First steps to create your first online course

Today we'll teach you how to create your first online course up to building your syllabus, meaning having your content ready for recording and content preparation. We see two lines of thinking: one that believes you need a lot of money and investment to launch a course, and another that believes creating your first online course is the most trivial thing in the world.

The process of creating your first online course can be done at home, and you can even record with your own webcam, though we all know the quality of the webcams built into computers.

As for the second point, to create a first online course that truly brings transformation to learners, you can't do it without planning. If you already have some experience creating in-person courses and trainings (and even talks), you can probably transfer your skills and knowledge.

Think of this article as an introductory guide on how to create your first online course, whether or not it's your first. This article will give you a path to structure your content better.

Choose your subject

The first step in the course creation process is clearly choosing your topic. We need to reflect on the content because it's what sets the rules of the game, who your target audience is (in a way) and your approach. If it's your first course, we suggest creating something squarely within your area of expertise. Teachers more experienced in the creation process can create tangential content, since they've mastered the art of passing on knowledge and researching content to build lessons.

You should be able to write this in a few words or even one sentence. If you need a paragraph to explain it, either you're still confused about what you want to teach, or it's very specific. In the second case, that's fine. In the first case, make it clearer.

You can browse sites like Udemy, Coursera, Domestika or Sebrae, for example, and look at the course categories they have. This can help you narrow down and fit your content better.

If you like, you can choose to get a bit more specific in more competitive areas. For example, talking about HTML programming or Customer service so broadly may not help your learner become interested in your course. What will you teach within those topics? For practical purposes, our suggestion is to think about creating more focused (and therefore shorter) courses for now. Getting a bit more specific can help in this process.

From the learner's point of view

From the learner's point of view, a more specific course is better because the learning is clearer. A "customer service" course may sound too vague, but a course on "How to handle angry customers in customer service" is much clearer. From a profit point of view, it's equally positive. Focusing on shorter courses instead of one super long program lets you make sales faster. Nothing stops you from later putting these short courses together into a bundle and launching it with a larger course load. When developing your course, leave a bit of room for follow-ups.

Answer:

• Which areas do you master the most?
• Which of those areas do you believe have a lot of demand?
• What specific approach can you take to this subject?

Research the market

When we tell you to be specific about your idea, I don't mean you have to be that specific. A course on content marketing for fashion is a good idea, but a course on content marketing for blogs focused on retro fashion from Victorian-era England may have too niche an audience to be worth it. In that case (the example is absurd, of course, but for very, very specific content in general), it's advisable once you already have good market penetration in general and when it's a niche that can have high value.

To know that, you have to research the market. Instead of a guess based on your own experience, you can search Google Trends to see what people are searching for, and go to course platforms to see which subjects are trending; almost all of them have a similar section. Udemy has a research tool that reports the demand and supply for a topic and even the average earnings.

You can use these platforms to search for your course title (even if it's just the idea) to see what they're offering, the number of learners and even to refine your idea (we'll get to that shortly).

Answer:

• Is there demand for this content?
• Is the competition too big for me?
• Is it an area that allows differentiation?

Research your audience

Now, let's talk about your learners. There's a model we particularly like to use, which we'll cover in a denser piece of content on the subject. But the idea is that you think about who your learners will be.

Tip: you can use the Value Proposition Canvas. It's very focused on businesses in general, but we can think of people too.

What you can ask yourself when researching your audience

You have to think about your customer's goal. Once again, be specific. Saying that the target audience is "anyone interested in my course topic" is too general and impractical, yet it's very common to hear. Instead, try to identify the following important demographics of your target audience:

Age. Depending on your course topic and the depth you want to give it, this number can be different. Adjust your writing and teaching styles accordingly. You have two approaches here: you can take the average age of people interested in your chosen topic, or the age of those you'd like to teach. For example, a basic programming course might have a young adult as the average target audience. But you can also choose to make a programming course for kids or seniors.

Education level. Most online course learners are highly educated, with a bachelor's degree or higher. Adjust the complexity of your course to match the education level of your target audience.

Employment status. Is your course for training already-employed professionals? Or is it aimed at job seekers who want to start a career in a new sector?

Identifying all this demographic data isn't always a simple process. If you're having trouble, try using social media for audience research.

