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The size of your course project depends on the depth of the content - how much do you need to cover?
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1.02 define-the-scope-of-your-course - Exercise.docx61.7 KB
Quick reference
Define the Scope of Your Course
One of the questions I asked in the last lesson was: What do you need to teach? Or put a different way: What does your audience need to learn? In either case, the answer to these questions will help you define the scope of your course.
Check out the lesson video lesson to get started.
Teaching a Process or System
If you need to teach a process or system, outline the steps:
- Let the learner know where to begin, whether it’s on a home page or dashboard, or a specific location at a work site.
- Each step you describe should be simple, and if it requires any complexity, break it down into smaller pieces, or provide some examples or scenarios to help learners identify with what they’re seeing.
- Consider the best way to visually explain each step. Checklists might be easy to skim, but adding pictures, diagrams, or screenshots for specific steps can greatly improve your audience’s ability to understand what’s going on and repeat the action on their own.
Teaching a Topic or New Concept
Maybe you don’t need to share steps - perhaps you want to communicate specifics about a topic or introduce the learner to a new concept:
- Start with foundational information and build upon it. Think about what makes sense to know FIRST and offer that information. Then consider what comes next.
- Take the learner down paths that make sense, and once the learner has enough knowledge to learn on their own, switch to a different path of information.
- Focus on the information your audience needs to know. If you’re ever not sure that something belongs, ask yourself: Does this help my audience accomplish their goal?
Something else to keep in mind...
If the course you’re building is part of a larger training program, you may not have to provide ALL the information your audience needs with this one course. By combining this course with others, and with other types of training, you can mix formats and make the training more interesting.
For example, if you were teaching someone how to drive a car, it makes sense to explain some concepts before they drive in a self-paced online course - share some terminology, basic laws, even some scenarios. But a key part of the training will be the actual driving, allowing students to put concepts into practice on the road. Some overlap in content is fine, but you don’t want to repeat things if you know you’ve got other pieces to the training puzzle.
Conclusion
By identifying the scope of your course, not only will you figure out what should be included, but you should also discover various ways to present this information, and find opportunities where the learner should get involved and try things on their own. So in the next lesson, we’ll explore this idea more when we discuss the differences between passive learning and active learning.
Login to download- 00:04 One of the questions I asked in the last lesson was, what do you need to teach or
- 00:09 put a different way, what does your audience need to learn?
- 00:13 In either case,
- 00:14 the answer to these questions will help you define the scope of your course.
- 00:19 What is the essential knowledge required by your audience to accomplish
- 00:24 the thing they should be able to do when this course is complete?
- 00:28 The essential knowledge is the scope of your course, and if you can provide
- 00:33 everything included, your audience will have everything they need to succeed.
- 00:39 So perhaps what they need is to be able to create a help ticket
- 00:44 on your brand new support platform.
- 00:47 This is a specific enough goal where you can easily define how much
- 00:51 to cover and also what not to cover.
- 00:54 There are likely important steps people should take in a specific order, and
- 00:58 there might also be some tips and
- 01:00 tricks that make using the platform even easier for your audience.
- 01:04 That's an example, but if you need to teach a process or
- 01:09 system, outline the steps.
- 01:11 Let the learner know where to begin, whether it's on the homepage, or
- 01:16 a dashboard, or some other specific location at a work site.
- 01:21 Each step you describe should be simple,
- 01:23 and if it requires any complexity, break it down into smaller pieces.
- 01:28 Or provide some examples or
- 01:29 scenarios to help learners identify with what they're seeing.
- 01:34 And consider the best way to visually explain each step.
- 01:38 Checklists might be easy to skim, but adding pictures, diagrams, or
- 01:43 screenshots for specific steps can greatly improve your audience's ability
- 01:48 to understand what's going on and then repeat the action on their own.
- 01:53 However maybe you don't need to share steps.
- 01:55 Perhaps you want to communicate specifics about a topic, or
- 01:59 introduce the learner to a new concept.
- 02:02 Start with foundational information and build upon it.
- 02:06 For example, if you're teaching math, it makes sense to introduce addition and
- 02:11 subtraction before you get to multiplication and division.
- 02:15 If you're introducing the learner to a new platform,
- 02:18 describe the main uses of the app show the main menu structure.
- 02:22 And then dig into the key features before going too deep into those specific
- 02:27 exceptions.
- 02:28 Take the learner down paths that makes sense.
- 02:31 And once the learner has enough knowledge to learn on their own,
- 02:36 switch to a different path of information.
- 02:38 For example, if you're teaching history,
- 02:42 you'll almost always start at the beginning of the existence of a country,
- 02:47 and then go in chronological order to tell the whole story.
- 02:51 So maybe you're going to teach process, maybe you're introducing concepts, or
- 02:56 it could be a bit of both.
- 02:57 Whatever the case, focus on the information your audience needs to know.
- 03:03 Adding extraneous details or exploring irrelevant tangents of information
- 03:08 will make the training longer and it may confuse your audience.
- 03:13 If you're ever not sure that something belongs or not ask yourself.
- 03:17 Does this help my audience accomplish their goal?
- 03:21 By identifying the scope of your course, not only will you figure out what should
- 03:25 be included, but you should also discover various ways to present this information.
- 03:30 And find opportunities where the learner should get involved and
- 03:35 try things on their own.
- 03:36 So in the next lesson, we'll explore this idea more when
- 03:41 we discuss the differences between passive learning and active learning.
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