How to Make A Digital Course
How to Create a Digital Course
So, you’re thinking about creating a digital course but you’re not sure where to start. In this guide, we’ll take a look at the process of creating your own digital course from start to finish. Let’s jump right into it.
Find the Problem
The first step to creating a digital course is finding the problem. It’s sort of like creating a startup. You have to have a good idea, but you need to figure out what problem you’re trying to solve.
People want to use courses to better themselves. They want to transform by learning some new things. And so the goal of any course is to help them in this process. So think about why your audience wants to transform. What is it they want to accomplish? Once you figure out what it is your students want to better about themselves, you can create a course on any topic.
If you’re still having issues figuring out what sort of course to create, the easiest way to solve this is to ask the people you’re making the course for. If you have an audience on social media or an email list, ask your audience what it is they’d like to learn.
Test Your Idea
Once you have your idea, the next part of the process is to vet it. Your idea may be a great one, but the fact of the matter is that your idea may not be a good fit for an online course. You don’t want to jump straight in and spend hours upon hours creating something that people won’t actually want.
You also have to keep in mind the difference between people that say they’re interested and people who are actually willing to spend money. Plenty of folks will look at something and want to commit to it but never actually follow through.
So, how do you make this distinction? You do what’s called a smoke test. A smoke test is essentially where you start selling a product before it’s actually created.
The best way to do this is to create a landing page with an overview of your course, a table with your pricing, and a big buy button for people to order your course. Once you’ve got it made, you can start sharing it with your audience.
What you’ll be looking at is how many people clicked through your landing page and tried to purchase your course. You may have your own numbers in mind for what sort of conversions you want, but if you’ve got over five percent of your traffic that clicked through and tried to buy, then you’ve successfully vetted your idea.
Develop Your Course Outline
Now that you have your idea and you’ve verified that it’s a good one that people will pay for, it’s time to start developing your course’s outline.
If you don’t have teaching experience, this part can be a little tricky at first. This is definitely something you want to give a lot of thought and plan to. Don’t try to do it on the fly or wing it. Your audience is paying you to guide them through the growth process. So you need to come to the plate with your game face on.
The best way to come up with a solid course outline is to start tailoring existing content you have for your course. You can create everything from the ground up, but if you have content that’s already created and relevant to your course, you can save a massive amount of time by repurposing it for your course.
Once you’ve gone through any content you may have, the next step is to start sifting through the information that’s currently out there. Do some solid and research, but don’t get too caught up in fleshing out every tiny little detail. Your course doesn’t have to be perfect, so be wary of going down too many rabbit holes.
Now that you have all your information, you’ll want to start organizing it. Separate everything you have into modules or sections. Think about what you have and try to organize it in such a way so that your students will learn a new skill with each module they finish. This will give them a feeling of continued growth and success.
Now that you have your modules, you’ll want to break them down even further into lessons. Try to keep lessons short and easily digestible. You don’t want to bore your students with a long, drawn-out video.
Try to structure each lesson in a way that communicates what you’re teaching, what your students need to learn from it, the results of learning this thing, and then the actual process of teaching it.
Take this format and continue developing everything you have for your course, building up your student’s proficiency as you go along. By doing this, your students will feel progress and be consistently achieving results.
Your First Class
Regardless of the type of product you’re making, whether it’s an online class or a smartphone app, you need to have a beta test. Before you release your course to the market, you need to let other people besides yourself use it. Your beta test is going to be your first and most important class.
Your first class will be your future advocates. They’ll be your case studies and your success stories. And with them, you’ll find what does and doesn’t work with your course. They’ll provide you with the necessary feedback which you’ll use to improve and refine your course.
For your course to work and for it to be of value to your students, you need to be committed to guiding them and helping them grow. You can’t simply throw information at them; they can go online and do that themselves. To understand how well you’re doing this, consider setting up Q&A sessions with your first class of students.
Find out where they’re experiencing issues with your course. Figure out where they’re struggling. See how well you’re guiding them through their growth. Then use this knowledge to refine and perfect your course.
Foster a Community
So, you’ve come up with an idea, you’ve vetted it, and you’ve turned it into a successful course that people are learning and growing from. What now?
The best thing you can do for your course’s continued success is to create a community for your students to gather around. Learning is individual, but it’s also a social process. Creating a community for your students to share ideas and help each other learn and grow will ensure that your course stays relevant and alive. It will also help take some of the pressure off of you in answering all the questions and responding to feedback.
Conclusion
Creating an online course can be challenging work. But it can also be extremely rewarding. When you’ve created something that your audience engages with, learns from, and grows as a person, it’s a great feeling knowing that you helped that happen. So, take this guide and get to teaching.
REFERENCE & RESOURCES
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