Creating an online course is a challenging thing to do. There are numerous factors to consider, like how best to teach your students, what tools to use to create your content, and how to make sure your course is engaging. Not to mention the technical side of things, such as where and how to host your online course. Plus, there is a lot of competition in the e-learning market. After all, the market is expected to reach a trillion $ by 2027 (Gankar S., “eLearning Market size worth $1 Tn by 2028”, GMI, 2022)
In light of these challenges, we created a list of our best tips for online course creation. These tips and strategies will guide you from start to finish as you create your online course.
So with that in mind, here is our best online course creation advice.
Summary
- Define clear learning objectives
- Know your audience
- Structure your course
- Create engaging content
- Use quality visuals and design
- Incorporate assessments
- Facilitate interaction and community
- Ensure accessibility
- Leverage technology
- Gather feedback and improve
- Market your course
- Support and motivate learners
Crafting your course’s vision and goals
Before we get into specific online course creation tips, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve with your course. You also need goals that are aligned with that vision.
Why is it so important to have a clear vision and concrete goals? Several reasons. 🧐
First, it will guide your course design. All the modules and materials should be fueled by your vision and goals. When you have a clear direction, it’s easier to create content that is cohesive and focused. It’s also helpful to ensure that all the content you create is relevant, both for the learner and for your goals.
A vision and goals also help you with marketing the course. When you have a clear message and purpose, it’s easier to communicate it to potential learners. It also helps in attracting the right audience for your course. You can share the value of your course and why people would benefit from it.
Thirdly, a clear vision and goals will help motivate learners as they take your course. They understand the learning outcomes and keep pushing until they achieve those goals. When your learners know they are moving towards something specific, it creates a sense of purpose and motivation to keep going.
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Additionally, having a clear vision and goals helps you effectively allocate resources when creating your course. You can prioritize which modules or topics are most important to include, and allocate time and resources accordingly. This ensures your course is well-structured and covers all the necessary information without unnecessary fluff.
What’s more, a vision and goals improve the learner outcomes from your course. When your course has a clear purpose and specific goals, it becomes easier for learners to understand the value of the content and how it can benefit them. This leads to better engagement, retention, and application of the knowledge.
👉 Finally, a clear vision and goals result in sustainable growth for your course. You will develop a stellar reputation for delivering high-quality, goal-oriented learning experiences.
With these things in mind, let’s look at our key tips for creating a successful online course.
Key online course creation tips that work
Now that we’re clear on why a vision and goals are critical for online course creation, here are some specific online course creation tips to help you during your course creation.
📌 Define clear learning objectives
The first and most important of our tips for creating online courses is to define clear learning objectives for your course. You must identify what you want your students to learn from your course.
Consider using SMART goals when defining your learning objectives:
- Specificity. Clearly define what your students will learn.
- Measurability. Determine how you will measure their progress and achievement of the learning objective.
- Achievability. Ensure the goal is achievable within the given timeframe and the resources available.
- Relevance. Make sure the learning objective aligns with your course vision and goals.
- Time-bound. Set a realistic timeline for achieving the learning objective.
The more clarity you have regarding your learning objectives, the sharper and more effective your course will be. Your learners will be much more likely to achieve their learning goals and be satisfied with the results.
Without clear learning objectives, our tips on how to create online courses won’t help. However, if you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish and who you’re seeking to serve, you’ll have more success in creating your course.
Not sure how to get started with your online course? Read our in-depth guide on how to create an online course.
📌 Know your audience
You need a clear awareness and understanding of your audience to create an effective online course. You need to see things from their perspective and understand their desires and needs.
Ask yourself these questions:
- How much do they already know?
- What are their learning preferences?
- What are their pain points and challenges?
- What are their goals and aspirations related to the course topic?
- How do they prefer to engage with course materials (e.g., video, text, interactive activities)?
Knowing your audience will help create relevant content, engaging and tailored to their needs. It will help you determine the appropriate tone, language, and level of complexity for your course. It will help ensure that your content lands with your audience.
📌 Structure your course
Our next tip is to structure your course in the most effective way possible. Start by breaking the content down into manageable modules and lessons. If your modules are too large, your learners may feel overwhelmed and disengaged. If they’re too short, your course may feel disjointed and not flow well.
✔️ Based on our experience, each module should be 7 – 10 minutes long.
This allows you to convey enough information to learners without overwhelming them.
You also want to ensure your content follows a logical flow. Organize the content in a way that makes sense and builds upon previous knowledge. Consider starting with an introduction to the topic, before diving deeper into more specific concepts and ending with a conclusion or recap.
Additionally, use a consistent format throughout your course. All the lessons should follow the same outline. There can be some deviation, of course. However, keeping things consistent helps your students better understand the materials.
📌 Create engaging content
To state the obvious, your course materials should be engaging. Really engaging. If they’re not, your students will become bored and tune out. Use videos, infographics, text, and interactive elements to keep learners engaged.
Where possible, use interactive elements. This includes things like quizzes, polls, discussions, and assignments. These materials promote active learning and reinforce what students learn in each module.
Using real-world examples can also be a tremendously effective way to create engaging content. Use case studies and practical examples to illustrate concepts. Scenarios like this help learners understand the practical application of the material and keep them engaged.
📌 Use quality visuals and design
Another online course creation tip is to utilize high-quality visuals and professional-quality designs. People are visual creatures. Having visually appealing materials can significantly enhance the overall learning experience.
Choose high-resolution images, videos, and graphics to complement your content. Avoid using low-quality or pixelated visuals as they can be distracting and take away from the effectiveness of your materials.
