 There's a reason you're thinking about creating a course.
- 01:41 So what is it?
- 01:42 It helps to link this directly to an identifiable problem you or
- 01:47 your team faces.
- 01:48 By creating this training, you may want to improve a key metric,
- 01:53 shorten a long process, improve knowledge and
- 01:56 work quality, reduce support requests, something like that.
- 02:02 So consider the question, what do you need to teach?
- 02:06 The answer needs to be clear because this defines the scope of the course or
- 02:11 how much you need to cover.
- 02:13 This, in turn, tells us how big or small the course will need to be.
- 02:18 In order to solve our problem, would a colleague need multiple hours, perhaps
- 02:22 days of training or is this something that they can learn in 20 minutes?
- 02:27 This question relates directly to our next question.
- 02:31 Who needs to learn it and why?
- 02:34 Who is going to take this course and
- 02:36 then take action based on the knowledge you provide, knowing your audience is
- 02:40 going to help you create the right content using appropriate or optimal formats.
- 02:45 I'm talking about text, video, screen recordings, screenshots, or
- 02:50 whatever is needed.
- 02:52 And ideally, this training will benefit groups of people into the future.
- 02:56 You could plan on training one person, but ideally,
- 03:00 if you're going to invest the time and resource into creating a whole course,
- 03:04 you want it to help lots of people for a long time to come.
- 03:08 So maybe you need to teach marketing coordinators, how to use a new content
- 03:12 management system, and specifically how to post new content.
- 03:16 Or you might have a group of new hires who need to be onboarded and shown how
- 03:21 your company uses your HR platform to access benefits and request time off.
- 03:27 Or maybe this course is meant to educate customers on how to install the plugins
- 03:32 you build on their website, whatever the case, identifying the content and
- 03:37 the audience will guide you through the entire process, of course creation.
- 03:43 But there's one more question that factors into this
- 03:47 whole equation of building a course, who is going to teach it?
- 03:51 Can you or someone else on your team teach the information?
- 03:55 Do they have enough knowledge?
- 03:57 And maybe most importantly, can they spare the time?
- 04:01 The answers can determine whether you or a teammate teaches the course or
- 04:06 you hire someone to teach it for you.
- 04:08 These questions will point you in the right direction when it comes to
- 04:12 considering your own training course.
- 04:15 Go ahead and take some time now and
- 04:17 answer these questions if you've already got a course project in mind.
- 04:22 As we progress through this course, you'll see why these
- 04:26 answers are important as the plans for your own course come into focus.
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