course pre-planner the art of course design. the big idea getting ideas on paper about the course...

COURSE PRE-PLANNER

THE ART OF COURSE DESIGN

THE BIG IDEAGETTING IDEAS ON PAPER ABOUT

THE COURSE YOU WILL TEACH

1 | WHAT IS MY COURSE IDEA?

Without worrying about polishing your words, write down your course ideas. If you have more than one idea, now is a good time to try to focus on the one that is most compelling first. Take time with this and make sure your idea is solid enough to build a course around, and that the topic is something you feel energy about sharing, teaching and talking about.

STUDENTSPICTURE THE REAL PEOPLE WHO

WILL TAKE YOUR COURSE AND HOW THEY WILL BENEFIT FROM IT

2 | WHO NEEDS TO TAKE THIS COURSE?

Describe the type of people who would need or want to take this course. What does the “ideal” student of your course have in common with you and how are they different from you? Try to really visualize some of these people.

3 | WHAT IS MY STUDENT’S OBJECTIVE?

In simple terms, write down why the student takes this course. What will they know how to do at the end of this course that they don’t know now, and how will they benefit from this new knowledge? How does the student’s life change after they’ve taken this course?

4 | WHAT BASIC SKILLS WILL I TEACH?

Without trying to think about how course materials will be organized, what are the basic skills a student will be taught in this course?

TEACHINGTHINK LIKE A TEACHER AND NOT JUST A SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT

5 | HOW DO I WANT TO TEACH THIS COURSE?

Popular methods of teaching include:

Written Instruction (Linear text, like a Blog Post)

Presentation Slides (Powerpoint or Keynote, animated or not)

Speaking (Conference Calls, Recorded Audio or Podcast)

Video (Like Vimeo or YouTube)

Live Interaction (Webinar, Periscope, Google Hangout style)

Interactive Chat (Using Twitter, Blab or a chat room)

There are many methods of providing instruction to students. These are methods you should think carefully about, as some are more complex than others. You should focus only on what you can feasibly do yourself or hire someone to help you do.

Your first course does not have to contain all the bells and whistles imaginable… you should add to it and improve it over time.

5 | HOW DO I WANT TO TEACH THIS COURSE?

Delete bullets that don’t apply right now and/or add thoughts here.

Written Instruction (Linear text, like a Blog Post)

Presentation Slides (Powerpoint or Keynote, animated or not)

Speaking (Conference Calls, Recorded Audio or Podcast)

Video (Like Vimeo or YouTube)

Live Interaction (Webinar, Periscope, Google Hangout style)

Interactive Chat (Using Twitter, Blab or a chat room)

6 | HOW WILL I ENSURE STUDENTS LEARN?

How will I help students put the skills they learn from me into real-world practice, and even master them?

This should be a primary concern if you want to offer courses for sale, but something you haven't thought about much yet. Here are some great books that I can recommend to help you understand how to go from sharing information like a subject matter expert, to actually seeing that students can use what they learn from you once their course is completed.

How We Learn by Benedict Carey – you can purchase this book used for under $10 and it will help you understand how people’s brains work to learn new information, before you create your course content. Highly recommended.

Cathy Moore is a corporate employee training consultant and she offers a free ebook that has some great information in it regarding using examples as teaching methods. Get the ebook and check out her excellent blog: http://blog.cathy-moore.com/save-the-world-from-boring-training/

6 | HOW WILL I ENSURE STUDENTS LEARN?

How will I help students put the skills they learn from me into real-world practice, and even master them? Write down ideas here.

7 | HOW WILL I GIVE FEEDBACK TO STUDENTS?

So many self-promotional subject matter experts want to teach courses that are self-paced and left up to the student’s own assessment to determine whether or not they have an understanding of the materials or have even completed the course they signed up for.

That’s one approach, but I recommend you consider methods of follow-through with students and if you teach a course, ensure that you are actually available for interacting with them. Here are a few ways to interact with students:

Discussion Forum participation

Weekly Twitter Chats or Conference Calls

Facebook Group for Students

Quizzing and Completion Status

Completion Certificates

Grading a Paper/Essay to Complete the Course

Examining Student Projects for Assessment of Completion

7 | HOW WILL I GIVE FEEDBACK TO STUDENTS?How I could interact with my students…

PLANNINGCREATE A ROUGH COURSE

OUTLINE & START BRINGING YOUR COURSE TO LIFE!

