Creating Your Content

Once you have your topic, it is time to start creating the content for your course. This may take a while to do, but it is important that you create factually accurate, up-to-date, and visually appealing content for your students. This content is what the students will see and gauge your course by. Content that is unattractive or incorrect will discourage students from taking your course. 

Pick A Platform

The first step to creating your online course content is deciding on a platform. The platform is how your students will reach your course.  The platform you choose will affect ownership, customer relations, in additional features of your online course. It is important that you pick a platform that matches all of your needs and preferences.

You have two platform options to choose from for online course making. You can either build your own website using a CMS like WordPress, BELLA*LIFE, or you can use an all-in-one platform like Teachable. Both options are great, but they come with their own pros and cons. To determine which platform type is best for you, do a lot of research and think about what you want out of course ownership and budget.

Research Your Topic

When you are creating your course content, you also need to research the topic thoroughly. In fact, this phase is highly important because it ensures that you have content that is factually accurate and up-to-date. If your content is incorrect in any way, you will get a bad reputation as a content creator and people will not want your product.

As you research, you should keep an open mind and use a number of research tools. Read books, look at web articles, and look at other online courses on your topic.

Create Lesson Plans

After you have done thorough reading, you should create outlines and lesson plans. These lesson plans will give you a base to go off of when you are creating the content. As a result, your content will be more professional, organized, and user-friendly.

When you make lesson plans, you want to group big ideas together into little units. All the units will relate back to your topic, but they are like subsections of the topic. List these topics in a logical order that is easy to follow as a student.

Additionally, you want to list out exactly what you want to do, say, or upload for every lesson. Do not be vague or fail to fill out the lesson plan completely. If you do, your content may be disorganized and difficult to execute. Do yourself a favor and put in the extra work to creating thorough and engaging lesson plans.

Create Your Content

Finally, it is time to create your content. You should use a number of multimedia types in order to keep your content engaging and effective for a number of different student learners. Multimedia types can include videos, audios, documents, or pictures. Using a number of multimedia types will ensure that all learning types are reached through your course.

For most online courses, videos are the most effective multimedia type. The reason for this is that it is easy to get distracted when trying to learn online. Videos, however, force the learner to watch and listen to your lectures. This prevents them from looking at other websites or their phone during your lessons.

If you choose to put videos in your lessons, you should also upload a number of documents. These documents can be in the form of cheat sheets, study guides, or lecture notes.