How To Create Your First Online Course

Online courses aren’t just for students. Behind each one are university staff, faculty, and graduate students, who took the time to create a stellar learning experience just for you. All those resources in your online course? Someone selected them, formatted them, and figured out the best way and best place for you to access them.

Interested in creating your own online course? Follow these simple steps and you’ll be well on your way.

1. Know your audience

Want to create a thoughtful course that your students will remember? Know your target audience: who are they? What have they studied? Where are they coming from? What do they need from the course? What personal goals might some of them have? Don’t waste time and make assumptions. Figure out what your prospective students want and need and then design a course that meets those needs (see #2).

2. Understand course design

Course design is a process that includes basic tenets of instructional design. Core elements are: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. If you follow this model when designing your course, yo won’t miss any benchmarks and you’ll base your course on basic learning theory.

You’ll have a clear instructional plan—how the students will access the information; learning materials—chosen and/or developed; activities—that inspire and promote mastery; assessment methods to ascertain whether your students meet the standards set forth in the course (probably in the analysis part). Course design is complicated. Figure out your overarching goals, scope and sequence, and get help where you need it. Don’t be afraid to delegate.

3. Offer flexibility

One of the greatest appeals of online learning is flexibility, so you’ll need to ensure that your course has it. How do you do that? Offer flexibility in course time, place, and type of technology. Vary learner experiences, offer flexible delivery and accessibility, and most importantly be flexible in the type of assessment that addresses content. Use formative and summative assessments, collaborative assignments, peer and self-reviewed work, and combinations of “face-to-face” and auto-graded work.

4. Offer multiple media options

Your course should offer a plethora of media options. Print instruction. Visual media. Video. Audio narrations. Combinations of all or some. Your course should not be a series of PowerPoints or Google Slides. Your students should have a variety of interfaces to interact with your content.

Multi-media courses should also be interactive. May you require voice recordings or videos as part of assessments. Students should be able to interact with each other, too, not just the content of your courses. Whatever multi-media you use: make it meaningful and relevant for your students so that they maximize their understanding and application of your content.

5. Keep it short

The soul of it, and a key to online course success. Make it short and sweet. This goes for everything, but don’t sacrifice understanding. Videos should be short and concise. Video components should not be more than 10 minutes. Audio components? Even shorter. 5 minutes max. If you have significant amounts of reading on screen, divide it into several chunks over a series of lessons. Remember: concise, meaningful, accessible.

6. Communication

Figure out how often and when you want to communication with your students. Do your students need to contact you for exams? Do you want to require interaction once per week? What does the content of those interactions look like? How do they contact you? Do you have the technology in place for face-to-face meetings? Is that something you want? What should students be able to do or discuss when you meet? Will you hold office hours? How should students contact you during them? Will you schedule appointments? When are appropriate times for students to email you? How much time can they expect to wait for a response? What days don’t you work?

Consider these questions before your course so that your students have the knowledge and confidence to reach out to you when they must, or when they want to ask you something.

Creating an online course isn’t so different from creating any other course. Why? It’s all about relationship. Your resources in a brick-and-mortar classroom are different than in the online world. Use them to create the most positive, learner-friendly student experience you can.

Flexible scheduling and materials, creative use of multi-media resources, thoughtful course design, and clear communication protocols directed at a specific audience will launch you on an online course trajectory to success.

Want to develop your teaching skills before you make your first class? Find an online course in teaching.