Creating an online course can be a rewarding endeavor, allowing your company, agency, or organization to share its expertise with global audiences. There are even numbers to back this up: the e-learning industry is booming (McCue, TJ. “E-Learning Climbing To $325 Billion By 2025 UF Canvas Absorb Schoology Moodle.” Forbes, 2018) and is projected to reach $325 billion by 2025. Additionally, online learning (Peck, D., “Online Learning Statistics: The Ultimate List in 2024 | Devlin Peck.” Devlin Peck, 11 Jan, 2024) is believed to increase student or employee retention by up to 50%, while also reducing the time needed to grasp new subjects by up to 60%.
👉These figures are quite promising, highlighting the rising trend in market demand for online education and the industry in general.
In this guide on how to develop online courses, we will walk you through the essential steps, from analyzing your audience to conducting thorough QA checks to ensure the final result meets your expectations. We’ll also highlight the most common mistakes course creators encounter, so you can avoid them.🧐
Summary
- Initial analysis
- Learning design
- Production stage
- Localization
- Quality assurance
- Project delivery
- Final improvements
- Not knowing your target audience
- Not knowing how to manage cognitive load
- Skipping learning design stage
- Ignoring optimization and QA
- Not considering scalability
7 Steps to create online course that succeeds
Let’s dive into the step-by-step process for online course material creation. The following steps to create online courses are based on our own experience and align with the standard online course development framework our team follows when producing educational content.
#1. Initial analysis
Initial analysis is critical before online course content creation begins. It helps to ensure the course is tailored to its intended audience and produces the desired learning outcome. A comprehensive target audience analysis should be conducted in this step. This involves gathering data on the learners’ demographics; such as age, educational background, and learning preferences.
Afterward, it is necessary to determine the primary goals of the course. Is its aim to impact new skills, enhance existing knowledge, or prepare employees for specific job roles? This task is carried out in the next step.
#2. Learning design
Clear and measurable learning objectives guide the content development process and ensure that all elements of the course align with its intended outcomes. These objectives also define what learners should know or be able to do upon completing the course. This is where the learning design comes into help.
Learning design is a method for developing online courses that focuses on the learner’s needs. This approach involves defining learning goals and establishing evaluation methods and corresponding tools. It also involves the development of a comprehensive course outline that includes the total number of learning hours, lesson breakdowns, and details of all guided and non-guided learning activities.
Once the outline is ready, it gets reviewed by the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). They make any necessary adjustments to ensure the course structure meets the educational goals and form a solid basis for the further phases of online course creation.
#3. Production stage
The production stage refers to a series of smaller online course development steps necessary for creating all the assets used in an online course. Here is a brief description of how an animation — a common media type in online courses — gets created.
First, we establish the overall visual style by designing style frames and animation samples. Style frames are static images representing the final shot with all characters, backgrounds, and details illustrated as they will appear in the completed version. Animation samples are short sequences that demonstrate character or object movement. Once the style frames and animation samples are approved, the team proceeds to draw all the 2D objects and design 3D models.
Next, we move to the animation stage where still objects are brought to life. While animators work on the animation sequences, sound designers develop sound effects, background music, and other audio elements. If the animation includes voiceover, professional voiceover specialists are brought in to record the narration.
This is how the typical quality content production process goes. Although there may be specific nuances for different media types, the general approach remains largely the same across various forms of media.
#4. Localization
The localization process optimizes content for various languages, regions, and backgrounds. This step includes several key sub steps to develop online course: translation, content adaptation, cultural modification, and voice adaptation.
Translation ensures all instructions, tests, quizzes, and other materials are appropriate for the target country or market by using suitable idiomatic expressions and technical terms, and maintaining consistent terminology. Content adaptation ensures that the online course aligns with learners’ expectations as well as with local legislative practices and policies where necessary.
Cultural adaptations ensure the course content reflects the cultural norms and values of the target group, incorporating relevant references, examples, and case studies. For voice adaptation, we collaborate with native speakers and use advanced AI tools to ensure all auditory components of the course match the linguistic and regional characteristics of our audience.
👉 For more about the nuances of the localization process read Exploring E-learning Localization: What It Is and Its Importance Nowadays.
#5. Quality assurance
The quality assurance (QA) process involves several important components to ensure the final product meets the predetermined standards of accuracy, functionality, and learner engagement. At Blue Carrot, we conduct multiple QA checks throughout the production process to ensure the final product has no mistakes.
During QA testing, we check the clarity and coherence of the course structure, proper grammar, syntax, formatting, consistency in terminology, and localization accuracy. We also verify all the content and facilitate technical compliance to ensure all assets meet the project’s technical requirements.
If the project includes a voiceover or sound effects, we ensure the soundtracks are correctly placed throughout the course and synchronized with on-screen actions. We also extensively involve SMEs to keep all the course content consistent, relevant, and up-to-date.
#6. Project delivery
After all the checks are completed, it’s necessary to get the course content ready for delivery to the client. In this step, the team ensures they have: 1) all necessary files at hand, including videos, illustrations, and other media; 2) all files are converted into the required formats, relevant to the client’s LMS requirements.
Once this is done, the team transfers the files to the client or directly uploads them to the client’s platform for learner access. At Blue Carrot, upon project delivery, the client receives full ownership rights, and all assets become fully owned by the client.
#7. Final improvements
The final step in course production involves making improvements based on feedback from the client and target audience. To incorporate suggestions from the audience, we recommend setting up a feedback loop and conducting course iterations based on direct learner input.
Another effective method for improving course content is by conducting focus groups. Ask participants about what they found engaging or confusing, which parts of the course were most and least useful, and any suggestions for improvement. Analyzing their feedback will help identify patterns and areas for content enhancement.
