Modern technologies greatly expand learning opportunities and make education more available for people. There are many courses, software, and other special instruments that facilitate the organization of e-learning.
All course creators know that realization and organization of online learning are of paramount importance because they influence the perception of information and its retention. Selection of material and its organization are key aspects that guarantee the success of an online course.
Here, we tell you all the secrets of providing effective e-learning. Moreover, we’ll show you what you need to do, and of course, cover all peculiarities of online education.
📆 Launching an online course: preparation stage
№1. Defining your purpose
Do you realize why creating an online course is necessary for you? If no, you should brainstorm and find an answer to this question. Today, online learning is mostly used for such purposes:
- To promote expertise in a certain field and sell your knowledge.
- To boost sales of your products or services.
- To increase the number of subscribers by means of sharing interesting content.
- To make people trust the brand or product.
№2. Identifying the tasks your course should solve
Let’s imagine that you’ve identified the purpose of your course and can tell why you need to launch it. However, you should also know how it can help people that’ll buy it. We mean that you need to define its objectives and goals. It can be difficult enough to define them at once. Remember that learning objectives can’t be measured but can be achieved. Durability and extensiveness are other characteristics of distance learning.
Objectives are often called the results of education since they are directly related to the expected results of learning.
Your first task is to choose at least three objectives of the course. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine the goals, so we offer you to look through three following sentences and complete them to understand your goals:
- My task is to emphasize…
- The key topics students will learn are…
- The overall result I want to see is…
Use this planning chart to transform goals into objectives and vice versa.
|
|
Goals |
Objectives |
|---|---|---|
|
Convey |
Your beliefs regarding general educational experience |
The choice of learning strategies, training materials, and training activities |
|
Present |
Your vision of the course, a description of its tasks |
What skills the participants will obtain? |
|
Describe |
The unmeasurable and long-term goals |
The indicators you use for grading |
|
Inform |
What should your students experience while learning? |
What is the task of your learning materials ? |
№3. Pick the topic
The search for the topic shouldn’t present a problem at all. Answer these questions to help yourself find your niche:
- How often do your friends, clients, or colleagues seek your assistance with something where you consider yourself an expert?
- Have you ever solved a problem other people couldn’t?
- Do you consider yourself an expert in a relevant area people are interested in?
Coaches that know how to provide distance training appropriately also consider the following important factor when determining a topic — the potential return. The more relevant and useful the topic is, the more people will pay for the offered distance and e-learning technologies.
№4. Assigning a lecturer
If you’re an expert, you don't need to hire a specialist. Of course, if you aren’t sure you have enough experience and knowledge, you’d better invite a recognized and respected expert, or even several people.
№5. Defining the target audience
A target audience is a limited number of people expected to be interested in your product. A detailed analysis of your target audience lets you identify people’s needs. And this knowledge will become a basis for planning future marketing activities focused on promotion and sales growth.
№6 Tips to boost sales
Here are several ways of organizing and selling any online lesson:
- Pre-sales e-mail newsletter
This sales strategy presupposes that you have an extensive list of email addresses ( min. 100 subscribers), but it’s the easiest strategy.
- Involving people through personal interviews
If your target audience is small or isn’t interested in your content, this way of promotion is for you. However, be ready to feel awkward: when a person says ‘no,’ you may write with the refusal.
- No-cost consultations
Your task is to offer a useful free consultation people will get if they purchase your distance course.
- Create a perfect website
Using modern website builders, everyone can create stunning landing pages to sell or promote your products on the Internet. It also works well for online courses promotion.
✍️ How to hold a distance learning: realization
№7. Preparation of educational material
Content preparation requires a little more time than other steps, so we ask you to be attentive and don’t rush. We’ll do the same.
Any experienced coach or teacher will tell you that creating a course or any other informational content from scratch isn’t a problem. Before you launch a course, you should review all information you have and systematize it. Many people don’t think that including their materials in course isn’t necessary and make a mistake. You’ve probably accumulated a lot of educational material, starting with informative leaflets to monographs and books, thematic materials from conferences, etc.
Use everything you have, including the materials you’ve created earlier. Are you a blogger? If you recorded the last seminar you’ve attended or the last webinar you’ve watched, give your students access to it. Do you want your course to be perfect? Include these types of content to it:
- Videos (recordings of your lectures, webinars, etc.);
- E-books and other text files (you may add your blog posts as well);
- Presentations;
- Tests;
- Speeeches and podcasts.
