Do you struggle with organizing your ideas for a course? Let’s talk about some *practical* aspects of organizing your ideas in a course curriculum. How to create a course curriculum?
You must have already heard some of the key pillars of great courses like “have a clear goal”, “create for a specific audience”.
But where to ACTUALLY start the process? WHAT. TO. DO.
✅ You have your course idea.
✅ You know how you want to help.
✅ You’ve clarified your vision for the offer.
Now you just have to untangle 10 years of experience & decide what information matters the most for your students…
Let’s talk about creating a course curriculum!
How to create a course curriculum?
Before we dive into the actual process of creating a curriculum for your online course, let me clarify a bit of that “before” work you must have done.
There are many different ways how you can approach coming up with a course idea but here’s a rather simple “checklist” I suggest going through to make sure your idea is going to stick.
Related read: Not ready to create a course just yet? Here’s what you can do now.
Ask yourself the following questions before creating a course on your chosen topic:
- Do you have a clear goal, a clear focus with your idea? Can you clearly indicate what will this course help with?
- Do you know who is your ideal target audience? Will you create a course with a clear persona in mind?
- Have you based your idea on a clear need amongst your audience? There’s a difference between creating a course for yourself and creating a course for your audience…
If you’re not ready just yet, consider getting in on Kickstart Your Course Challenge which will help you to clarify your course vision, as well as plan and create your offer!
But if it’s green light all above the board, let’s move on.
So how to actually create a course curriculum?
STEP no.1: Decide on the key topics your ideal student will need to explore to reach the promised goal
The first step is to consider the bigger topics you will want to cover within your course.
Ultimately, these can turn into your modules but this is not something you should overfocus on at the moment.
To begin with, consider if it will be more relevant to consider this topic-based or step-based.
For example, when it comes to content about creating online courses, I usually cover the following topics:
- content
- design
- marketing
- platforms
- launching
Each of these can be seen as a module on its own and in this case, it’d then be topic-based.
At the same time, we can also flip the script and consider it as a step-based curriculum as well, for example:
- step 1: clarify your idea and set branding (content and design combined but only on the starter level)
- step 2: outline your course in detail and design your first slide samples (again, content and design is combined but taken to the next level)
- step 3: finalize your course slides and do trial video recordings
In this sample, the different topics overlap in each of the steps but they’re more focused on the specific phase they are in.
You can choose either of the options, based on what works better for your vision (and you can always update later!)
For now, your first step is to clarify those bigger categories or topics to cover.
STEP no.2: Set up these categories on a free Trello board
A Trello board is a great way to lay out your course modules – the key categories you will want to discuss.
From there, you will be able to easily manage the topics and see the bigger picture of your course.
STEP no.3: On each board, brainstorm the questions you want to cover within the category.
This is the part that can take a while but that’s where Trello comes in handy – it’s easy to add, change and delete topics as you go.
Once that is done, you will be able to start thinking about your actual user experience & what will make the most sense for them.
It’s a work in progress but you don’t have to do it all alone!
STEP no.4: Organize your ideas, keeping in mind your key goal
As you’ve laid out all of your ideas for the course, it’s time to start organizing them in a curriculum that will make sense for your audience.
This is where it’s important to keep in mind the key goal – the key promise – of your online course.
What it is your audience is here to learn?
As you lay down their path to this goal, keep in mind this question and, with each new lesson, consider if it makes sense in their path.
Follow @coursecreationlab for more tips on Instagram and TikTok!
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