To ensure content effectiveness is regularly evaluated, it’s also crucial to plan for future iterations, not just post-release. For such evaluations, you can track how many learners complete your course and whether these numbers are what you want them to be. Additionally, monitor the time spent on the course, whether learners complete it fully, identify any points where they drop off, and so on.
Need to discuss your e-learning project?
Overcoming drawbacks in online course creation
This article would be incomplete if we didn’t mention the most common issues organizations encounter when producing online courses. While this isn’t an exhaustive list of all possible drawbacks, we aim to highlight the most common to help you avoid them when building an online course.
👉 For more about the most common mistakes, read: The Most Common Mistakes in Online Course Creation and How to Dodge Them.
📌 Not knowing your target audience
One of the most common problems course creators face is failing to understand or misinterpreting their target students, which can corrupt the entire course structure and its efficiency. As with commercial videos, you need to know who you’re creating the video for (read customer’s pain points) to make it effective.
Therefore, a thorough audience analysis should be done before course production starts. Ask yourself: What’s your audience’s age group? What’s their knowledge background? Demographics? What problems do they face, and what motivates them to take your course? And so on.
📌 Not knowing how to manage cognitive load
The ability to effectively manage the cognitive load is crucial for the overall effectiveness of an online course. Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort required to grasp new information or a subject.
If a course presents too much information all at once, learners can become overwhelmed, leading to frustration and poor retention of material. Conversely, with sparse content or poor organization, learners may not engage effectively with the material.
There are various ways to manage the cognitive load for learners. Course creators can chunk complex subjects into smaller blocks of information, use captions, introduce interactive elements, limit the length of lessons, etc. By doing so, you can create a more engaging and immersive learning experience for the audience.
👉 For more about ways of managing cognitive load, read: Cognitive Theory of Video Production for Universities and Higher Education.
📌 Skipping learning design stage
The learning design stage is essential for aligning the course content with the educational goals and needs of the target audience. Without proper learning design, the course may lack coherence, making it difficult for learners to follow and retain information.
Neglecting the learning design stage can lead to a disjointed and ineffective course, wasting resources and failing to meet learners’ expectations and educational standards. Furthermore, the absence of a solid design framework can result in inconsistent content delivery, technical issues, and an overall diminished learning experience, ultimately reducing the course’s impact and credibility.
To create an effective course structure, you should define learning outcomes, outline a comprehensive list of course topics, and set precise goals for every block of content. Be mindful of the lesson length. Keeping each segment short (5-6 minutes max) will ensure learners aren’t overwhelmed by too much information. Additionally, consider incorporating suitable media formats, interactive elements, quizzes, and tests to make the course more manageable and engaging for learners.
📌 Ignoring optimization and QA
Overlooking the technical aspects and QA stage during the course production can significantly impact the learner experience and directly affect the effectiveness of the online course. Users may become frustrated when coming across cumbersome guidelines while taking your course, plus, unpolished UI and even grammar errors can lower the credibility of your product.
Page loading speed, UI quality, accessibility, adaptability for various screen sizes, etc., should all be tested in advance. While basic checks don’t necessarily require a technical background, more sophisticated automated tests of the learning design and media files should involve professional help.
📌 Not considering scalability
It’s a widespread misconception that a course is complete once it’s ready for upload. However, to ensure long-term success, continuous updates are essential as the information can quickly become outdated, especially in an e-learning field. Therefore, we suggest treating an online course like any other digital — or even physical — product: develop the first version, roll it out, test it, and improve it.
Think of it as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that includes only the necessary functionality (i.e., a set number of videos or lessons). Once you’ve tested the MVP and gathered learner feedback, you can proceed to expand it further, introducing new content blocks, enhancing the course structure, adding active learning components, and more.
Are you considering AI for online course creation?
Consider Blue Carrot your trusted partner
👉 With over 10 years of experience producing e-learning videos and explainers, our agency has mastered the intricacies of the process and gained unique knowledge. This expertise allows us to create effective content while saving our clients money and time. Here are a few projects from our extensive portfolio.
📌 Course about healthy relations
This course aimed to help learners recognize healthy relationships, assess their own, and provide tips for maintaining them. It also helped to improve their relations with their partner and resolve conflicts constructively.
In collaboration with dedicated SMEs, our team conducted extensive research and testing with focus groups for this project. We produced five hours of e-learning content, offering learners three educational paths comprising 232 slides.
👉 More detailed and in-depth info about the course can be in our latest article: Online course creation through AI: how we increased engagement, accelerated production, and streamlined SMEs involvement
📌 IRI
Our team created a learning video course for the International Republican Institute (IRI) on how a democratic society develops. The main goal was to design high-quality content to ensure viewer engagement throughout the entire course. Given the complexity of the subject and the substantial amount of political theory to be covered, doing a quality script and selecting the best visuals to clearly convey the message posed a significant challenge.
The IRI video course was successfully launched on time and received positive feedback from the clients, education experts, and students. The project resulted in the production of over 50 minutes of original video content. The scope of work included 34 minutes of whiteboard animation, 24 minutes of animation overlays, 5 minutes of live shooting, and 26 illustrations for books. The timeline for the project was 4-5 months.
Summing up
The production of an online course is a complex process comprising multiple stages, each of which needs to be carried out in a particular order. As presented in this online course creation plan article, all the online course creation steps are straightforward and can be carried out by the company or organization in-house.
However, for professional online courses to be distributed to wider audiences and requiring localization in different languages, it’s better to involve specialists with relevant expertise, who know how to create an online course that is effective and profitable. At Blue Carrot, we have extensive experience designing online courses and educational video production for distribution in different markets. If you want more information on how to make online courses or get your project off the ground quickly, our managers are standing by ready to answer your questions!