№8. The choice of the teaching method and the way of providing distance learning
It’s also important to define the types, methods, and instruments of learning. The best option for you is to combine the following components:
- Teamwork
Students may use special software (for example, Zoom) to implement various group projects. - Tests and assignments
You should regularly check students’ knowledge to see if your course is effective. - Discussions
Invitation to a discussion lets you increase interest in studying. A high level of student engagement is a key to success. - Videoconferencing
Video conferences are key to the implementation of synchronous distance learning. Otherwise, online software will be limited to self-directed learning without interaction with the teacher. - Learning management system
Always use LMS to give all students one-stop access to all educational materials. - Planning network
All students need to contact teachers for counseling. It would be good to launch a platform where students could schedule meetings with teachers. - Providing access to the resource base
Make sure your students have all the necessary sources of information and opportunities to search for educational materials.
№9.Is it possible to create a distance learning platform alone?
Well, you’ve completed all the stages mentioned above, but holding distance learning using a special platform is still a mystery for you? Today the range of such services is broad enough, and the functions of these services are almost unlimited. Edx, Coursera, Udemy are the most commonly used distance learning sites.
All these sites have one significant drawback: people who upload and sell their courses there must be ready to share the income with platforms. And the part of income they require is big enough. Moreover, you must be sure that your course can compete with similar products.
Sounds like not the best way to promote your knowledge.Some people may ask: can these platforms boast of any advantages? A large variety of functions is a key advantage for all course creators.
You’d better use an independent platform to create and promote your online courses. KWIGA is the best option. Feel free to download the course you’ve already created or use its functions to create it from the very beginning. Having any technical skills isn’t a must at all.
№10. It’s time for quality assurance
Any new software should be tested, and especially online courses. Testing is important because it’s the only way to avoid bugs and mistakes. Don’t forget that you must release a perfect product. Your family members or friends can act like QA engineers: ask them to pass your course and tell you about the mistakes they’ll find. At the very least, you may gather a group of real users for testing. Please, don’t ignore this stage. Perhaps you’ve missed something or forgot to add a slide or a button, deleted a test you’ve mentioned in your previous task, etc.
Look through the course on your own and fix the mistakes you see. Then ask friends to do the same, perhaps, they’ll find more inconsistencies. You must know that people working on something for a long time don’t notice the mistakes because they’ve read the information multiple times. Quality assurance will let you know how to improve the quality of distance learning and achieve the main goal — to make it useful.
№11. Start your online learning
All right, you have finally learned how to hold online lessons, have prepared to be a lecturer, handled all technical issues, designed and tested your course, et. Remind your group about the launch of your online course via e-mail newsletter or SMS messaging. Enjoy sharing your expertise with other people: hold lessons, discuss interesting topics with students and assess their knowledge to see the results of your work.
🏁 To sum up
Well, we’ve examined the methods of organizing distance learning and now you’re almost an expert in creating informative and useful online course. We hope that now you understand that the right approach is everything that separated you from achieving your goal.
⁉️ FAQ
- How long should video content be for e-learning?
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If you add videos to your course, you should be very careful because not all of them are suitable for online learning. We mean if the content you add is too long and too difficult to perceive, students will hardly stay interested for a long time. Student engagement is a very important aspect in online learning, and all course creators should understand this. Here are the videos that can be used for distance course:
1) up to 5 minutes. Short introductory information statements.: вводные короткие информационные сообщения.
2) from 5 to 10 minutes.Separate videos that answer a particular question, but not the whole topic or chapter.
3) from 10 to 20 minutes.Detailed videos containing a lot of useful information. They can cover the whole chapter from your course; however, in this case, they should be very interesting and catch the attention of your audience.
- Do students need textbooks and guides for e-learning?
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If we are talking about creating a distance learning system, we can’t omit a text component because it’s very important. One of the best ways to implement this component in your course is to use electronic books. Giving students access to ebooks may be a good decision, but we advise you to rework these materials and create your ebook using design templates.
- How to calculate the right price?
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Setting a price is a difficult stage for many course creators. A perfect price is a sum that is affordable for people and at the same time offsets the efforts and money you’ve put into it. Find a happy medium. You may be surprised, but the price of your course impacts the level of student engagement: the more they’ll pay, the more interested they’ll be. Don’t offer your content for free; otherwise, people won’t trust it and
- How to put your group together and create a community?
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The opportunity to find new friends and found a community is one of the advantages of studying. Learners like to interact with like-minded people and share their ideas. That’s why it’s especially important to encourage communication between the students. It helps them all pass the shared path during their learning. The community also makes them feel supported.
Instilling a fellowship between coursemates will be good for everyone in the long turn. Found groups among your students and your subscribers, initiate discussions, and unite people.