8 | WHAT IS THE OUTLINE OF MY COURSE?

Planning your course themes (modules), lessons and associated materials is something we will cover in great detail in The Art of Course Design, but before beginning, think about the things you will teach and how they might look broken down into sections, and then as lessons within the sections.

Module 1

Section Theme Name

Module 2

Section Theme Name

Module 3

Section Theme Name

Module 4

Section Theme Name

Module 5

Section Theme Name

Lesson 1Title of Lesson




















8 | WHAT IS THE OUTLINE OF MY COURSE?

5-10 sections are ideal, and with no more than about 4-8 lessons within each section. You want to keep things manageable for students. If you have a lot more material than this, think about whether or not you need two courses: Basic & Advanced or Part 1 & 2… there may be a natural division.

Module 6

Section Theme Name

Module 7

Section Theme Name

Module 8

Section Theme Name

Module 9

Section Theme Name

Module 10

Section Theme Name





















MARKETING

THIS IS THE FUN, PRETTY, COOL, NIFTY PART! WELL, FOR DESIGNERS AT

LEAST. WE LIVE FOR THIS STUFF :-)

9 | WHAT DOES THE COMPETITION LOOK LIKE?One of the first things we do at Fresh ID when a client hires us to do branding and naming is assess the competition and the market for their service/product/course/book in general. You never want to inadvertently offer something that looks like someone else’s as your goal in the market is to stand apart and be unique.

ASSIGNMENT 1

Go to Google, Amazon, and Audible and take screenshots of any competitor that is too close to your subject matter or title or that you like and want to remember. If your course title is exactly the same as one already released, change it. You don’t want any confusion in searches for you or your course if you can prevent that to begin with.

9 | WHAT DOES THE COMPETITION LOOK LIKE?ASSIGNMENT 2

The second part of the market/competition assessment is going to include finding a unique domain name, so you may as well start that hunt now. We use name.com for domain name registration as they are a little bit cheaper than other registrars. You should read this domain name advice first.

9 | WHAT DOES THE COMPETITION LOOK LIKE?ASSIGNMENT 3

The third part of this market assessment is trying to create a unique hashtag that makes sense, like people use on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For example, #AOCD is actively used by others, so I am going to use #ArtOfCourseDesign which is not used now for my course.

You also want to research common hashtags used to describe this subject - make note of ideas and hashtags you see on social platforms here.

10 | HOW DO I WANT MY BRAND TO LOOK?

Though “Fresh ID” is all about branding online and offline, as well as the user experience, this is not the first thing you should be thinking about when it comes to completing a complex project such as an online course. We have deliberately put it last in this pre-planner on purpose.

But this is a super-fun part of creating your new course, and you should research and think about the kind of brand that would represent both the course and yourself as the instructor. Some exercises to help you think:

A. Think about the words that describe the type of style you like, such as Modern, Shabby Chic, Elegant, Traditional, Grungy, Edgy, Sporty, Playful, Intelligent, Clean, Fresh, Trendy… what words come to mind for you?

B. What are your favorite colors? Do they relate to, or at least not distract from, the course content? Consider using 2-3 colors you really like if you can as you will have to sell what you see, interacting with the materials so much.


C. Copy/Paste some images from a Google search on mood boards + colors you like. Here are search results for “moodboard black white” for example.

Hey… this one looks familiar!


C. Mood boards, sites or graphic images I like… (paste your examples here)

READY TO CREATEA COURSE NOW?

The Art of Course Design is scheduled to launch sometime before the end of 2015. If you’re ready to create your course right now and want help from creative professionals, contact us at freshid.com.

If you want to DIY, hang tight… help is on the way soon!

Kristi ColvinChief Experience Officer & Founder,Fresh ID

course pre-planner the art of course design. the big idea getting ideas on paper about the course...

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