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Hi There,
When you decide to create an online course, you may be tempted to jump straight to doing things like:
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Recording videos for individual lessons
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Putting together written resources
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Designing worksheets and downloads
It's easy to see why. This gives you a sense of productivity, but the result is often a course that lacks the most important thing:
What the course is actually supposed to help someone achieve.
If you're overwhelmed and unsure where to start, this one is for you.
Step #1 – Before opening the course builder, try completing this sentence:
"By the end of this course, students will be able to..."
The difference between a vague promise and a clear outcome matters more than most people realize. For example:
"Learn photography" sounds fine, but is far too broad.
"Take professional-looking portraits using natural light" is not only clearer, but also much easier to teach.
Once you know the destination, planning becomes much easier because you're no longer creating "content" at random. You're creating the path your learners will take to reach that destination.
Step #2 – Open the course builder and start building.
The further you keep your work (be it lesson notes, drafts, video scripts) from their true final form, the harder it will be for your course to take shape, for you to refine, and iterate as you go.
For your course to come together, you want to:
1. Build one small part at a time. Start with the sections.
2. Add the lessons that section needs and shape it until it feels close to something a student could actually progress through.
3. Pause and test it from a learner's point of view:
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Does the order make sense?
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Does each lesson naturally lead to the next?
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Does this section help students move closer to the outcome you defined earlier?
4. Once that section feels solid enough for a first version, move on to the next section and repeat the process.
You don't need everything polished before you continue. You just need each part to support the broader promise of the course. This keeps the focus on building a useful course, not just filling an outline with content.
Bear in mind, you will naturally jump back & forth quite a bit.
A few minutes after thinking the structure of your sections is right, once you have the first few lesson titles, you'll suddenly realize that the sections need to change.
Fear not, that's the whole point...
You can't get a sense for whether what you've done is correct until you actually start, get a structure in place, and test it with a dry-run (without lesson content at first). This feeling of experiencing your course the same way a future student will is what allows you to work your way towards launching much faster.
ℹ️ Designing a course in this way is often also what sets a course apart from those where someone simply planned content & loaded it into an LMS, vs. someone who very intentionally designed a course with clear consideration given to the path a learner will take.
Once you're happy with your course structure & plan, start working on individual lesson material with an open mind. You may find better ways to structure things or add new lessons at this stage as well, because at each stage your course becomes slightly less abstract.
As a result, your "dry-runs" of how a learner will experience a course gradually become closer to reality until you feel it's ready to launch & share with the first real students you invite in to take your course.
Note: This is one of the main reasons we believe in keeping the core LifterLMS plugin free. We want to remove as much friction between you getting started & actually launching as we can. |
