4 Tips for Effective Course Development

 

 

 

 

What do we do when we have an idea? We don’t sleep on it, right? We share it with our spouses or bosses. If our idea is good and understood by our audience, we get an appreciation and if possible, have our idea implemented at home or at work. Some path breaking ideas have the potential to make you extremely rich as well.

However, what defines whether your idea can be implemented is whether you can sell your idea to the key stakeholders. For example, at work, the adoption of your idea will depend on whether you can explain the value in your idea to your boss.

Similarly, if you consider course development, they are like ideas to your learners. Just as ideas are new entities for anyone else other than you, a course or its topics are likely to be new ideas for the learners. In addition, what pitching ideas teaches us is that:

  • To pitch an idea effectively, you need to weave a story with it around its use case.
  • Similarly, for any course, you need to tell a story, give examples, and show how to implement what is being taught.

So, by learning from selling ideas, here are four tips for more effective course development:

  • First, treat each topic on a slide as an idea
  • Second, connect the ideas or slide topics
  • Third, be crisp in your presentation
  • Lastly, teach how to apply the idea

Let us examine these in detail.

Treat each topic on a slide as an idea

As an idea is a new entity for a listener, so is a topic. To sell ideas, you need to convey the difference adopting a new idea can solve a problem or make the world a better place. Similarly, in any course, the topics on the slides are likely to be new ideas for the learners. Hence, when you teach a topic, present it to your learners to ensure that they understand the topic and know the difference it will make to their knowledge or skills.

The need to explain the difference learning about the topic can make for your learners is important. Conveying the applicability of a topic or explaining how the topic will help them solve any problem will keep your learners engaged. This will further enable them to implement the lessons from the course.

Connect the ideas or slide topics

Next, it is important to connect the ideas or topics when you develop courses. Let us understand this in relation to ideas. To sell an idea, you need to sell it via. stories. You must paint a picture of how adopting the idea can bring about positive changes. Similarly, to teach a course effectively, you need to write the course such that the topics are linked with each other. Writing this way will ensure that your course has a flow, topics are linked, and your learners get the big picture that you are trying to teach.

A significant number of courses don’t achieve their objectives as they are written such that the topics are taught in silos. Hence, as an instructional designer or a course writer, your course development should be similar to writing a story, where each topic builds upon the previously taught topics. This will enable your learners to link all that you’ve taught and apply it.

Be crisp in your presentation

Next, be crisp in your presentation. When selling ideas, you should not bore your audience or approvers with unnecessary details. Similarly, the level of detail that you present on a topic in a course will depend on the knowledge that your audience currently has on the topic and how they need to apply the new knowledge. So, know your audience, their preferences related to course durations, job requirements, and then determine the amount of content you want to present to teach your topic.

Teach how to apply the idea

Finally, in your courses, you should include tips on applying the knowledge, processes, or procedures that you have taught in the training. When you present an idea, you must include a roadmap on how you plan to implement the idea. Without this aspect, the idea will just be a theory, which may not yield immediate results. Similarly, when you write a course, present your learners with tips on how to implement what you are teaching. This will empower them to become a better professional or an individual with what you’ve taught. In addition, teaching application will help you to achieve your learning objectives from a course.

To summarize, effective course development is a challenging task. Implementing these tips derived from selling and presenting new ideas can enable you to improve your course writing. These tips will help you to ensure that your courses have:

  • A logical explanation for each topic,
  • Topics that are connected,
  • Only relevant information, and
  • Include tips on how to apply the topics

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