.png)
Recently I was asked, how do I decide what type of course I need? Let’s poke at that question a little bit.
What the heck does “type of course” even mean?
When someone asks this question, they are often asking what type of content delivery they should use. So my “what do you mean type of course” is often responded to with “well like a video course or an audio course? Should I deliver this via email? “
And so the question often focuses on “what type of course” because people want to know what they need to go create, which is a legitimate question, but you don't know what you need to go create until you have a bunch of other pieces in place.
You shouldn't be just saying, I'm going to go create a video course and then working out the details. You need to work out the details first.
Another way that this question of “course type” can kind of get misconstrued or asked, is in terms of how long the course should be. So sometimes my follow up question gets responses like “well should it be 12 weeks or 8 weeks?”
And again, these are things that you can't actually answer if you don't have other pieces put in place, because those other pieces are more important and will drive those decisions about what's appropriate for the length of what you're trying to teach.
How do you know if it’s going to take someone 12 weeks or 8 weeks unless you know how complex it is, where they are in terms of knowledge and ability, etc?
What to ask instead
The first question you should actually be asking is, “what should I teach?”
Because what you teach is going to have a big part in how you're going to deliver that content, how long the course will be, a zillion other details.
Coming up with ideas is often not a problem for folks who want to create a course. They’re either already doing 1:1 work or they’ve got things they know and want to teach others. The problem is usually narrowing it down to something that’s achievable and focused.
That begs the follow-up question: “how do I decide what to teach?”
You’ll want to start with making a list of possible topics. So you can ask yourself these questions:
What skills do I have?
What do I love doing?
What life experiences do I have?
What things have I overcome?
What training do I have?
What have I taught myself?
That last one might be particularly useful because you learn a lot by teaching yourself.
After you use those questions to make a big long list, pick the top three and then rank them. If it helps, you might articulate why you like the sound of one over the other. This is a key step because you can’t do it all.
You want to start your course creation process with something very focused. And so you need to just pick one topic, even though you might want to do all of them.
That doesn’t mean you can’t add to it later, but you have to start somewhere. The first small step is easier to take. So pick your number one topic out of that list that you made, and write a description about what that course would be about.
It's okay if it's kind of messy and squishy at this point.
The second piece of determining what you should teach is whether or not people are interested in learning this thing.
Take that description and get some feedback from friends, family, people, you know, if you have an audience in social media or any groups that you belong to.
You can say something like “Hey, you know, I've got this three sentence description of a course I might offer, is it something that you would be interested in if I ran a course on this?”
Picking the topic is going to drive every other piece of your course creation process.
When content & length come into the scene
Having a course topic and then breaking down all of the steps and how complex the topic is will help you figure out what the content delivery is and how long that course should be.
And I have a secret:
Your content delivery doesn't have to be the same the whole time. You can have and should have a variety.
You can have certain pieces that are video because you're showing and telling things. You can have certain pieces that are just audio. You can have really excellent infographics that help people make decisions or explain a concept. You can have all of it.
The point is that locking yourself into “I am going to do a video based course” or “I'm going to do an audio course” is really not going to be helpful when you're first getting started.
Those questions of content delivery and length come much later in the process.
The idea of directly tying course type to content begs the follow up question of well, “what is a course?
Let’s take it another step
What do you think of when you hear someone say “I have a course?” What do you envision?
When I asked this in a poll on social media, 86% (12) said that a course is content and activities, and 14% (2) said it was a video vault (with half that group saying it was what they expected not what they wanted).
Yeah, it’s a small pool, but it’s also telling of a larger movement. People are tired of buying courses and being handed content.
Learning science also tells us this isn’t ideal for learning. If you are just creating a series of videos, even if you have some activities built in, you have a video vault if there's no kind of support and application of the content.
Evergreen content can exist. Evergreen courses don't.
So if your question about the type of course is directly asking about the type of content, then you're thinking about courses in a way that's doing a disservice both to your learner and also to your, to your business.
You're not going to be creating something that people are going to want to continue with or come back to you for more. Return customers are a huge part of your market.
So if somebody buys your course and then never finishes because they don't have what they need to finish the course, all they have is a series of, you know, videos that they're watching, why would they buy anything else from you?
If you want some additional help in thinking about how to embed support into your course and how much you need to do, I have a blog and a video on that.
Comments
Post a Comment