4 Steps for Developing Better Online Courses.

There are so many E-learning development models out there to follow, however as a professional Instructional Designer I see many that are complicated, hard to follow and leave you as an online course developer frustrated with incomplete courses or worse, unhappy customers.

There are 4 key building bricks to course development that must be tackled BEFORE you start creating your course.

Let’s say you’re building a house. Construction doesn’t start with a pile of raw materials — wood beams, bricks, nails, doors, windows, and flooring. Before you even hammer the first nail into a piece of wood, there are dozens of questions that must be answered such as:

Who is your ideal home owner?

What style is the house?

How will it be laid out?

How many bedrooms and bathrooms will it contain?

What are your blueprints?

What are the first, second, and third steps in the construction process?

Who is on your team and what are their roles?

How will you communicate your needs to the team?

Who will walk through your stages and provide detailed punch list?

How long will the construction process take?

The process before building the house is the most important part of the process. Designing and developing an E-learning course is a lot like building a house. If the blueprints, stages and steps incomplete then the house cost more resources and time to build and likely the house will sit there either incomplete or abandoned.

When I am developing an E-learning course, I follow a structured 4 step process that provides me the blueprints to my online course.

1) Plan the Project!

Plan with the learner in mind “not your good idea”. Determine what the learner wants to achieve, determine the desired outcome first. This starts with asking lots of questions to your ideal learner; however the most important question is: “What would you like to be able to do once you complete this course?” and How will you know you have achieved this? Determine course topics and write an outcome/ objective for each topic: “Learners will be able to ……………………..”

2) Course Development Map

A Course Development Map is a simply written document that outlines the learning content. Slide by slide, content by content. The purpose of this storyboard is to provide a foundation for your learning and activities. This is the blueprint of the structure. It can be as simple as drawing your ideas on paper. The Map can look something like this:

3) Develop the Course

There is a lot more that goes into developing a course this is just the process. More detailed articles and information to come. Develop the course based on your Course Development Map. If you have created a detailed CDM then this stage will be easy and go much quicker than without one. I prefer to build my content Topic by Topic in PowerPoint first, then if video is needed I will record video’s after the content has been developed in PowerPoint first. Review topic completion with an ideal learner to see if that module has achieved the desired outcome. Your ideal learner can be a friend, colleague or a member of your social media tribe.

4) Review and QA the Course

This step is so important and this is where I see most course developers missing the mark. Up to now you have been working hard building and reviewing your content with your ideal learner to make sure the content is aligned to the desired outcomes. Quality Assurance is the time to set your feelings aside and let people dive into the content, the videos, the activities, materials etc. and find fault. Yes, this can be painful but this is how your course gets better! Let them find fault, find the grammar errors, images that don’t convey the message etc. Let them have the freedom to really share productive criticism. Better your friends and colleagues than your paid learners. I prefer to do this step Every 2 modules, that way it is not so hard at the end. You are able to fix and often rearrange your content earlier and more effectively.

The bottom line is creating an effective and profitable online course takes planning, structure, design and quality assurance. Taking a bunch of raw materials and content can seem overwhelming. However, if you break the process down into these 4 simple and repeatable steps, you’ll see that your online courses will increase profits and raving fans.

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