Tuesday Oct 25, 2011
Where to begin when authoring a Course
Road block avoided with organization of course purpose and goals
When you create a course, you may have great content but if it is not organized with a clear direction, your learners may become confused rather than educated.
For this reason, taking a few minutes to organize your information and thoughts before you start formatting your course will be very effective.
The first step in course authoring is defining the course purpose. The purpose includes what you are trying to achieve through the course as well as what your learners should understand upon completion of the course
Be specific when defining the purpose. Don’t just say “to train users on platform.” Say something along the lines of “To train PowerPoint 2010 users, giving them the ability to understand fonts, embed items, print layouts and navigate the tabs on the ribbon.”
Secondly, based off your course purpose, create course objectives, which are the means to achieving the course aim. Objective examples for the PowerPoint course mentioned above are:
-Adjust Font
-Create excel document to embed
-Navigate the ribbon
Creating the course outline is the third step to a successful learning environment for your learners. When creating the course outline, the following points are recommended:
-Arrange objectives into logical groups to create a course outline
-Title each main section
-Assign each section your ideal content
-Assign the section a quiz if you choose
Example
I. Introduction
II. Navigating the Ribbon
A. The home tab (screencast)
B. Formatting Tab (article)
C. Insert Tab (upload video)
D. Quiz
Then you can create your content around your outline, knowing exactly what you need for your course. Also, if you create a written document to use as a guide for content creation it will help you ensure that you are covering everything.
These initial three steps will guide you into an easy production of your course. After they are created, the next step is to create a compelling introduction. In the introduction, keep the following tips in mind:
-Get your audience excited
-Make sure it summarizes what will be covered in the course
-It can be a PowerPoint, a screencast or another format of your choice but grab the learner’s attention
-Know the objectives of the course and make sure the introduction sets out the objectives
These steps will give you confidence that your course will make sense and flow well.