These are general guidelines. Next, you should think, "What does my audience want from this?" Much more than thinking about sociodemographic data, we prefer to think about behaviors and attitudes. Are they people who like more direct content? Metaphors? Do they like innovation, or are they more traditional?

Answer:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their characteristics and behaviors?
• What goal are they trying to accomplish that will make them look for this content?

Define the content

Now that you know who you'll teach and what, you have to start writing the course itself. That means organizing the course content, also called the curriculum or program.

The idea is to list the topics covered in the course so they form a logical chain. Organization and sequence are very important for the learner. They (and all of us) read a list as if it were a sequence. So if you read the syllabus of a literacy course and it said:

• What vowels are
• Addition
• Learning to draw
• What consonants are
• Subtraction

That would look disorganized. You can think in modules: what are the three to five general topics? They have to be self-contained, meaning that just by studying that module we'll learn that concept. Even if it's pure theory, important for the next module. For example:

Module: What is literacy

• Getting to know the structure of language
• The different types of words
• What numbers are
• The importance of writing

Notice that by the end of the module, we haven't learned to write. But all of this will be a foundation so we can learn later.

Knowledge by itself isn't enough. You also need to know how to present it in a way that makes sense to the learner, in a way they can understand. Just dumping facts doesn't work for most people, otherwise we wouldn't need schools and teachers.

In instructional design terms, this is called instructional sequencing, when you define the steps needed for a given learning objective to be fulfilled or achieved. With this sequence, you build an activity map, which will give rise to the lessons themselves.

Your task now is to gather everything you know and put it into a logic that makes sense to the learner

There will always be learners who pick up the subject faster and others who need more detail. For that, it's essential to plan with multiple versions of the same subject. Think of each person as having their own puzzle, with you providing the pieces. You can provide only one type of piece to help a very specific audience, but you can provide different pieces to cover other people.

Then, once you have the right amount of knowledge and understanding, you'll have to package it. What should be learned at the beginning and what should be saved for later? What logically connects one subject to another? At what point can a learner be considered to have learned enough about the subject? These are all questions you should consider when creating your first online course and its structure.

This is as much for the learner as for you. With proper structure and connections, you can teach with ease, and the learner will find it easier to understand what you're trying to convey.

Answer:

• What is the content of this course?
• What logic makes the most sense for the learner?
• How can I diversify my lessons?

Build your first syllabus

So you have all your knowledge organized. Fantastic! Now it's time to think about how you'll deliver that knowledge to learners. You know what you'll teach, but now you need to decide how you'll teach it. We started talking about this when we discussed media diversification in the previous topic, but now we'll break it into smaller pieces and make it more specific.

For each piece of content you defined in the previous step, write 3 to 5 points that should be taught. For each of these points, think about what you have to say. Can we do this through a recording, a PowerPoint, an explanation of a flowchart, a book, a link? We're getting into the lessons. Each content point can be broken out as a lesson.

Going back to the literacy course example, we would have:

Module: What is literacy

Getting to know the structure of language

• History of the alphabet
• Types of communication
• Elements of language

The different types of words

• Nouns and verbs
• Adjectives and adverbs
• Numerals
• Prepositions and conjunctions

With these bullet points defined, think about the best way to explain them. For the history of the alphabet, we could choose a video. For types of communication, it could be a theoretical explanation. For elements of language, something playful with shapes (with a PowerPoint presentation) and a diagram at the end. Always remember to keep the media you use varied.

You should end up with a table containing the list of lessons, their objective and which material will be used (if any).

Answer:

• What are the points of each listed content?
• How can I teach this content?
• Do I need to break it into one or more lessons?

How to create your first online course

Creating your first online course takes time and effort, all so your learner doesn't have to struggle to learn. It should be an enjoyable, light process for them. You'll probably learn a lot about the topic during the process and improve your teaching techniques over time.

It's important to study a bit of instructional design, because all the points mentioned have a lot of theory behind creating your first online course. This was just the simple structure of creation. But there are models, formulas and templates to make it all happen.

You probably won't get everything right the first time, but don't let that fear, or impostor syndrome, stop you. Your first course often serves to help you understand the process end to end, rather than to create the next revolution in education. With our clients, we talk a lot about building a course with a prototyping mindset, precisely so the aspiring teacher understands how the process works.