Additionally, consider utilizing consistent design elements to create a cohesive look. This looks more professional and helps learners associate certain colors or designs with specific concepts.
Ensure all the text in your course is readable. Use clear fonts and contrasting colors to enhance readability. Nothing is more frustrating to learners than being unable to read the materials.
📌 Incorporate assessments
Assessments help your students determine how well they understand the material and where they may need to improve. They also give you valuable feedback and help you measure course effectiveness.
Consider including both formative and summative assessments throughout your course. Formative assessments, like quizzes or short assignments, can help check understanding after each module or section. Summative assessments, like a final exam or project, can measure overall comprehension of the material.
Additionally, give your students practical assignments that will help them better understand the course content. You want your students to be able to apply practically what they’ve learned. Worksheets, case studies, and simulations can be great tools for this.
Provide feedback on assessments. Help your students learn from their mistakes and improve. This will show them that you are actively invested in their learning journey.
📌 Facilitate interaction and community
Interaction and community are essential parts of online courses. They allow your students to understand better what they’re learning. They also help to create a sense of belonging and support.
Include discussion boards in your course. Create spaces for learners to discuss topics and collaborate. Live sessions can also be tremendously helpful for your students. Q&A’s and webinars are great ways to build interaction and community into your course.
Don’t forget to be present yourself in your e-learning community. Answer questions, encourage your students, and do whatever you can to motivate them on their learning journey.
📌 Ensure accessibility
Ensure your course is accessible to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities. Create easily readable content, including alternative text for images and videos. Provide closed captioning for video content and transcripts as well.
Additionally, consider offering your course in multiple formats such as audio or PDF versions for those who may have difficulty accessing the material in its original form.
Making your course accessible demonstrates you care about reaching and teaching all learners.
📌 Leverage technology
Technology can be a huge benefit for your online course. It can make the materials more accessible, interactive, and engaging.
Use a reliable Learning Management System (LMS) like WordPress, Thinkific, or Kajabi to host and deliver your course. Also, tap into other high-tech tools to help with video production, creating quizzes, sharing documents, and more.
Just ensure you test everything before launching your course to provide a smooth experience for your learners.
📌 Gather feedback and improve
Your course won’t be perfect from the start. There will always be ways to improve your course, whether through strengthening the content, improving the delivery system, etc.
Use surveys to collect opinions and insights from your students. Ask for suggestions on how to make your course better. Take their feedback seriously and use it to improve your course.
Course analytics can also give insight into how your students interact with your course materials. For example, you may see students are dropping off at a certain point in the course, indicating you may need to improve that section.
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Continuously seeking and implementing feedback can help you create an even better online course and keep your students engaged and satisfied.
📌 Market your course
Students won’t take your course simply because you created it. You must actively promote your course and get it in to as many people as possible. If you don’t strategically promote your course, all your hard work will be for nothing.
Use social media, email marketing, webinars, and other channels to promote your course. Additionally, the use of advertising dollars can also draw even more people to it.
It’s also important to optimize your course for search engines. Your course description and the website hosting the course should be highly descriptive, communicating exactly what is in the course. Doing this will help Google better understand the contents of your course.
Another marketing strategy to promote your course is to partner with influencers in your industry. Collaborating with other educators/influencers can gain you access to their audience. You’ll be able to reach people you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
📌 Support and motivate learners
The final tip is to consistently support and motivate your students. Ensure you provide reliable customer service to help your students with technical-related issues. Also, be available to answer any course-related questions and respond to comments promptly.
It’s also important to motivate your learners throughout the course. Provide encouraging messages and share success stories from previous students.
When students become discouraged with their progress, remind them of their end goal and encourage them to continue. You want your students to feel like you have their back throughout the course.
How Blue Carrot can help your business
Hopefully, you now see how valuable online courses can be for your business. And while creating an online course may seem daunting, Blue Carrot specializes in creating engaging courses.
For example, these are courses we created about Sustainable Energy:
The customer required the production of new e-learning content that would reach learners in different countries across four languages. This project aimed to produce 70 hours of e-learning content in 4 languages within 2 months.
👉 We faced numerous challenges:
- The project’s tight deadline necessitated quick and cost-effective creation and localization of accessible e-learning material to address global educational requirements.
- It was necessary to produce this content while maintaining top-notch media quality. The courses needed to be efficiently delivered across different linguistic and cultural contexts.
- The e-learning content had to be “customer-ready” so our client could send it directly to foreign learners without any additional review.
👉 How did we meet these challenges?
- We decided to use generative AI to create the courses. Generative AI represents a groundbreaking approach to artificial intelligence, where systems are designed to create content that mimics human-like outputs. Using sophisticated algorithms and machine learning models, it can generate texts, images, and videos that are hard to distinguish from reality.
- We used generative AI to produce videos that used a synthetic avatar for pre-recorded courses. Using generative AI for video production greatly decreased the time and resources required for generating new content.
👉 The results?
- We created more than 70 hours (1800+ minutes) of learning content and produced 2500+ slides, 240+ lessons, and 800,000 words.
- We successfully localized the content into four languages: German, French, Spanish, and Romanian.
- We completed the production in the client’s designated 2 months.
At Blue Carrot, we use our expertise in instructional design and e-learning media development to help you create high-quality, interactive courses that will keep your learners engaged and motivated.
We provide custom online course creation services to elevate the educational experiences of your learners. From curriculum creation to course release, we’ve got every step covered.
We’ve helped 300+ businesses and organizations create online courses, including the University of Southern California, Takeda, and the United Nations.
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to tap into the growing demand for online learning. Get ahead of the curve by creating an exceptional online course that will enhance your brand’s reputation and attract new customers.
👉 Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business thrive through online courses.
