With the growth of educational technology, there has been a big transition from conventional teaching methods to online educational modes. To enjoy several benefits like better flexibility, convenience comfort, cost-effectiveness, and more work opportunities, educators plan to develop online courses. To start an online education course, expertise in technology, launch, the right marketing, design, and software development are a few skills required. Let us discuss a five-step process that one can follow to start an online course.
Five steps to follow for starting an online english courses
1. Validate your idea
To start online classes and develop a successful course, validating your idea is very important. You need to check and see how accurate and effective is the course topic that you have selected. A course topic should be effective for the educator, and learner as well as in the market. Validating the course idea in simple words means evaluating its demand in the market before investing your time and effort in course development and creation.
To do so, you need to follow the right strategies. Do keyword research to find out what is the demand and expectations of the learners and whether your course idea meets it or not. You should keep a close eye on your competitors too. Conduct surveys and online polls to see the effectiveness of your course topic. If the idea clicks for all, go for further planning and preparation.
2. Plan the course structure
After validating the idea, you need to plan how will you develop an online course. First of all, you should check what all subjects have to be taught under the course topic selected. For example, if you launch course on professional development, English, IT knowledge, and job skills are some of the basic subjects to cover. See whether you will single handily manage all the tasks, or you need to collaborate with your fellow creators and hire educators. Think about the mode of your course. Live streaming, asynchronous, or hybrid are some of the online course models.
3. Recording video lectures and planning other content mediums
Online courses can be of different modes. It can be synchronous as well as asynchronous. To start an effective online course, planning the content mediums is important. This means selecting how knowledge will be imparted to the students. Audio visual tools like picture cards, PowerPoint presentations, and ebooks are some examples.
One of the most important content forms is video lectures. We all know that in online courses, physical meetups are not possible and video lectures are one source that makes students feel connected with the teachers. You need to record the videos for your online course. This can include both promotional videos and lecture videos. To record quality videos for your course, focus on the below-mentioned points
- Develop the right script
- Invest in the right tools.
- A dedicated workplace
- Effective audio quality.
- Post-production work
4. Reach out to the target audience
After validating the idea, and creating the course content, comes the step to reaching out to the target audience. You are done with the substantial part that is building the online course, and now it’s time to make it available to the audience. There is tough competition going on in the e-learning field, and to start your online course successfully, you have to follow the right professional and marketing strategies.
Firstly, to sell online courses from your own website, build one. Or you can also make business accounts on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube to sell online courses. Make sure to go for search engine optimization so that you increase the traffic to your website organically. Give quality access to the course to the students.
5. Track the engagement metrics rate
Once you get enough enrollments in your course, start tracking students’ progress. The more the students are engaged, the better the success rate of the course. You should track students’ growth to see how effective is the course going and more, about what can be done for improvement and betterment. Seek feedback from the students on how effective they are finding the current teaching practices and what are their further expectations and needs. Use the feedback collected to enhance the course content and quality of classes.
Conclusion
For personal and professional success, many educators prefer to start online courses. By following the above-mentioned five-step process which is validating the course idea, planning a structure, working on content medium, reaching out to the target audience, selling, and measuring the success rate, one can start an effective and efficient online course.
BYJU and YUANFUDAO focus more on exam preparation than on learning the results.